Great Lakes, 1946

Heat. Heat. These are the waters of the Great Lakes. Artyer of commerce carrying the lifeblood of a nation, feeding the m of industry, filling America's larder with food. The Great Lakes, huge puddles carved from the earth a million years ago by a monstrous glacier. A geographical colossus whose offshoots of nature, such as Niagara Falls, serve not only as a thing of beauty, but as a source of power. And through its connecting links, a medium of pleasure and travel. 6 million passengers a year sail over Lake Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario. Here is the Inland Empire embracing eight states spawned by the five lakes which are said to contain half the fresh water in the world, enough to cover the entire United States to a depth of 15 ft. On their shores have mushroomed the great cities of the industrial Midwest. Detroit, popularly called the nation's arsenal in time of war. Peacetime caterer to the comfort of millions with its output of [Music] motorc's second city. crossroads of the continent. Alive, lusty, and immensely productive. Its far-famed stockyards and packing plants, pointing up its position as butcher to the nation. Buffalo, gateway city between America and Canada. Its multiple industries, a concerto of commerce, a stride of vantage point that makes it the nation's fifth largest rail center. Toledo, producer of automobile parts and that vehicular phenomenon, the Jeep, of plate and shatterproof glass and bottles for the drugus shells. Cleveland, biggest port on Erie's Southshore and one of the most diversified manufacturing cities in the United States. Leader in steel making, machinery, aircraft parts, paints, and printing trade. [Music] Milwaukee traditional inspiration for many a vaudeville joke, but more directly concerned with traffic from the famed Wisconsin dairylands with largecale production of giant turbons and farm machinery. Here now are the wind rows of ice which bind and fetter lake traffic four months of the year from December to April. Wherever these vessels put in on their last trip of the season is where they wait for spring thaws to open the [Music] channels. Carefully nursing the problems of Great Lakes navigation, the improvement of waterways is the Lake Carriers Association formed by vessel operators in 1881. Today it represents 34 American fleets and each year its officials in Cleveland meet with Coast Guard officers to discuss the opening of the season and other current shipping matters. During the war, security measures were their joint concern. Ice is the lake shipper's most formidable foe. Sometimes the lakes are blocked until the middle of May. To open the channels as soon as possible, the Coast Guard keeps constant aerial vigil. Radio's position, thickness, and movement of the massive flows. But when winter has a stubborn streak, the Coast Guard gets persuasive. Out steams the mighty Meno, $10 million worth of icebreaker to run interference for the cargo carriers. Weather is a fickle friend on the lakes and there is no waiting for the calendar suddenly embarrassed to catch up with itself. [Music] Meanwhile, at Coast Guard stations scattered throughout the area, preparations already are underway to refit and man the 350 Coast Guard craft serving on the Great Lakes. In taking charge of all aids to navigation, it is the Coast Guard's task to transport the lighthouse keepers to their lonely but vital outposts. Supplies must go too in quantity, for theirs is an 8-month watch broken only by an occasional visit to the mainland. Radio telephone keeps contact with the [Music] shore. Where once every lake mariner was his own meteorologist, reading the weather signals hung out by nature and relying on the stars for guidance, today thousands of lights, horns, and bells give ready warning through 1500 miles of tricky waterways. Here, the buoys get their spring [Music] bath. From Buffalo to Duth, in every harbor town on the lakes's 8,000mi coastline, this is the real harbinger of spring. And for skippers coming aboard to change from civilian to seafaring clothes, it's the welcome end of an annual hibernation. No carrier, however, can move from its moorings until it passes the Coast Guard's marine inspection. Fire hoses must work. Lifeboats must be seaorthy and stocked with emergency supplies. And below decks, the engine room and its operation must meet a long list of requirements before the inspecting officer attaches his seal of approval. Today's lake carrier has come a long romantic way from the flat bottom bhateau of early French voyagers from the picturesque fur fleet of John Jacob Aster. A modern or freighter is more than 600 ft long carries 13,000 tons and in one season will travel a distance equal to twice around the world. Doo, biggest ore loading port in the world. Gouged incessantly from the nearby Great Masabi Range at Minnesota, the red ore flows in awesome quantity. More than 65 million tons of it yearly for steel to win a war. Now rrooted once again along the paths of peace. In