IQ08 



NATIONAL DRAINAGE CONGRESS 



lOI 



creasing the value of the salt marsh 

 that comes under our operations sev- 

 eral times the amount of money ex- 

 pended, and this will prove the best 

 investment ever made by New Jer- 

 sey." 



Mr. H. N. Wilson, Chief Engineer 

 of the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey, spoke of swamp peat as a fuel. 

 He said, "Peat is used extensively in 

 Europe and in Canada as a power gen- 

 erator, and experiments are being 

 made with it in this country. A ton 

 of peat, when put into a gas produc- 

 er and converted into gas for that sort 

 of engine, makes nearly as much 

 power as a ton of bituminous coal un- 

 der a boiler. This peat could be found 

 and gathered in great quantities from 

 swamps in this country ; when made 

 into briquettes it provides good fuel." 

 Senator Asbury C. Latimer, of 

 South Carolina, declared that the Na- 

 tional policy of drainage was in line 

 with the broad. National policy of 

 conserving the undeveloped resources 

 of the country. Mr. Robert E. Lee, a 

 Baltimore attorney and member of the 

 Baltimore Federation of Labor, spoke 

 on "Drainage from a Labor Stand- 

 point," showing that "the clearing of 

 this land will necessitate the employ- 

 ment of thousands of laboring people, 

 both skilled and unskilled." Profes- 

 sor William Bullock Clark, State Geo- 

 logist of Maryland, described the 

 swamps of that State, showing their 

 area to be 328,768 acres. Of drain- 

 ing these swamps he said, "The result- 

 ing soil will prove to be very rich. 

 Putting the value at about $30 an acre, 

 which would be reasonable for land of 

 this quality, it would add ten million 

 dollars to the taxable property of the 

 State. Further, adjacent lands would 

 be improved." 



Senator Francis G. Newlands, of 

 Nevada, criticized the granting of 

 public swamp lands by the Nation to 

 States or corporations. He said: 



"These swamp lands constitute, for 

 the most part, the alluvial deposits 

 made by the great rivers. No proper 

 reclamation of them can be made with- 



out taking up in some comprehensive 

 way the treatment of the rivers of the 

 country and the control of their wa- 

 ters, with a view to flood prevention, 

 stream control and the maintenance of 

 an equal and sustained flow of such 

 rivers. These rivers, for the most part 

 are interstate, and all bear important 

 relations to interstate and foreign 

 commerce. 



"These rivers bear an important 

 relation to interstate and foreign com- 

 merce, and are subject to the regula- 

 tion and control of the National Gov- 

 ernment. It is important in the in- 

 terest of interstate commerce that the 

 waters of these rivers should not be 

 permitted to waste themselves over 

 vast areas of lowlands, making 

 swamps and bayous useless for any 

 purpose. It is important that these 

 waters should be controlled by the 

 construction of levees and by a sys- 

 tem of bank protection that will re- 

 strain the erratic courses of rivers and 

 hold their waters in a permanent chan^ 

 nel, thoroughly secured, and kept open 

 by a strong current, and thus made 

 useful for navigation. 



"The swamp land question, there- 

 fore, is a part of the inland waterway 

 question now before the American 

 people, and that question necessarily 

 involves the preservation and replac- 

 ing of forests, as conservators of mois- 

 ture ; the construction of reservoirs 

 which can hold the flood waters above 

 and make them useful for irrigation, 

 and the watering of great plains by ir- 

 rigation which can absorb the flood 

 waters and gradually give them back 

 to the stream by percolation when 

 they are most needed during periods 

 of drouth. Irrigation is the antithesis 

 of drainage, and while possibly neither 

 can be engaged in under the National 

 powers, except with reference to Gov- 

 ernment lands, there can be no ques- 

 tion about the power of the Govern- 

 ment to engage in both as a part of the 

 stream control so essential to naviga- 

 tion." 



Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Forester, 

 spoke of deforestation as one cause of 



