the organizers are William L. Douglas, former governor of Massachusetts, Col. John J. Whipple, Hon. Robert T. Davis of Fall River, and Hon. Portus B. Hancock. The plan for a canal which these men have outlined is regarded as the most feasible of any Cape Cod Canal plan that has yet been evolved and it will have financial support that will carry the venture through. At Weymouth, near Quincy, about twelve miles south of Boston, are located the big shipvards of the Fore River Engine Company, a concern of which Massachusetts is justly and exceedingly proud, for it has already built several of the star cruisers of Uncle Sam's Navy, and is working day and night to build more. The importance of this newly-started

tion to the up-building of New England shipping can hardly be over-estimated. Through the Fore River plant, New England is hoping eventually to win back some of the prestige of generations agone, when Boston was the first shipping port of the United States. The

con

"Brockton crowd," as they are veniently termed in Bay State financial circles, propose to dig a canal from near the Fore River works, following down Smelt brook, going through Brockton and Bridgewater to Taunton, a distance of thirty-one miles. It is estimated that the canal can be built for $1,000,000 per mile. With this canal in operation, a vessel instead of making. the trip around the toe and heel of Cape Cod, would simply drop down to Quincy and take the canal down to Taunton, thence the Taunton river to Fall River, into Narragansett Bay and down Long Island Sound to New York. The use of such a waterway would, in a single year, save millions of dollars in time and freedom from danger. In fact, its blessings would be almost incalculable. Big coal barges and fair-sized vessels can already travel from Fall River up to Taun

ton. With the deepening of the river and the construction of the proposed Brockton canal, a splendid waterway for the largest ships from New York to Boston would be opened-an engineering triumph truly national in its importance. As has been said, the present New York, Brockton and Boston Canal plan is generally regarded by Bay State people as the wisest and most practicable Cape Cod waterway solution of all the years.

As early as 1736, the Cape Cod Isthmus was spoken of as "the place through which there has been a canal talked of for the last forty years."

The next application for a Canal was made to the General Court in 1776, and a resolution was adopted authorizing two officials "to view the premises and report upon the practicability of a channel." The committee's report was referred to the Continental Congress, so important

was thought this enterprise of trying to avoid the rocks of the course around the Cape. But owing to the financial stringency of the times, the subject lapsed until 1791 when it was again before the Massachusetts Legislature, and again did a committee report that the canal project was feasible and the benefits to be attained commensurate with its cost.

It is the most surveyed and argued and delayed project on record, this Cape Cod channel. Commencing

with the Plymouth colonists, surveys have been made by citizens, by the State, by an officer of engineers under General Washington, by the Board of Internal Sea Improvements under Congress and again by the United States Commissioners of Boston Harbor. In 1798, another

petition was before the General Court, and in 1803 another committee was investigating the subject. In 1818, Laommi Baldwin was appointed to survey the route. In 1828, Congress caused a survey to be made of the best route between Barnstable Bay and Buzzard's Bay. In

1830, the General Court was at the scheme once more! In 1860, a committee inspired by the Governor and aided by the United States Government made surveys and estimated the cost of the canal to be between five and ten millions.

In 1870, the General Court granted a Charter for the construction of the Canal, to Alpheus Hardy, whose summer home was at Bourne, near the proposed Buzzard's Bay entrance. The charter

was five times extended, but the owners did nothing more than make a survey.

This charter was succeeded by a grant to Henry M. Whitney, the Cape Breton coal, iron and steamship man. Whitney had associated with him a coterie of big New England financial powers, but after an investigation and estimation of the cost of the construction work, he refused

to undertake the project, and, in 1883. the privileges of a charter were granted to Frederick Lockwood, who was to undertake the work of construction at one million dollars per mile. Lockwood built an enormous dredging machine and dug a big ditch about three-quarters of a mile in length. The whole spasm of activity was a failure. Lockwood had