the car, put the stuff on a barge, carry it down the river to the Gulf much quicker than you can the other way. There are good roads in the valley here along here [indicating], so that a great deal of tonnage that would originate there [indicating] would be hauled from Birmingham by trucks. We have immense trucks there and we could load the material onto the trucks here [indicating] and haul it down here [indicating], making it unnecessary to put it on the cars. That is the reason we are contending for the terminus at that point, because there is where the railroads converge.

Going back to the canal proposition-but before I do that I wish to show you some photographs which I took myself and which I therefore know are authentic. They were taken with a kodak and enlarged.

This picture (indicating] shows the river right along at this point here [indicating]. Here is a road that runs along here, an old lumber road, so that you can get an idea of that part of the river [indicating]. That road is right here [indicating on map]. On this side you have rocky bluffs. If you wanted to, you could put up a dam 500 feet high there, although it is not necessary to do that at all.

Here is another picture which shows this part of the road here [indicating]. It gives you an idea of the character of the stream. Here is a mile stretch of the river, gentle

men.

The Valley River has high, rocky bluffs on each side of it through here [indicating]. Occasionally you will find a place where there is a little valley. On this side there may be a high place, just little creeks coming through here [indicating]. Right in there [indicating] you will probably find some cleared land, 10 acres of cleared land, perhaps, and the balance of it comes right up to the cliff. This plan that you see here [indicacting map on wall] is my own plan, worked out with the assistance of the local engineers who know this proposition by heart. They have been up and down this stretch dozens of times and know it by heart.

My idea was simply to put one lock at the narrows and then another one here [indicating]; another one here [indicating]; and another one here [indicating]. When you get to this point [indicating] there is no difficulty from overflow if you use these 63-foot locks. When you get to this point here [indicating] you have to come down just a little in order to get this level in here [indicating]. Therefore the main difficulty is right here [indicating]. The balance of it is simple. To canalize the river and put locks and dams in from here to here [indicating] simply means the excavation of 30 feet of land in order to get through to this point [indicating].

The plan was this [indicating profile], to put a lock at the narrows here then come on up and put another one here [indicating], which brings us to this point here [indicating], and then when you get to McAdory simply put one at the loading basinCol. NEWCOMER. Put the fourth lock there [indicating]?

Mr. WELLER. Yes. I am doing away with this lock entirely. We have ample water now from this point [indicating]. When this map was made originally, there was a question in my mind as to whether there was water enough, but that question has been solved. We have ample water. By putting this lock right here [indicating], nature has provided in here [indicating], an admirable location for a loading basin. It is surrounded by hills and the overflow, when we have occasional flood conditions. would go over a 25-foot spillway, so that when the water ran into the spillway and into this level [indicating] it would naturally run over the dam here (indicating]. That has all been worked out by the local engineers.

Mr. MOLTON. If you will pardon me. Mr. Weller, I would like to have Representative Oliver, of Alabama, say a few words. He lives in a county adjoining the Warrior River and knows something about it. He has an engagement and can not stay.

STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE W. B. OLIVER, OF ALABAMA.

Mr. OLIVER. I wish to express the deep interest that the Senators and other Representatives from our State have in this improvement. We are very hopeful that the facts submitted to the board at this time will justify a recommendation for a detailed survey. As civilians, we feel that the detailed survey will demonstrate the feasibility of this project and justify the improvement later. I am sure that the board is familiar with the steps that are now being taken to have recognition given to the extension and development of the barge transportation on the river. I think that some definite action will perhaps be taken in the matter in the very near future, and certainly there could be no better feeder for that river than the splendid industrial section of Birmingham, if it is given a water connection.

I, of course, know nothing about the technical end of it. I simply appear for the purpose of expressing, with the others, the very warm and deep interest we feel in the project, and we hope very much the facts presented will justify a recommendation for a detailed survey.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF MR. T. A. WELLER, MEMBER OF THE BIRMINGHAM CHAMBER OF

COMMERCE.

