s for her
port. Last summer the port of New Orleans was congested, but she held
her own because other ports were congested. But that may not occur
again. If you want to hold your own you must improve your facilities."

Wharves can be built a great deal cheaper on the fixed-level canal,
with its stable banks. And that is the only place specialized
industries can secure water frontage.

Sooner or later the government will adopt the free port system, by
which other countries have pushed their foreign trade to such heights.
Free ports have nothing to do with the tariff question. They are simply
zones established in which imports may be stored, re-packed,
manufactured and then exported without the payment of duties in the
first place, duties for the refund of which the present law makes
provision, but only after vexatious delays and expensive red tape.
Precautions are taken to prevent smuggling. In the preliminary
investigations and recommendations made by the Department of Commerce,
New York, San Francisco and New Orleans have been designated as the
first free ports that should be established. With the ample space it
offers for expansion, the Industrial Canal is the logical location for
the free zone.

Counting the $15,000,000 contract of the Doullut & Williams Shipyard,
the $5,000,000 contract of the Foundation Company Shipyard, the
$13,000,000 army supply base, the Industrial Canal has already brought
$33,000,000 of development to New Orleans, 60 per cent more than the
cost of the undertaking. More than half of this was for wages and
material purchased in New Orleans. The state has gained hundreds of
thousands of dollars in taxes. About half the money spent on the
Industrial Canal was wages; and helped to increase the population,
force business to a new height, raise the value of real estate, and
make New Orleans the financial stronghold of the South.

What indirect bearing on bringing scores of other industries to New
Orleans, which did not require a location on the waterway, the building
of the Industrial Canal has had, there is no way of ascertaining.

Since the work was begun the Dock Board has received inquiries from a
hundred or so large enterprises regarding the cost of a site on the
canal. That they have not established there is due to the fact that the
Canal has not yet been completed, and the Dock Board has announced no
policy.

It is now working on that question with representatives of the
Association o