Before the constitutional convention of Louisiana, on April 4, 1921, he elaborated this thought as follows:
"The Industrial Canal will furnish to New Orleans her greatest need. It should be possible to build docks there where the entire cargo for a ship may be assembled. Under present conditions in the river it is often necessary for a ship to go to three or four docks to get a complete cargo.
"Last year there passed through the port of New Orleans 11,000,000 tons of freight valued at $1,100,000,000. This required 1,000 loaded freight cars a day passing over the docks, fifteen solid trainloads of freight each day. The inbound freight was about 5,000,000 tons and the outbound about 6,000,000. This is extraordinarily well balanced for any port in the United States. This would mean about 5,000 steamers of an average capacity of 2,000 tons.
"The proper place to assemble a cargo is on the docks. Last year the Dock Board allowed but seven days for assembling the cargo for a ship—only seven days for assembling 250 carloads of stuff. Then last year the Dock Board would not assign a ship a berth until it was within the jetties. These are some of the difficulties.
"What New Orleans needs is 50 to 100 per cent more facilities 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.