National Affairs: A Victory for Progress

The forces of progress, which for more than 30 years have been mounting against opposition to the St. Lawrence Seaway project, last week broke over the top and cascaded to a 51-33 victory in the U.S. Senate. The year's first legislative success for the Eisenhower Administration was achieved by mustering as many Republican as Democratic votes, and came as a result of expert preparation in the backwaters of Capitol Hill.

In 1952 the Senate voted 43-40 against the Seaway, with the opposition bulwarked in the Atlantic and Gulf states and in areas sensitive to railroad and coal interests. But during the last fortnight, the bulwarks began to crack; one Senator after another shifted to support of the Seaway. The Administration appealed to the Republicans on the basis of national security and loyalty to the President. Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned the Senators that the Russians have six times as many submarines as the Germans did in 1939, said supplies of Canadian iron ore in a future war might depend on the Seaway.

Some old-fashioned logrolling also helped. Two days before the vote, Wisconsin's Senator Alexander Wiley, long a Seaway project man, got his Foreign Relations Committee to approve a $3,000,000 survey for the long-dormant Passamaquoddy Tidal Power project on the Maine-New Brunswick border. Coincidental result: Maine's Senators Margaret Chase Smith and Frederick Payne backed the St. Lawrence Seaway. Last month Interior Secretary Douglas McKay came out for the billion-dollar Colorado River Storage project. Coincidental result: the support of Colorado's powerful Eugene Millikin, along with other Senators from the five Colorado Basin states.

Having swept over the dam in the Senate, the Seaway's next obstacle is the House, where some of its foes have already shown signs of weakening.