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Show FIGHT LOOMS ON HARBOR BILL OPPONENTS SAY ITS PURPOSE TO TAKE MORE WATER FROM LAKES 8ult8 Pending Against Chicago Mosf Since Slavery Days; Hearings Will Begin In The Supreme Court In October Washington. The most angrily contested con-tested question in this congress will appear in the senate this week, when I that body takes up the rivers and harbors har-bors bill. Among the hundred and sixty improvements authorized all over the United States, one is for the superficially innocuous purpose of deepening the Illinois river. Back of that are industrial, constitutional and international questions of extreme importance. im-portance. The advocates of the bill say its purpose is merely to make a more navigable passage for water-borne water-borne freight from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. Opponents say the additional purpose and certain result is to enable Chicago to take more water out of the great lakes. A condensed summary up to date would say that Chicago twenty years ago, in order to get rid of sewerage cut through from the Chicago river to the great lakes, and abstracted from the latter about 4167 cubic feet per second, which was- turned down through the Illinois river to the Mississippi, Mis-sissippi, instead of going the normal way through Niagara to the Atlantic ocean. Later Chicago increased the amount of S500 cubic feet. The partisans parti-sans of Chicago say that only six inches of this fall is due to Chicago diversion, and that the rest is due to what they call a "ten-year cycle of low water," attended by abnormally small rainfalls and abnormally high evaporation. Several suits asked for an injunction against Chicago. The states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota joined in a second suit. Hearing of the suits will begin in the supreme court October 4. Competent lawyers have told the writer that these suits compose the most important question before the supreme court since the sectional suits arising out of slavery. Congressman Theodore Burton of Ohio contends, among other arguments, argu-ments, that congress should postpone action about the Illinois river until the supreme court decides the pending suits. The advocates of the deepening say they have done all that is necessary neces-sary by inserting a proviso that "nothing "noth-ing in the act shall operate to change, the existing status of diversion from Lake Michigan, hut the whole question of diversion shall remain and be unaffected un-affected hereby as if this act had not been passed." To this, the answer of the opponents is that exactly this language has the effect of legalizing what Chicago had already done; and the past acts of Chicago are precisely what is in question ques-tion before the supreme court, as Congressman Charles A. Monney of Cleveland, Ohio, put it, the pending action ac-tion would be "congresisonal recognition recogni-tion of diversion." |