MOBILE HARBOR, ALA.

COMMITTEE ON RIVERS AND HARBORS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C., February 11, 1914. The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., Hon. Stephen M. Sparkman (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Taylor, this meeting of the committee was called at your request, in order that you might present and we might hear some gentlemen from Alabama, particularly from Mobile, in the interests of Mobile Harbor. Are you ready to proceed now? Mr. TAYLOR. Yes, sir; I am ready.

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE W. TAYLOR, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA.

Mr. TAYLOR. The committee is well aware of the anxiety that I have had in regard to having action on the new project providing for a depth of 30 feet in the harbor of Mobile at this session of Congress; and when I communicated with Mobile and told them that the hearings on the bill were about to be closed and that the report of the engineers had not reached the War Department and was not ready for submission to the board of review, my people in Mobile became considerably excited and wired me to ask the committee to hold up the hearings on the bill until they could be heard from. They desire, if possible, to have the project put on its feet at this session of Congress, and they are here before you this morning to present their views. I take pleasure in introducing Mr. Horace Turner, of Mobile, who is the chairman of the river and harbor committee at Mobile, a committee organized under the chamber of commerce, and which has jurisdiction and care of river and harbor matters in our section of the country.

STATEMENT OF MR. HORACE TURNER, MOBILE, ALA.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we realize that we are, possibly, a little bit premature in discussing this matter of the improvement of Mobile Harbor before the engineers' report has been passed upon by the Board of Review; but when we wired Mr. Tavlor, at the time we started from Mobile, we understood from our local engineer that the report should reach the Chief of Engineers not later than Monday, and we hoped that report would be able to get to the Board of Review by the time we reached Wash

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ington. We also hoped that this committee would hold the appropriation bill long enough for us to see if we could not get that report passed upon by the Board of Review, printed, and in the hands of the committee, simply because it meant so much to Mobile. We have been delayed in getting this Mobile report to Washington and before your committee not through any fault of our own, but through the misfortune of having several changes of engineers. The report, or preliminary survey, was made by Col. Flagler, who was relieved from duty at Mobile and left Capt. Ward next in command, and I do not think he was directed to finish this report, or at least make it up and send it in, although it was fairly well made up at the time Col. Flagler left Mobile. Then, in October, Col. Keller was sent to Mobile, and he, of course, had to make his own investigations and decide the very important matters to be considered in that report; we had to supply him with new data just like any new engineer.

Mr. TAYLOR. Col. Keller didn't reach Mobile till this last October? Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir; he went to work upon his report, and called upon our committee for additional data and facts which he wanted to go into, and he did go into them very thoroughly. He made his report-I think it was ready for submission the early part of January-but he was called away to Baltimore to see the chief of his division, and that delayed the matter another week or 10 days, and then when he finally sent it to Baltimore Col. Beach wanted to come to Mobile to look over some features of the maintenance of the channel. He came to Mobile and then went on out to Texas or somewhere else before he went back to Washington. That all caused more delay; but finally the report was received by Col. Beach, and we hoped it would be through his hands and in the office of the Chief of Engineers, and particularly to the Board of Review, by the time we reached Washington. That is the history of the delay; and during this period the people of Mobile have done everything they could to try and hurry the report up; but we all know that in matters of this kind the engineers are going to take time to consider each new detail before passing on such important matters.

Mr. HUMPHREY. I think you have gotten along remarkably fast. Mr. TURNER. But we were so worried and concerned over it, from lack of the water we should have, that Mobile was particularly anxious to push the matter as fast as possible. We knew that with a channel as long as that at Mobile it would take four years to complete the work. We are working at a great disadvantage with the 23-foot channel, because we have to select the type of boats that come to Mobile, boats that are much smaller in size than we should have and consequently much more expensive to move freight in them. The CHAIRMAN. The engineers report that you have 26 feet there

now.

Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir; they are speaking about that; but the conditions are the same, just the minute we get the deeper water the type of boats gets larger; we are still selecting the type of boats to come to Mobile, and we can not take the deepest draft boats that come into the Gulf. We can not get them to come to Mobile because we haven't enough water. We are also at another disadvantage in Mobile, where we have fresh water. Salt water is much more buoyant, and if we had 27 feet in Mobile Harbor we could only load to

26 instead of 27, as they could do at Pensacola, for instance. So we are at a disadvantage of 6 inches in this respect.

The CHAIRMAN. That statement is a little surprising. I thought that of all the Gulf ports you could come nearer utilizing the full depth there than at any other place.

Mr. TURNER. No, sir; we are at that disadvantage.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought that on account of the nature of the bottom, the soft mud, a little more than the reported depth was developed; I understood the boats could plow through this mud.

Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir; but even at that a boat will come up 6 inches higher in salt water than in fresh water.

Now, the next disadvantage we have is the fact that our tide is so uncertain and so much affected by northers. The difference between the highest tide and low water is, I would say, 3 to 4 feet, at least 3 feet; we always load our boats as deeply as we can, and during these periods when the water is greatly reduced in depth by the northers the boats are much delayed after loading.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that condition is common to all Gulf ports. Mr. TURNER. Not absolutely.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not so familiar with Mobile, but I know that applies to some extent to Pensacola, which has the same kind of land-locked harbor. Certainly it applies to Tampa.

Mr. TURNER. We need every inch of water we can get, and when we lose any on account of the effect of the north winds on the tide they immediately cut off the cargo. We frequently have to send boats to other ports to complete their cargo; they go to Pensacola to take bunker coal, because they have 30 or 31 feet there, and that is a great expense upon shipping. But leaving out entirely the question of the losses in revenue to the port through the sale of bunker coal or the fact that they could get a lower rate if they could load entirely at Mobile, it is a serious delay to the steamer.

The CHAIRMAN. Your port is not peculiar in that respect. Tampa, for instance, is in the same situation, except that it only has 24 feet where you have 26; boats go there and after partly loading proceed to some other port to complete their cargoes. Many of them load with phosphate and then go to Charleston or some other place to complete their loads.

Perhaps I had as well say right here that your port is not alone in another respect: A survey for Mobile, for instance, was ordered in the last bill. The harbor at Tampa also had a survey ordered in the same bill, which is still pending, the preliminary survey not having yet been completed. So that your project has been pushed much more rapidly than the one for Tampa. I only mention this to show that you are not alone in having no report. I may also say that the engineers have apparently been pushing your project along as rapidly as they could, consistently with thoroughness and effective work. Col. Flagler. I believe, was not at all sure at first that it would be possible to maintain at reasonable cost a 30-foot depth; but whatever his views were or might have been, Col. Keller, his successor, finally took the view that it could be done, and recent work on its survey has proceeded with that end in view. I believe the matter has been pushed as rapidly as it could be prosecuted, and that there has been no unnecessary delay. We all sympathize with you, Mr. Taylor, in your anxiety and efforts to push the matter along.

You have a great port there, one that has not and will not be neglected by the Government. Its rapidly growing commerce justifies liberal treatment, but nothing can be done without a project. I hope that our engineers-and we have the most skilled in the world— will be able to work out the problem, and they will, if given time; there is no doubt about that.

You have quite a problem there; it is well worth considering, and worthy the attention of this committee and of Congress, because you have a great commerce which must be taken care of, and we are going to take care of it if possible. But we can not, under the rules of this committee, vote to appropriate money for a project unless it has been favorably recommended by the engineers; and as they have not given us such a recommendation in this case, we can not make an appropriation in the bill. Nor, as I said, are you alone. There are many other places in the same situation, where projects. are not in but will no doubt come in later on. I am under the impression, however, that we will not be able to do anything for you in this Congress. You must remember that a year from now we will pass another bill-less than a year from now. When, if the report is here, it ought to be and doubtless will be provided for. These bills formerly came along every three years. Then, if a project was passed over, it had to wait three years, but now the delay is only for a few months. In the meantime the engineers must work out the problems in this case, but until that is done we can do nothing. We are glad to hear you gentlemen, nevertheless, for you can give the committee a good deal of information we would have to get later on, and it is just as well, perhaps better, to have it now.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate all you have said in regard to our pushing the project, and we appreciate too the engineering difficulties you have mentioned, and if we hadn't felt we were so close to getting it in this time we would not have come up here. We felt, however, that the engineering problems were practically passed upon. Col. Beach went to Mobile and considered the question of maintenance; he was under the impression that this channel could not be maintained through the harbor, that the sides sluffed in, but upon examination of actual cross sections of the channel he found that the channel did maintain itself to a degree not possible as through hardpan, but it did maintain itself. We have gone through this little narrow ditch, just a hundred feet wide

Mr. HUMPHREYS. Is that the width of the channel down Mobile Bay?

Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir; at the bottom section. It is so narrow that the suction of every steamer drags it in. It was 200 feet wide in the 27-foot cut, but we have such a long channel that it should be wider and deeper; we never have had the right sort of channel down Mobile Bay. I believe the engineers have been surprised that it has maintained itself as well as it has. In the report now being considered there is a recommendation for the first time for a channel that is really the width it should have been-300 feet.

Mr. TAYLOR. I would say in regard to this that we have what the engineers recommended: the survey was to report on providing suitable facilities commensurate with the commerce of Mobile, and they reported 200 feet wide and 27-foot depth, and that project is