e New Orleans Steamship Association;
R. W. Dietrich of the Bienville Warehouse Corporation; Edgar B. Stern,
Milton Boylan, W. H. Byrnes, J. C. Hamilton, and about thirty other
representative business and professional men. Mayor Behrman, John T.
Banville, president of the Brewery Workers' Union, and George W. Moore,
president of the Building Trades Council, at a subsequent meeting, gave
their endorsement.

With only one dissenting voice, these meetings were unanimous that the
Industrial Canal must be completed at all costs; that without it, the
growth of the city would be seriously interrupted. The one protest was
by the Southern Realty and Securities Company. It was made October 23
against the Levee Board's underwriting the interest on the new bond
issue.

On that date the Levee Board unanimously voted to guarantee these
interest charges, amounting to $375,000 a year. This brings the total
being paid by that body out of direct taxation to $925,000.00 a year.
The other $50,000 is paid by the Public Belt Railroad.

To provide a leeway against the engineer's estimates, the Dock Board
made provision for a bond issue of $7,500,000, but actually issued only
$5,000,000 worth. This was taken by the same syndicate of bankers that
had taken the previous issues, but this time they paid par. That was a
point on which President Hudson had insisted. The contract was accepted
December 10, 1919.

And the work went on, with every effort concentrated on economical
construction.

SIPHON AND BRIDGES.

As an incident in the work of building the Industrial Canal, it was
necessary to create a disappearing river.

This is the famous siphon--the quadruple passage of concrete that will
carry the city's drainage underneath the shipway. It is one of the
largest structures of its kind in the country.

A word about New Orleans' drainage problem. The city is the bowl of a
dish, of which the levees against river and lake are the rim. There is
no natural drainage. The rainfall is nearly five feet a year,
concentrated at times, upon the thousand miles of streets, into
cloudbursts of four inches an hour and ten inches in a day. In the
boyhood of men now in their early thirties it was a regular thing for
the city to be flooded after a heavy rain.

To meet the situation, New Orleans has constructed the greatest
drainage system in the world. There are six pumping stations on the
east side of the river, connected with each other by canals