OCR Text |
Show River And Harbor Improvements REPRESENTATIVE FREAR of Wisconsin, on Monday last assailed the River and Harbor Bill in the house, declaring that the $50,000,000 spent by army engineers in 1914 was wasted. We suspect that that was in great measure true. For fifty years and morp, most of the money spent on rivers and harbors, and it has amounted to hundreds ot millions of dollars, has been wasted. It has generally been obtained by a combine among congressmen. Mr. Jones of New York wants to give a contractor who has helpeu to elect him a contract to enlarge Goose Creek. Mr. iSmith of Alabama is under obligations to Mr. (Skookum, and he wants to give him a contract to deepen Duck Slough. At the same time, the Hon. Joshmosby of Arkansas is solicitous for the welfare of his chief supporter, Mr. Helpum, ana so wants an appropriation td build a levee on Red river. They, with enough more combine, and vote a general appropriation of $50,000,000 for the (River and Harbor Rill. They all have their grab at the treasury and the money is spent in the next summer's campaign. Meanwhile, Goose Creek flows on, Duck Slough waters grow green in t!io fall, and the people in the neighborhood have chills and fever, and with the first thunder shower Red river overflows. As a rule there should be no appropriation for small rivers; the railroads can do the work. For the great rivers like the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri, there should be no improvements until a scientific plan for canalizing canaliz-ing the river, and making it a permanent and effective water-way shall be prepared, and the assurance given that the work when completed will be an improvement to last for all time. The Mississippi river ought to be a great commercial highway to float the products of a dozen states to the sea shore, but the work ought to 'begin at one end or the other, most naturally the lower end, and be finished as it progresses. Where the river has high ibanks and is too wide, the jetties should be resorted to, to reduce the width of the channel and cause the waters to scour out a deep channel; where the river is too narrow, and the .banks are low, levees should be built far enough 'hack from the river to contain the flood waters. Where there are sharp bends, they should be cut out to such a depth that the current will do the rest of the work. Such a man as General Goethals should be given all the help he wants to make the surveys, and the estimates, and then an appropriation for one section should ibe made and spent, then the second section treated the same way, and with the completion of each section, sec-tion, that section would be an object lesson, to show what the river would eventually be. Engineers Engi-neers might have a "better plan than that outlined above, but no effective plan has been decided upon and tried through more than a century of experiment experi-ment that has; been going on. |