"This is the bill for the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. It literally has everything--power for defense which could mean as much to us as Muscle Shoals and the later T.V.A. did in World War II; an interior and defensible route for iron ore from Labrador in war or peace; opening to deep water transportation the entire heart of the Mississippi Valley; and all this for an investment of less than $1,000,000,000, split between Canada and the United States in such a way as to create an additional tie between the two countries. It would develop one of the last of our great natural resources."
Prof. Harlow Shapley (astronomy) calls for creation of a Department of Peace and Human Welfare, headed by a Secretary of Cabinet rank. "Congress should back this department with a budget approaching 10 per cent of what we are currently spending on the various machineries of war. The department would of course include a number of bureaus that already exist, but its large new adventure might be in the field of the international development of the world's human and material resources to the end of decreasing the miseries and irritations that lead to the wars that threaten our civilization."
Some Gagged It
A facetious view of the question produced the following replies:
Prof. J. K. Fairbank (history)--"Instead of the old one 'that all automotive vehicles should be preceded by a man carrying a red flag' (to solve unemployment), I suppose now we need a law 'that all verbal statements by members of the executive or legislative branches must first be written out in longhand' (to lower the national blood pressure)."
Prof. Donald C. McKay (government)--"If we can have only one law the country will obviously be prey to inflation and paralysis, the Soviets will feel free to carry out the Hoover Plan, and we might as well look sharply each one to his own special interests.
"Under these conditions I favor passage of an "Aid to Indigent Professors Act" which would envisage that rapidly-growing class which has always occupied a position on the subsistence frontier and which has recently (if I may vary the metaphor) been caught squarely in the inflation scissors."
Professor McKay said the Sunday travel supplements of newspapers remind him "of the one-sided nature of a society which sends its business leaders--not to speak of university administrators, reluctantly heeding the winter call of Florida alumni--to mend their nerves on Florida beaches while we professors inhale each other's germs in the fetid air of Widener Library."
"Let the government come to the rescue of this neglected group (it's almost the only one not to have had government aid to date) so that it may have a regular mid-winter restorative; for the wives, too, of course (we don't want this to be misunderstood or slipped into the Raised Eyebrows Department)," McKay added.