NATIONAL DRAINAGE CONGRESS 



T"" HE second Annual Meeting of the spring grew to manhood and woman- 



■'■ National Drainage Association hood handicapped with disease that 



was held in Baltimore November 25, unfitted them to befome industrious 



26, and 2^] last. Its object was to pro- and useful citizens. You have had the 



mote National reclamation of lands in same experience wherever wet lands 



all the States, now worthless or worse, are located, and New Jersey, Illinois, 



because partly or wholly covered by and North Dakota have no advantage 



water. over North Carolina in this respect. 



Mr. J. S. Mundy, of Newark, New Some five years age we commenced to 

 Jersey, spoke of the great value of work for dramage for health in Char- 

 swamp mud as a fertilizer. "One leston County, and I have the honor of 

 thing," he said, "which keeps the far- directmg that work." 

 mers of North Carolina poor is their The speaker then told of the mil- 

 bills for fertilizer, one man having lions of mosquitoes which infested the 

 paid last year $2,800 for fertilizer." swamps and bore malarial germs, and 

 Said he: "You don't have to fertilize how drainage of the swamps enorm- 

 swamp lands. Up in New Jersey there ously lessened the numbers of mos- 

 are two plants that dish off the soil quitoes, and replaced the dark marsh- 

 from the swamps and, after drying, it es with green fields and firm ground, 

 is put in machines, from which it and made homes for thousands. This 

 comes like powder. It is shipped away work, he insisted, was the duty of the 

 and sold at from $16 to $20 a ton, and National Government. Professor A. 

 it costs $5 an acre. The best lands in E. Ayres, of New York, a leader in 

 the United States are under water, or the movement for exterminating mos- 

 partially so. The hills have been cul- quitoes, gave an illustrated lecture on 

 tivated until there is nothing more to this subject. He named five diseases, 

 them. Near the farmers, for a cost of particularly yellow fever and malaria, 

 about $100 for drainage, are lands which are transmitted by mosquitoes, 

 where they can raise more corn to one He said, "The extermination of the 

 acre than to twenty in the hills. Look disease-breeding mosquito is not now 

 at the Mississippi river bottoms, which a sanitary problem but a political is- 

 are practically inexhaustible ! The use." Col. C. P. Goodyear, of Bruns- 

 swamp lands, when they are drained, wick, Georgia, declared that "a war 

 are the same way." against the mosquito should enlist 



Col. Tames Cosgrove, member of every patriotic American citizen." 

 the South Carolina legislature, and New Jersey mosquitoes are com- 



the "Apostle of Drainage in the monly supposed to hold the record. 



South," spoke on the vast benefits re- Professor John B. Smith, Entomolo- 



sulting to the public health from drain- gist of the New Jersey Agricultural 



age. He said, "For centuries it has Experiment Station, lectured on the 



been believed that no white man could drainage of the salt marshes of that 



live in the summer months in the State, using stereopticon slides. He 



swamp lands of Carolina, without con- said that in New Jersey there are more 



tracting malaria. So firm was this be- than 296,000 acres of tidal_ marsh, a 



lief that, on the first approach of hot large percentage of it being waste 



weather, the farms were abandoned land, producing nothing, much of it 



by most of the owners, who did not untaxed, and some townships largely 



return until frost. Those who re- made up of salt marsh, so slimly set- 



mained were bound to 'catch the fever' tied that it is difficult to find men to 



* * * with the result that they and fill public offices. He said, "We start- 



their families became invalids for a ed in to exterminate the salt marsh 



great part of the year, and their off- mosquito, but incidentally we are in- 



