cost, perhaps, ten times that amount. For this reason it was thought by the committee to be desirable that the preliminary report should be made to Congress, and that Congress rather than the Secretary of War should determine whether the more expensive surveys should be made. For this reason the proviso beginning at line 2 on page 8 was inserted.

In reporting upon examinations made for the purpose of improving streams for navigation, the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors is required to state its opinion as to the advisability of adopting the project, and occasionally is called upon also to give its opinion as to what share of the cost should be borne by local interests. The committee believes that this rule should be universal in flood control examinations and has, therefore, included this requirement in the paragraph beginning at line 9, page 8, and has added thereto the further requirement that the board state its opinion as to what Federal interest, if any, is involved in the proposed improvement. While this is not in any sense a question upon which the technical education and training of the engineer would specially qualify him to advise, the committee believes the opinion might in many cases prove helpful. To illustrate this two cases may be cited. After a most thorough, elaborate and detailed examination of the whole watershed of the Sacramento River, it was the opinion of the engineers that the most economical, if not the sole method, of improving the navigation of the Sacramento River and its tributaries was the plan which is provided for in section 2 of this bill and which coordinates in cooperation with the State of California and the various reclamation districts the general plan for flood protection and navigation. One Federal interest very clearly indicated there by the report of the engineers was the improvement of the navigation of the Sacramento River.

The rivers and harbors bill which recently passed the House provided for a survey of the St. Francis River in Missouri and Arkansas. Just what that survey will develop, of course, can not now be stated, but it was claimed in the hearings before that committee that any plan for the proper improvement of that stream would necessarily involve the question of flood control and that more than 50,000 acres of very fertile land belonging to the United States Government, which under present conditions are dedicated to perpetual overflow, would be reclaimed. What the cost of the project will amount to, and whether upon investigation it will be found desirable, are matters that must, of course, be left to the future for determination, but the Federal interest which would certainly be ascertained by the engineers in their investigation and could, therefore, properly be reported upon by them is the fact of the possible reclamation of this public land. Other instances may and doubtless will arise where the engineers can very properly report upon the Federal interests involved.

Under the law as it is now written the Chief of Engineers can not make any additional report on a project after the final report has been made to Congress except upon joint resolution calling for additional information; but the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors may, upon the request of the Committee on Rivers and Harbors, report upon any special phases of any pending project upon which that committee may desire further information. The last paragraph on page 8 authorizes similar additional reports touching questions

relating to flood control upon like requests by the Committee on Flood Control.

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

The Committee on Flood Control was created by a resolution of the House, adopted on the 3d of February, 1916, and a few days thereafter visited the Mississippi River for the purpose of studying the flood which was then prevailing and on this inspection trip traveled from Cairo to New Orleans. The purpose of the trip was to familiarize the members, by first-hand information and by personal observation and study, with the problem presented by this great flood. After their return to Washington they began hearings which extended through several weeks and which are printed now in the usual form and are available for use by the Members of the House.

The problem of the Mississippi River is almost as old as the Government itself. From the date of the Louisiana Purchase when the river passed in its entirety under the jurisdiction of the United States there has been an insistent demand by the citizens of its valley that the Federal Government lay its hand to the task of solving its duplex, as well as complex, problems. The citizens of the northern valley demanded that the river be improved for the purposes of navigation to the end that their products might pass on it out to the sea and to the markets of the world.

The citizens of the States of the lower valley, in addition to their common interest in the navigation of the river, were faced by another problem presented by its recurring and disastrous floods. As early as 1822 Congress was induced to send a commission of Engineers of the Army to examine the river and report some plan for its improvement. This was followed in time by other engineering commissions, appointed for the same purpose. Notable among these are the examination which is set out in what is commonly known as the Ellet Report in 1850; the report of Humphreys and Abbot in 1861; of Gen. Å. A. Humphreys in 1866; the Warren Commission in 1875; and the annual reports of the Mississippi River Commission from 1879 to date. No river perhaps in the world's history has ever been more thoroughly studied than the Mississippi, so that it can be said with some assurance that there are no data desirable or necessary to a complete understanding of its problems or for a formulation of plans for their solution which are not now available.