volume trade, iron ore is the leading product on the Great Lakes, followed by coal, grain, limestone, and petroleum products. The ore in one boat alone would produce enough steel to build a completely equipped destroyer. Yet with modern time-saving devices, it takes only two hours to fill the cavernous hold of a [Music] carrier. Southward bound now for the steel cities. A,000mi trip at a cost of only 80 cents a ton. [Music] It was in 1622 that white men first explored Sue Samarie, where a century later was forged a man-made link between Superior and Huron. This is a replica of the Sue Canal's first lock. [Music] [Applause] The far-famed Sue, the canal through which in 8 months passes six times as much tonnage as goes through the Panama Canal in a year, more than the Panama, Suez, and Keel canals [Music] combined. [Music] Actually, Superior and Huron are connected by the St. Mary's River, but because its rapids were not navigable, early commerce was portaged around it. Today, the Sue with its five tremendous locks, the greatest ship highway in the world. An average of 100 vessels passed through here daily. And during the war, this was the most heavily defended spot of inland North [Music] America. Now, don't let any saltwater sailor tell you the Great Lakes are a toy boat in a bathtub business. Here is to be found some of the most treacherous and changeable weather known to mariners. And it's significant that generally the masters of great lake craft earn more than oceangoing skippers. Unlike saltwater masters, a lake captain is his own pilot. [Music] Coming into a harbor like Cleveland, he must know every foot of every narrow [Music] channel. Depositing the mountains of ore at Cleveland is a job for giants. For the great huelet unloaders, dubbed elephants by lake people. Their jaws scooping up 20 tons in a mouthful. Emptying a vessel in less than 4 hours. Raw red ore for the insable roaring furnaces of the steel belt, beating the fires of Chicago, Gary and Lorraine, of Cleveland, Buffalo, and Youngstown, and Pittsburgh, the city whose very name has come to be synonymous with steel. [Applause] Call it the bedrock of the nation's manufacturing might if you will and you broke no argument. For here was the base upon which we built in 3 years what took the Axis country's 10. Coal comes to the lakes in a black tide that never es. Collected at Toledo and Sanduski, Ohio, the two greatest coal loading ports in America. Rolled up from the mines of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio for trans shshipment. Entire car loads clanking up the elevators to be grasped and tilted into waiting holes with seemingly no more effort than a housewife uses pour sugar into a canister. Ready now for a thousand mile trip at less cost per ton than to have it hauled by a handyman from the curb to your basement [Music] window. For romantic rugged history, no lake country industry can offer more than the lumber of upper Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where once billions of board feet felled in limitless forests, created many a backwoods millionaire. 2 million tons of lumber products a year move on lake carriers, much of it in the form of newsprint. Later, it will pour from the presses in nearly every city in the United States and many abroad. [Music] Inland, seas though they be, the Great Lakes furnish a direct route to Europe by way of the St. Lawrence River and out into the Atlantic. Key to the route is the Wellland Canal connecting Ontario with Erie. [Music] Because of the difference in the water level between the two lakes, the canal system of eight locks raises a ship more than 300 ft in passing from a west to eastbound direction, lowers it going the other [Music] way into Port Arthur, Canada on Lake Superior. here flows the wheat from the grain fields of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, making this Ontario city the largest grain port in the world. 17 million tons of grain moved on the lakes last year, much of it to feed Europe. Samples are drawn off to be tested for quality by the agricultural department. 9:7 p.m. Drama by the clock for this is the last day of the lake season and no vessel is covered by marine insurance if it sails after midnight of that final day. Jam it in all you can while you [Music] can practically capacity as the stop signal cuts the stream at 11:59 and the captain shoves off. The end of the season usually finds dirty weather up and down the lakes and storm signals flutter their warnings from Coast Guard stations. 10 below temperatures and 30foot seas are common caprices of nature on the upper lakes and vessels have been known to freeze over solid in 20 minutes. No comfortable mill pond sailing this. For these are the great lakes, the really great lakes. For 300 years, their tumultuous waters have tossed with tradition. Have made an everlasting contribution to the pages of history. This surely has been a servant of empire, a wellfollowed path in the nation's progress. This is America. Hallelujah.