Commenting on the "astonishing exhibition of intelligent public spirit" in New Orleans, the Chicago Tribune said that "no other city in or near the Mississippi Valley, including Chicago, has shown such an awakening to the possibilities and rearrangements that are following the cutting of the Panama canal. * * * The awakening started with the talk of the new canal." Other papers throughout the country made similar expressions. In 1915 the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis made a preliminary survey of conditions and how development would be affected by the canal. At about the same time the Illinois legislature voted to spend $5,000,000 to construct a deep water canal, giving Chicago water connection with the Mississippi River; and the New Orleans Item linked the two projects when it said, January 16, 1916, "the Illinois-Lake Michigan Canal and the New Orleans Industrial Canal are complementary links in a new system of waterways connecting the upper Valley through the Mississippi River and New Orleans with the Gulf and the Panama Canal. This system again gives the differential to the Valley cities in trade with the markets of the Orient, our own west coast, and South America." Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke, president of the Association of Commerce, issued a statement to the press January 16, 1916, declaring that the prospect of the canal "brightened the whole business future of this city and the Mississippi Valley"; the New Orleans Real Estate Board and the Auction Exchange, in a joint meeting, urged its speedy building; and Governor Luther E. Hall, in a formal statement to the press January 16, 1916, gave his endorsement to the construction of the canal "long sought by many commercial interests of New Orleans," and said that work would probably begin in "three months." In August, 1916, the governor dismissed the Dock Board and appointed a new one. In the confusion attending the reorganization the canal project was again dropped. The New Orleans American, on August 28, 1916, attempted to revive it, but the effort fell flat, and the plan laid on ice until 1918. America had in the meantime thrown its hat into the ring, and the cry was going up for ships, more ships, and still more ships. National patriotism succeeded where civic effort had failed. New Orleans brought out its Industrial Canal project to help the country build the famous "bridge of boats." But this new phase of the plan was far from the canal that was finally built. In fact, the accomplishment of this project has shown a remarkable development with the passing years, reminding one of the growth of the trivial hopes of the boy into the mighty achievement of the man. Ships could not be built on the Mississippi River. The twenty-foot range in the water level would require the ways to make a long slope into the current, a work of prohibitive expense, and as nearly impossible from an engineering standpoint as anything can be.