22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



remove from the immediate benefit of the deep waterways project those 

 important communities which hope for renewed navigation on the 

 Missouri. 



If the entire lower Mississippi were given a new course free from 

 sharp bends, as could be done readily by cutting through the successive 

 necks, the sapping and caving of banks would cease and the distance 

 from St. Louis to New Orleans would be lessened nearly by half. That 

 this plan is entirely feasible is amply demonstrated by the success of 

 the Germans in correcting and straightening the Khine. The Khine, 

 if possible, presented a more difficult problem than does the Mississippi, 

 but the German engineers recognized the fact that where sharp bends 

 exist it is impossible to prevent entirely undermining and caving of the 

 banks. Acting on this principle, it was decided to give the river a 

 practically new course, less winding than the former, and in which 

 future control is insured. Unfortunately, this procedure applied to 

 the Mississippi would not be an adequate remedy for the floods, nor 

 would it effectively prevent the formation of sand bars. It is unques- 

 tioned, however, that the flood stages would run off more rapidly and 

 a greater amount of sand would be scoured from the channel, since in 

 a shortened course the river would have a steeper descent and conse- 

 quently a more rapid flow with increased carrying power. The cor- 

 rected course undeniably has much to recommend it, aside from the 

 mere facts of feasibility and a shorter route. 



If the high-water stages of floods could be prevented and the flow 

 of the river controlled, the practical solution of the question would be 

 at hand, for the major part of the sediment is washed into the streams 

 incident to the flood time, and the excessive flood volume causes most 

 of the caving of banks. For a good many years the federal govern- 

 ment has been at work on the Mississippi, building levees to control 

 or prevent floods, placing revetments along the banks to check the 

 caving action, and operating powerful sand pumps to remove the 

 shifting bars. It is estimated that in the last forty years the govern- 

 ment has spent all of $225,000,000 on the Mississippi and its more 

 important tributaries, not a single dollar of which has gone toward 

 permanent improvement, except in the case of the jetties at the mouth, 

 the slack water dams on the Ohio and the removal of rock ledges at 

 a few points. Fifty million dollars of the total amount has gone into 

 the construction of some 1,400 miles of levees and revetments along 

 the lower course, but before the national government undertook the 

 task of control, the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas had 

 already spent not less than $40,000,000 toward the same end. Enough 

 similar work has been done at one time or another by private indi- 

 viduals, so that, first and last, the levee-revetment system to date repre- 

 sents an outlay of fully $100,000,000. Yet not one cent has been 

 devoted to the control of the excessive floods which come almost every 



