THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 19 



niable that what is happening along the river to-day is a true sample 

 of what the river may be expected to do every day as long as the existing 

 conditions prevail. A fourteen-foot channel presupposes important 

 movements of goods from many points along the river. Large ship- 

 ments can not be handled readily or economically without expensive 

 modern terminal facilities along the river front, but the building of 

 such terminal facilities can not be expected as long as they are threat- 

 ened with the same fates as now confront Greenville, Natchez and 

 St. Joseph. 



The flood evil, the second great problem to be met in the control 

 and improvement of the Mississippi system, has been fresh in the minds 

 of every one since the disastrous spring of 1903, when the loss of prop- 

 erty amounted to fifty or sixty million dollars. The flood problem 

 applies not only to the main Mississippi itself, but perhaps even more 

 vitally to its chief tributaries, the Missouri and Ohio, which must be 

 regarded as the main feeders to any proposed improvement. The total 

 loss from a few historic floods in these streams has been tremendous. 

 In 1881 and 1882 the floods of the Ohio and lower Mississippi caused 

 a loss of $15,000,000. In 1881 the Ohio Valley alone suffered to the 

 extent of $10,000,000. An area twice the size of New Jersey was laid 

 waste along the lower Mississippi in the spring of 1897 with losses 

 again reckoned in tens of millions of dollars. The unprecedented rav- 

 ages of the Missouri came in May and June of 1903, and finally this 

 last year saw damage to an extent estimated at not less than $100,- 

 000,000 in the Ohio Valley. In the last quarter of a century, there- 

 fore, the plain money loss from a single half-dozen floods approaches 

 a quarter of a billion dollars, while the sum total from all floods must 

 be acknowledged to equal many times over the entire cost of the most 

 effective and permanent means of protection. 



The principal cause of the floods in the Mississippi is heavy or pro- 

 longed rains at certain seasons of the year, a primal cause, which lies 

 beyond the power of man to control, but which has been greatly aided 

 in its effects by wide spread deforestation about the head waters. Flood 

 conditions vary widely in the different tributaries. The Missouri has 

 the largest drainage basin of any of the tributaries, about 540,000 

 square miles, but the average rainfall over the region is small, unusually 

 heavy and long-continued rains are less frequent, and, because of porous 

 soils and excessive evaporation, only a small part of the rainfall passes 

 off in surface drainage. As a result of these conditions, the Missouri 

 supplies only about one seventh the total discharge of the Mississippi, 

 and is, on the whole, as regards floods, the least important of the large 

 tributaries. The upper Mississippi, with a drainage area only a third 

 as large as that of the Missouri, turns in about one fifth the total 

 volume of the main stream, while the Ohio, draining approximately 

 200,000 square miles, sends down a third of all the water discharged 



