The Times News

CANAL AIDED
PROSPERITY OF
ENGLAND, SAID
W. R. Croasdell of This
City. Gives Floridians
Data on Project

Pointing to the great value
that the Manchester, England,
ship canal has been in promoting
the life and prosperity of that
section, Robert W. Croasdell of
this city was interviewed at length
by the Jacksonville, Fla., Journal,
during his trip there, apropos of
the Florida cross-state canal, now
in a preliminary construction
stage, and for which six Florida
counties on Tuesday overwhelm-
ingly voted bond issues for the
purpose of financing the right-of-
way. The article appears below.

Editor's note:

"Working men and small store-
keepers put up their savings of a
thrifty lifetime to build the Man-
chester Ship Canal. They paid over
a million dollars to the British
government for the privilege of
launching the enterprise.

They paid, in cash, more than
$7,000,000 for the right-of-way
and hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars to buy off the organized op-
position of vested interests.

"The canal was constructed dur-
ing a period of great depression in
the area which it ultimately bene-
fited, and it took seven years of
actual construction work to com-
plete the job."

VISITOR TELLS STORY

Such was a statement made by
Robert W. Croasdell now of Hen-
dersonville, N. C., who as a young
man, was present and took part in
the English canal enterprise which
in many of its problems, parallels
the conditions now faced in Flori-
da by the Cross State Canal proj-
ect.

"The Manchester Ship Canal
was a dream for 150 years," Mr.
Croasdell declared.

"Idle factories, empty resi-
dences and vacant stores in the
town of Manchester inspired the
people of that and neighboring
communities to make their canal
dream a reality in order that ships
from the seven seas of the world
come inland 35 miles from the
River Mersey and bring to them
at low transportation costs, the
raw materials they required for
their industries."

TOWN PUTS UP MILLIONS

"The town of Manchester which,
at that time, was a relatively
small community languishing in
the depths of a depression, put up
$25,000,000 of the $76,000,000
which was required as a guaran-
tee before the British government
would consent to the construction
of the canal.

"The balance of $51,000,000 was
subscribed by working men, store
keepers and other small investors,
who had nothing to show for their
investment but a promise that
they might be paid 3 1-2 per cent
interest if and when the canal was
constructed and earned revenues
over and above operating costs."

"Opposition to the Manchester
Ship Canal project was highly or-
ganized and engineers of high re-
nown declared that if the canal
were built it would retain tide wa-
ter from the River Mersey and
dry up the bar of the Port of
Liverpool."

NONE HAPPENED

Other fantastic and fearful pro-
phesies of calamity were made by
authoritative spokesmen, many of
which are now recalled by Mr.
Croasdell because of the prophes-
ies of calamity now being pointed
against the construction of the
Cross State Ship canal.

"Needless to say," said Mr.
Croasdell, "none of these calami-
ties occurred. In fact, the Port
of Liverpool which was one of the
active opponents of the Manchest-
er Ship canal, entered into the
era of its greatest prosperity fol-
lowing the completion of the Man-
chester Ship canal.

AIDED RAILROADS

The railroads which were also
most active in opposition, receiv-
ed the greatest increase in traffic
because of the establishment of
many new and very large indus-
tries along the canal to serve
which many miles of new railroad
sidings were necessary to cope
with the increased freight move-
ment.

Very large industrial plants
which had been outlawed from op-
erating in congested area because
of odor nuisances or risks, such as
pulp mills, oil refineries, soap
factories, immense tanneries and
manufacturers of explosives es-
tablished great plants on both
shores of the canal in sections
lying between towns where the
canal passed through the open
country side.

IMMEDIATE PROFITS

"The working men, store keep-
ers and other business men in the
communities reached by the ca-
nal who invested their savings in
the cost of its construction, re-
ceived their first and almost im-
mediate profits from the tremend-
ous increase in business which re-
opened idle factories, caused
empty stores to be re-leased, en-
larged the practice of profession-
al men and set the communities
served by the canal far forward
on the road to the industrial and
business supremacy they now hold
within the United Kingdom.

"The city of Manchester became
a seaport with a population of
766,000.

OPPOSITE EFFECT

"It is rather interesting to re-
call," said Mr. Croasdell, "that a
mass meeting which had been call-
ed by disgruntled taxpayers who
protested against appropriations
by the town of Manchester of city
funds to buy right-of-way, had
just the opposite effect to that
for which the meeting was called.

"The protesting parties had to
fly for their lives under police es-
cort to escape the wrath of a mul-
titude of working men who had
invested their savings in the canal
in order to insure their own em-
ployment. The end result of the
meeting was a mandate to the city
to continue to make such appro-
priations as might be necessary to
complete the canal."

CONVERT 200

Mr. Croasdell, who is the father
of Roy Croasdell of the County
Engineers office and Rex Croas-
dell of Jacksonville Chamber of
Commerce, was a young man of
28 years when he took part in the
incidents related above.

He is now in business in Hen-
dersonville, N. C., where he takes
a prominent part in the affairs of
the Florida club of that summer
resort city.

During this last summer he, to-
gether with Fred Bettelini of
Jacksonville, has been working to
convert the 200 members of the
club from South Florida to sup-
port the Cross State ship canal.

BOOKLET CITED

In their work they found that
a citation of the facts regarding
the Manchester Ship canal was
their most effective argument and
to document their reasoning they
used a copy of a publication is-
sued by the Budget and Finance
Committee of the City Council of
the City of Jacksonville, which
was prepared by Alfred Francis
Harley, a local civil engineer, who
during the spring of last year
made a complete inspection of the
Manchester Ship canal and a com-
prehensive research into its his-
tory.

"We had only one copy of this
book," Mr. Croasdell concluded.
"but it was the gospel from which
we preached, and practically every
member of the Florida club com-
prised of over 200 Floridians from
the southern part of the state
were completely converted."