Mr. WELLER. Now, gentlemen, one word in regard to the water, and I am about through. I wish I could talk all evening with you about it. If I could talk two hours with you this afternoon, I could convince you of this thing without any trouble in the world.

What did Mr. Ripley say? He said that the water supply of the river division is ample. Mind you, that was in 1898. That a reservoir on McAdory Creek is necessary with 50 feet head of water, and so on, which would be large enough to supply over 4,000,000 cubic feet daily, which will maintain two-thirds of the maximuni traffic of 48 lockages daily during the extreme drought of 90 days. That was in 1898, gentle

men.

I am going to refer briefly to three or four sources of water supply. From McAdory down we do not worry about the water at all. We know we have plenty of it. Great springs rise right in this McAdory Creek. It is full of springs. Right there in the middle of the river there is a spring that boils up; you can see it, and they call it the Boiling Spring. That is below McAdory..

I will tell you about what happened in the last few years. The Schloss mine is right here [indicating]. I would like to state briefly that this is in Anticlinical Valley here, with the limestone standing up on end. Very seldom you will find springs in the valley here [indicating] but the water is down here [indicating], because we have had houses fall in down back of Birmingham; they went right down in a cave-in, and you could hear the water rolling down in there. The Valley River rises up here [indicating]. Some time ago there was a breakdown in the Schloss mine and they pumped over a million gallons of water into the Valley River. That water came down here through Bessemer right to this point along in here [indicating].

Possum Ridge is right here [indicating]. Right in here [indicating] the Woodward Iron Co. has put in an immense by-product plant in which they can turn coal into coke for their furnaces just above there. The Tennessee Co. is now erecting an immense by-product plant, and another company has already put in another big plant, and other big by-product plants are being operated in here. Those plants take water from this creek [indicating], which comes on down through Ensley into this reservoir [indicating]. The Tennessee Co. has spent a million dollars for that water supply. They pump the water from this reservoir and use it in these furnaces and steel plant. That water which goes into the steel plant goes back into the reservoir and it is used around and around again. These plants farther down Possum Valley, the by-products plants, have got to get water, and the consequence is the overflow of water from these plants goes into the Valley River [indicating]. Right here are artesian wells [indicating]. They went down to 130 feet and then put powerful machinery on them to get them lower, but they could not go lower. The water is there. The president of the pipe works told me that if you go down 30 feet you will strike an underground river. That would give us all the water we want at this point here. The mines here [indicating] are deep mines and have to be cleared of water. So you see there is all this water coming down into the river that was not coming down when Mr. Ripley made his report.

It is estimated that the sewage of the Birmingham district has increased tenfold since Mr. Ripley made his report. That water goes through a trunk sewer, goes into the Valley River, and we have no doubt at all about the supply of water.

Mr. MOLTON. That sewage is pumped from across the river.

Mr. WELLER. It comes right through here [indicating). There is an immense septic tank which takes the solid matter out of the sewage. The sewage from North Birmingham and Ensley goes down through Ensley into a septic tank and then goes on into this reservoir. The water is purified so that it can be used.

My time is limited, gentlemen, but I want to say that we are in dead earnest about this proposition, and we want you to give us a favorable report on it, because we have worked on it for 20 years and know that it is feasible. We know that. There is no doubt about it. All we want you to do is to recommend a detailed survey on this proposition. We do not expect to get the work done now, of course, but we want the survey made so that we can go ahead with it when the proper time comes. Do not stop a thing that will be of such vital importance to this great district down here, a district that has the greatest aggregation of raw materials in the world, probably. Those resources there are hardly scratched, and prosperity demands that you help us in this proposition.

I thank you, gentlemen.

Mr. MOLTON. Gentlemen, I would like to introduce Mr. O. L. Bunn, secretarytreasurer of the traffic bureau of Birmingham, who will tell you something about freight conditions there, something about the lack of cars and the amount of tonnage

lying in the yards that can not be moved because of lack of cars, and also something about the prospects of production.