The watershed of the Mississippi River comprises some 40 per cent of the total area of the United States, and the main trunk south of the Ohio River carries to the sea the accumulated rainfall from 31 States of the Union. It became apparent from this fact early in the history of the Government that the problem of the control of the floods was too comprehensive and altogether too stupendous for local interests to cope with, and appeals began to be made for Federal aid early in the history of the valley's development. The first act which Congress passed in response to these various and ever-increasing demands is popularly known as the swamp and overflow land act of 1850. This was à donation to the several States of the swamp and overflow lands within their respective borders, which were too wet for cultivation, the condition being that the proceeds of their sale should be devoted to the construction of "levees" and "drains.”

The development of the States north of the Mississippi Delta was so rapid, however, and their "drains" could be developed at a cost so much less than that required for the construction of levees, that it soon became apparent, to adopt the language used by Lieut. Fllet in his report (supra), "that the process by which the country above was relieved was the process by which the country below was ruined." Levee districts were organized, nevertheless, in the States of the lower valley, and by 1860 their levees were in a reasonably fair way toward completion-that is to say, the progress of levee construction was keeping pace fairly well with the increasing demands for the larger grade and section required, as the volume of the floods kept pace with the growing development of the States of the upper watershed.

The growth of the river's commerce increased steadily and in due proportion as the activities of the people of the upper valley multiplied, so that by 1850 it became the greatest highway of commerce in the world. Steamboats were greatly hampered, however, by the accumulation of logs and snags in the river and by the formation of sandbars, and the loss from these causes grew to appalling and disastrous proportions. Congress undertook to relieve this situation by the operation of snagboats, but the floods which spread out over the adjacent lowlands with the annual wash back into the channel brought more of these obstructions into the river than the snagboats could remove. In 1873 Mr. John A. Scudder, president of the St. Louis & Memphis Packet Co., testified before a Senate committee that there were 5,000 wrecks in the river between Cairo and St. Louis.

In answer to the demands of those who were interested in both problems that is, in navigation and also in flood protectionCongress in 1879 created the Mississippi River Commission. It was made the duty of the commission by the act creating it "to take into consideration and mature such plan or plans and estimates as will correct, permanently locate, and deepen the channel and protect the banks of the Mississippi River, improve and give safety and ease to the navigation thereof, prevent destructive floods and promote and facilitate commerce, trade, and the postal service." In other words, the commission was to make a thorough investigation and to devise and report a plan by which the problems, both of navigation and of flood control, could best and most economically be solved. This was a mixed commission-that is, was composed of three engineer officers from the Army, one from the coast and Geodetic Survey, two civilian engineers, and one civilian, who need not be an engineer. Since its organization there have been 32 members of the commission all told, and 65 engineers connected with it. After an elaborate study of the river and many experiments, the commission at last arrived at the conclusion that there was but one economical plan by which either problem could be solved and that plan, if carried out, would solve both.

The Committee on Flood Control at its recent hearings summoned before it Col. C. McD. Townsend, for many years a member of the Mississippi River Commission and at present its president; Maj. J. A. Ockerson, a civilian engineer who has been with the commission for the past 32 years, first as assistant engineer and later as member; Mr. Homer P. Ridder, of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and for 18 years a member of the commission; and Maj. E. M. Markham, of

the Army Engineer Corps, at present in charge of the first and second districts under the commission. In addition to these Gen. Arsène Perrilliat, a very able and distinguished civilian engineer, for many years a member of the Louisiana State Board of Engineers, and as such actively employed in the study and practical work of the control of the Mississippi River floods, appeared and discussed the problem in a most interesting and instructive way. Their statements will be found set out in full in the printed hearings. In addition to these engineers, many citizens of the lower valley representing all the levee districts from Cape Girardeau to the Gulf appeared, and every phase of the problem-engineering, scientific, economic, and political— was presented.

The engineers agreed, as have all the engineering commissions heretofore appointed by the Government to study the problem, that these floods can be controlled and passed in safety to the sea by means of levees built along the banks of the river and by preventing those banks from caving into the river by works of revetment. They were unanimous also in the opinion that these floods can be controlled by no other means. They were also of the opinion, and equally unanimous, that a navigable channel of sufficient depth to carry the commerce of the future could be maintained economically by these same means and in no other way.

