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Show A STACKED COMMITTEE 15 7 versation with the author. House Speaker Joseph W. Martin, Jr., however, spoke on the record. The bill would not be brought up for a vote in the House, he declared flatly, because of the wide-spread opposition to Echo Park Dam.174 With matters so discouraging in the House, it was extremely unpleasant for Watkins and Company to hear Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota declare with his customary smooth oratory: 175 ". . . during a war, when bombs are falling out of the sky, even the most barbarous and despicable enemy will hide its paintings and its statues deep in caves to protect them. It will camouflage its famous buildings in the hope they may be spared destruction. But we, with- out any justification of necessity or inevitability, whack away at the spectacular monuments which nature has designed - monuments which are supreme and rare, which never can be replaced. "The contrast is not a compliment to those respon- sible for it. "It is well known that the distinguished water policy task force of the Hoover Commission is strongly in favor of a cautious approach to this project, and the Engineers Joint Council - the most authoritative voice in American engineering - takes precisely the same position. "These authorities, Mr. President, do not represent societies of bird watchers or fossil fanciers. " Without being harsh, I think I can say that if the evaporation argument is the best that the proponents can come up with as their excuse for going into the monument, it is an indication of the poverty of their excuses. In the first place, the whole question of evapor- |