STATEMENT OF MR. O. L. BUNN, SECRETARY OF THE BIRMINGHAM TRAFFIC ASSOCIATION.

Mr. BUNN. Mr. Chairman, I am secretary of the Birmingham Traffic Association, an organization in Birmingham composed of the shipping interests of Birmingham, Bessemer, and that entire district. We have the largest manufacturing center in the South. We are larger than any two cities in the South put together, excluding Louisville and New Orleans.

We have an enormous amount of tonnage moving in and out of that district. We are intensely interested in the building of this canal. We believe it is the only way we can relieve the car shortage in that district, and, from a transportation standpoint, we are basing our request to build this canal on the following three reasons:

The first reason is the benefit that will accrue to the Government itself through the building of this canal; the second reason is the permanent benefits that will accrue to the Birmingham and Bessemer districts; and the third reason is the benefit that will accrue to the manufacturing interests all over the South that use the Birmingham materials as a basis to make their finished products.

The Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co., as you gentlemen know, is building a large shipyard at Mobile, and they are going to make the steel plates in Birmingham; they are going to fabricate it in Birmingham. Then it will be shipped to Mobile to go into the ships. How are they going to get it there? At the present time you can not get a car down there even when the Government makes a demand for it. When I left there I imagine they were short in that district from 1,200 to 1,500 cars. If we had this canal they could dray the steel plate to the canal, load it on to the barges, and unload it at the terminals in Mobile. I understand that they have spent or are spending, about $300,000 in building terminals at Mobile now.

Mr. WELLER. Those terminals are already finished.

Mr. BUNN. That is one way that the Government will get some benefit out of it. We know, of course, that you can not build this canal in time to ship these plates down, but we may have other wars; we may have a congestion after this war is over; we can not tell, but the Government certainly can get benefits out of that canal.

The second reason is the permanent benefits that will accrue to Birmingham. We have 336 manufacturing plants there, and we are making almost every known article in that district. We are shipping those articles to practically the entire United States and a large portion of the tonnage is exported.

I have made up some figures which show the export movement for the year ending June, 1914. That is what we would call a favorable year, about the time the war started. We shipped for export, cast-iron pipes, 33,312 tons; steel rails, 47,079 tons; billets, 109,712 tons; pig iron, 204,997 tons. That was just for export, and every bit of it moved either through the port of New Orleans or the port of Mobile. We can reach both of those ports by water if we had this canal.

Another reason for needing that canal is the tonnage of coal. We mined in the Birmingham district last year, coal alone, 18,234,625 tons. Figures do not sometimes convey the right impression, so I am going to tell you that to transport that coal alone, if we loaded every car with 60,000 pounds, the maximum loading of a coal car ordinarily, it would take 607,820 cars. If you put those cars in a train with 40 cars to the train, it would take 15,145 trains, of 40 cars each, each car loaded with 30 tons.

I do not recall whether it is shown on this little leaflet or not, but to transport a total of only 2,492,537 tons will take 83,085 cars, 60,000 pounds to the car. That would be for just the iron articles shown in the leaflet. The coal will take a total of 690,905 cars. If we did not have anything else to ship except those two commodities, you can see we would be right up against it when it comes to cars. We could transport the larger part of that tonnage down the river. We have two concerns that are now shipping down the Warrior River, the Debardenladen Coal Co. and the Pratt Consolidated Coal Co., which are operating barges taking coal down the Warrior River to New Orleans and selling it to W. G. Coyle & Co. who do a large bunkerage business. The coal goes down in these barges and they have facilities there for unloading the barges right into the ships. About six months ago at an Interstate Commerce Commission hearing held in New Orleans, a representative of that concern stated that they would put all of their coal on barges and send it down the river if they could do it. If all of the coal could be shipped down the river by barges, just think of the number of cars that that would turn loose for something else.

Col. NEWCOMER. You do not mean to say that that 18,000,000 tons of coal goes out of the district?

