The bottleneck was at the Alton (Ill.) lock, just below the point where the Illinois River, fed in part from Lake Michigan by way of the man-made Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, joins the sluggish Mississippi in its 2,350-mile sweep to the Gulf. There, as many as 200 Chicago-bound barges were stalled at one time this fall as the water in the lower sill, diminished by the four-year drought in the Mississippi Valley (TIME, Dec. 17), fell from its normal (9 ft.) level to a bottom-scraping 6 ft., thus forcing the carriers to...
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