The opposition, said President Thompson, at the Dock Board meeting of February 26, 1919, reviewing the development of the canal plans, "was inspired by vicious and spectacular attacks of certain private interests hostile to the canal project and to the port of New Orleans." Railroads, whose right of way crossed the Canal, were the principal propagandists. They realized that the Dock Board could not be required to build their bridges over the waterway, and although the Thompson board financed the work at the time, they knew that sooner or later would come a day of reckoning. The Hudson Board has since then taken steps to collect several million dollars from these roads. But why build a canal almost large enough, only? Why build a 25-foot lock when ships drawing 30-feet of water come to New Orleans? A lock cannot be enlarged, once it is completed--and the tendency of the times is towards larger ships. Why not make a capacity facility while they were about it? [Illustration: LOCK SITE Driving Sheet Piling] [Illustration: LOCK SITE Dredges Entering] These were questions the Dock Board asked itself, and on June 29, 1918, it decided to build the lock with a 30-foot depth over the sill at extreme low water, and make the canal 300 feet wide at the top, and 150 feet wide at the bottom. To do this, would cost about $1,000,000 more, it was estimated by George M. Wells of the Goethals company--a sum which the Dock Board thought would be realized from the rental-revenues of Doullut & Williams and the Foundation Company, without increasing the second bond issue. This is the Canal that was finally built--nearly 70 per cent larger than the one that was begun and about 100 per cent larger than the one originally planned, when the newspapers and forward-looking told the people that the lack of such a canal had cost New Orleans millions of dollars in development. DIGGING THE DITCH. No rock-problem was encountered in dredging the canal. The cost was below what the engineers estimated it would be--less than thirty cents a cubic yard. But a novel situation did develop; a condition that would have sent the cost sky-rocketing if an Orleanian had not met the difficulty. Louisiana is what geologists call a region of subsidence. The gulf of Mexico formerly reached to where Cairo, Ill., now is. Washings from the land, during the slow-moving centuries, pushed the shoreline ever outward; the humus of decaying vegetation raised the ground surface still higher. This section of Louisiana, built by the silt of the Mississippi, was of course the most recent formation.