Mr. BUNN. No; it does not go to New Orleans or Mobile, but over 80 per cent of it is sold in the Southeastern States. Under the recent order of the Government all of that will be shipped in that district because they have given us certain territory which wẹ

must supply coal to. They have given the same thing to the Tennessee fields. In other words, the Tennessee fields come down and take in a part of north Alabama as distributing territory under that recent order. Boaz, Ala., used to get its coal from Birmingham, but they are now compelled to get it from the Tennessee fields. So they took the matter up with me and asked me to get them a reduced rate. The recent order threw their rates all out of balance.

Col. FISK. Where was the coal on the Warrior River that was shipped down to New Orleans?

Mr. BUNN. The coal shipped by the Pratt Consolidated Co. is put on the barge at Maxine.

Col. FISK. Is that on the Warrior River proper?

Mr. BUNN. It is on the east fork of the Warrior River.

Col. FISK. It is mined there, is it?

Mr. WELLER. It is all mined there. All these black spots that you see on the map represent mines.

Col. FISK. That has water transportation now, has it not?

Mr. WELLER. Cordova is right here. The river turns around here. It is not shown on this map [indicating]. The Debarladen Coal Co. ships from Cordova, the point I have indicated.

Col. FISK. I wanted to get an idea where the coal was mined and where it was put on the river.

Mr. MOLTON. Those are not the only companies that are mining coal.

Mr. BUNN. The only way they have of getting to the river now is to use the railroads out of Cordova, over the St. Louis & San Francisco, and they can take the Birmingham & Southern down to Maxine, about 30 miles.

In giving you gentlemen the figures on the cars, I did not take into consideration the enormous tonnage of iron ore that is used in the district, which is hauled from the mines to the pig-iron furnaces and melted.

Col. NEWCOMER. You say the tonnage of iron ore was a couple of million tons?

Mr. BUNN. No I gave 2,000,000 tons as the cast iron pipe, steel billets, rails, pig iron, etc.

Col. NEWCOMER. I thought you gave the tonnage of iron ore.

Mr. BUNN. No; I did not give that. The ore is melted right there in the Birmingham district.

The third reason to which I referred was the benefit that would accrue to the manufacturers all over the South. I do not believe there has been a day in the last three weeks, unless it was on a Sunday, that I have not received a telegram from some people asking me to use my good offices to help get cars in which they could load pig iron. I had a letter from a man in Louisville, Ky., who stated that he had bought pig iron in the latter part of 1916, and that that pig iron had not been delivered. He told me it was very urgent and that his factory was going to have to close down unless he could get the cars. I got another telegram from Richmond, Va., from the chamber of commerce, to get a car for nails; that he had a car of nails ordered for more than 50 days and could not get it moved. Just the other day the Schloss-Sheffield and the Woodward companies, and several of the other larger concerns, took the matter up directly with Mr. McAdoo by wire, stating that they were short in the district more than two-thirds of the cars necessary to load their traffic for which they had orders. The small manufacturer is getting along the best he can. The small men are the men that I represent particularly. They are just getting along from hand to mouth, so to speak. They tell a man that they can not ship and then they stand him off and try to hold the order until they can get a car. Of course sometimes they lose the order in that way and sometimes they can get the man to wait for the order.

It seems to me that if this canal was built, and we could move these heavy commodities which the railroads themselves do not want to handle right now, by water, that that would release a sufficient number of cars to take care of the other people. It is to the interest of the Government that all the manufacturers down there be kept busy, and it is just as much to the interest of the manufacturers there that the manufacturers who use their raw materials all over the South should be kept busy. If we are not kept busy it is going to create a congestion right within ourselves, you might say, and a terrible condition will be created, it seems to me. We are making shells for the Government down there; we are making gun cotton, and we are making everything else we can make to help the Government. We are putting Government orders in front of everything. We want to do our part in this; we want that honor. We certainly hope that you gentlemen will give us a favorable report so that we can have a detailed survey made to see whether or not this is a feasible project. We believe it is feasible and we have come to you to ask you to do what you can to help us.