The Committee on Flood Control is composed of laymen. There is no engineer on the committee. Having secured the very best and most technically and professionally expert advice to be had on the purely technical problems involved, and the equally technical estimate of the cost involved, this advice was accepted and that phase of the problem was regarded as settled.

The question of the advisability of embarking upon the enterprise and committing the Federal Government to the expenditure of the vast sums so ascertained to be necessary was then approached and all the factors entering into the equation were given most careful and thoroughgoing consideration.

The question thus confronted was greatly simplified for the committee by the fact that Congress had already (Mar. 3, 1881, and Sept. 15, 1890) adopted the project and during the past 35 years had appropriated toward its prosecution many millions of dollars. The question, therefore, which demanded an answer from the committee was not whether the United States should be embarked upon some new sea of Federal activity and another channel opened into which the funds of the Federal Treasury might flow, but was rather whether an adopted project which had tarried so long upon the legislative stage should now be abandoned outright or the old and costly policy of meager and inadequate annual appropriations terminated by an order to the engineers to go in and complete the job.

All three of the political parties of the House are represented upon the committee, and upon examination of the platforms adopted by those parties in 1912 it was found that all three had definitely declared that the floods of the Mississippi River constitute a national problem and that each had declared it to be the duty of Congress to provide adequate means for their control. Mr. Wilson declared in accepting the nomination: "In the case of the Mississippi River, that great central artery of our trade, it is plain that the Federal Government must build and maintain levees and keep the great waters in

harness for the general use." Mr. Roosevelt said: "We, the Nation, must build the levees and build them better and more scientifically than ever before." Mr. Taft said: "I am strongly in favor of spending the whole $50,000,000 to save that part of the country from floods in a reasonable time and to provide a proper levee system."

In view of these platforms and the explicit declarations of the three candidates for the Presidency, the committee might have justified a favorable finding without further ado, but the members felt that a heavier responsibility rested upon them. They thereupon proceeded to an investigation of the whole broad problem with a determination to test it on the merits. It became more and more apparent as they proceeded with their investigation that the problem presented many phases and must be approached from many angles. It resolved itself at the very outset into two elements-flood control and navigation. The first inquiry, therefore, was: What, if any, is the Federal interest involved in the problem of flood control? To answer this intelligently, it is necessary to consider the extent and character of the area proposed to be protected.

The total area of these alluvial deltas which will be protected is about 25,000 square miles. It is difficult to comprehend the full meaning of big figures without stating their relative significance. Twenty-five thousand square miles is about the combined area of Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts; it is larger by one-third than the two States of New Hampshire and Vermont; it is almost as large as the great State of Maine or South Carolina, and, in fact, larger than West Virginia. It is equal to the combined Kingdoms of Belgium and Denmark; larger than Greece and Servia, and about the size of the Netherlands and Switzerland combined. If as an original proposition this great fertile valley, peopled as it is with our own flesh and blood, men inspired by the same hopes and traditions, and bound together by the teachings of a common history and a common purpose, all looking to "one God, one law, one element, and one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves"-if it were possible to buy from some alien sovereign this great estate so peopled and so blessed by the Giver of all things good, would Congress hesitate to bring it beneath the beneficent light of our stars?

If Maryland or Massachusetts or any other State were threatened by destruction from any source, tidal wave, or what not, and Congress could avert that disaster, who would quibble about the cost?

In 1880 the population of all the deltas was 445,604; in 1910, 829,720. In 1880 there were 1,619,721 acres in cultivation. What a somber picture that is. Here in the heart of this most marvelously fertile and productive valley, with 16,000,000 acres capable of producing the greatest crops of the world, at the end of a hundred years of struggle and ceaseless warfare against the great Father of Waters, less than 2,000,000 acres had been subjected to the will and purposes of man. In 1910 there were 3,585,070 acres in cultivation. Farm values in 1880 were listed at $50,961,199; in 1910, $174,187,559. The value of personal property on these farms in 1880 was $12,776,012; in 1910, $50,115,939. In 1880 there were no railroads and never could be; in 1910 there were 3,200 miles of railway. In 1880 there was one banking institution in all this great valley, located at Helena, Ark., and with a capital of $20,000; in 1910 there were 246 banks,