From every point of view, therefore, it is the duty of the national government to take over the Navigation Canal and release the monies of the state so they may be devoted to the improvement of the waterway with wharves and other works in aid of the nation's commerce. [Illustration: S. S. NEW ORLEANS First Ship Launched by Doullut & Williams Shipbuilding Co.] [Illustration: S. S. GAUCHY First Ship Launched on Canal] ECONOMIC ASPECT OF CANAL. Tied to the Mississippi Valley by nearly 14,000 miles of navigable waterways, and the largest port on the gulf coast and the most centrally situated with respect to the Latin-American and Oriental trade, New Orleans is naturally a market of deposit. The development of the river service, in which the government set the pace in 1918, is restoring the north and south flow of commerce, after a generation of forced haul east and west, along the lines of greatest resistance; and New Orleans has become the nation's second port. Its import and export business in 1920 amounted to a billion dollars. Ninety per cent of the nation's wealth is produced in the Valley, of which New Orleans is the maritime capital. It is the source of supply of wheat, corn, sugar, lumber, meat, iron, coal, cotton oil, agricultural implements, and many other products. It is a market for the products of Latin-America and the Orient. With the co-ordination of river, rail and maritime facilities, and sufficient space for development, it is inevitable that New Orleans should become a mighty manufacturing district. Such enterprises as coke ovens, coal by-product plants, flour mills, iron furnaces, industrial chemical works, iron and steel rolling mills, shipbuilding and repair plants, automobile factories and assembling plants, soap works, packing plants, lumber yards, building material plants and yards, warehouses of all kinds, etc., would be encouraged to establish here if given the proper facilities, and the Industrial Canal is the answer to this need, for under the laws of Louisiana private industries can not acquire or lease property on the river front. Even before the completion of the Canal, the dream has been partly realized--with the establishment of two large shipyards on the Canal, which otherwise would have gone somewhere else, and the building of the army supply base on the same waterway, largely due to the enterprise of the port. As Colonel E. J. Dent, U.S. district engineer, said before the members' council of the Association of Commerce, February 17, 1921, the Industrial Canal will be the means of removing the handicaps on New Orleans' foreign trade. "I hold no brief for the Industrial Canal," he continued, "but speaking as one who has no interest in it but who has studied the question deeply, I will say that five years from now, if you develop the Industrial Canal as it should be developed, you will be wondering how on earth you ever got along without it."