Col. NEWCOMER. What proportion of the tonnage you mentioned do you think would go in this direction along this route? Do you know now the point to which that tonnage goes?

Mr. BUNN. Yes. We quote them freight rates and check their expense bills and handle their freight claims. I suppose I am as well versed in their traffic matters as any one could be who is not employed by them directly. Outside of pig iron we ship very little east of Birmingham. It all goes west. It goes down through New Orleans into Texas, into Louisiana, and to Mobile for export. The pig iron we ship into Ohio and Illinois, and all those points. All the other articles hardly ever move up in that direction unless we get a contract. The cast-iron pipe people have factories all over the United States and they ship from the point where they get the best rates. I do not know of any movement of heavy commodities east other than pig iron. They generally go south or west. Of course we have other commodities like machinery and stoves. We ship stoves all over the country.

Mr. WELLER. A great deal of shipping machinery manufactured in the Birmingham district goes down into New Orleans.

Mr. BUNN. We want to do this; this is our dream a little later on: To get selfpropelled steel barges so constructed that they can take these raw materials down and bring the finished product back, something like dry goods, sugar, salt, molasses, coffee, canned goods, hardware, and so forth. We believe we can develop enough tonnage in the reverse direction to load these barges both ways, or at least a large number of them.

I have some statistics on some of the articles I named. I believe the statistics are fairly accurate although I did not have time to check them over carefully.

Annually we use about 25,000 tons of dry goods, 12,000 tons of sugar, 9,500 tons of salt, 5,000 tons of molasses, 3,000 tons of coffee, 1,280 tons of canned goods, and hardware that could move by water, about 500 tons. I am compiling other statistics, but those are the only figures that I wish to bring before you as fairly accurate, because I did not want to come here with any figures that were not accurate.

Mr. HUEY. I would like to state that Mr. Bunn overlooked the fact that at Bessemer they have a blast furnace that makes manganese iron. That manganese ore comes largely from Cuba and from Spain. We also have at Bessemer two large fertilizer factories and chemical works that use a great deal of pyrites. A lot of that is imported from Spain and that could come up the river. There would be quite a good deal of tonnage of that stuff, which Mr. Bunn overlooked.

Mr. MOLTON. The best evidence that we believe in this proposition and have faith in the fact that the canal would be built if we could get a detailed survey, is the fact that we are here. The very best proof we can lay before you of our interest is the fact that we are here, and believe in it, if we can get the survey. If it is not practical then that is all there is to it, but until we get a detailed survey we will always believe that the canal ought to be built.

At the time of this survey by Mr. Ripley and I want to emphasize this-the Warrior River was not navigable so that it really would not have been any benefit whatever to canalize the Valley River from Bessemer to the Warrior before the Warrior work was completed. That is the condition that existed at the time Mr. Ripley made his survey. At the time Mr. Guthrie made what Senator Bankhead has called a horseback survey two years ago, for the purpose of determining whether or not we needed these improvements, it was at a time following a period of depression in the manufacture of all iron products. Some of our furnaces had been idle and we did not have the freight that we have now and that we probably will have for years to come. The work on the Warrior River is finished now and ready for us to run our boats from the Valley River into the Warrior and on down to the Gulf. We have now more than double the water that they had at the time that Mr. Ripley made his survey and yet he approved it.

We would like to hear from Senator Underwood before we close this hearing.

STATEMENT OF HON. OSCAR W. UNDERWOOD, SENATOR FROM ALABAMA.

Senator UNDERWOOD. Gentlemen, I am glad to have an opportunity to say just a word. My colleague, Senator Bankhead, and myself were here when the original Ripley survey was authorized. Of course we are very anxious to have this Birmingham-Bessemer district connected with the work on the Warrior River.

When this matter came before the committee before, the Warrior River work was not completed. At an expense of nearly $12,000,000, the work on the Warrior River has been completed into the Birmingham district. The manufacturing operations of the district are removed from the Warrior River about 18 miles, in an air line, and it would be of very great advantage to this district and to the people that are supplying

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