HARDWOOD RECORD 



41 



sawmill who would estimate the cost at fifty or seveuty-five per cent 

 of what it actually will cost? 



Let us do what the Xewlands bill does, gentlemen. It realizes the 

 vision of Captain While and puts at least that much of the govern- 

 ment activities upon business principles; it recognizes that the Missis- 

 sippi river does not come up out of a hole in the ground at Cairo; 

 that the same floods which occurred in the Ohio river overran them in 

 the Mississippi. They have never had a flood which did not come 

 from the upper streams. 



One of the things which we object to and protest against with 

 reference to this reservoir system is the persistence with which the 

 wrong conception of the matter is given to the people. Nobody pro- 

 poses to store one-half, or one-fourtli, or any large amount of the 

 total volume of water running past a certain point. I spent nearly 

 two years in Pittsburgh as executive director while they raised the 

 money and did the engineering and prepared that wonderful report 

 of 175 pages, and as a result of that investigation they ascertained 

 that with a system of seventeen reservoirs they could lower the crest 

 of the highest flood at I^ittsburgh ten feet. If you can lower it ten 

 feet on the Allegheny, if you can lower it ten feet on the Monon- 

 gahela, if you can do it on every' tributary of the Ohio river, if you 

 can lower the floods on the streams coming in from the south, then 

 you have got the channel space to carry every flood that ever will 

 come up from the north, with the levees below Cairo at their present 

 height. You can overcome the danger from the peak of the flood, if 

 you can skim off the crest above the flood line and you have saved the 

 desolation and destruction which that peak w'ill cause. That is all 

 of the reservoir proposition as apjjlied to floods. 



In the American Review of Eeviews in the articles by Mr. Eansdell 

 and another writer, j'ou will find the extreme point of view of the 

 lower Mississippi valley. In the article of James J. Hill you will 

 find the extreme point of view of the western United States. He 

 knows that rivers can be dried up by the use of reservoirs and irri- 

 gation. The Missouri river floods can be controlled by reservoirs 

 and the danger removed by a combination of waters from the 

 Missouri and Ohio tributaries. If you can absolutely prevent the 

 floods of the Missouri river you will not in any year have a flood 

 of water coming from that river to make a combined flood with 

 the Ohio, which will make it possible to protect the lower valley 

 by levees. 



If you take two acres of water and set it over 10,000,000 acres of 

 land which is about one-fifth of the available land, you have a volume 

 of water enough to make a flood continuous 3 miles wide, 10 feet 

 deep and 1,125 miles long, and the people of the western country 

 are begging Congress to take that water and put it on that land. 

 Thereby you will increase the productiveness of that country $10 to 

 $100 an acre, or at the minimum increase, over $100,000,000 a year, 

 and make a market for your lumber in that dry western country. 



Take the question of soil porosity. This recent flood on the Ohio 

 river came from a rainfall of considerably less than twelve inches 

 upon a comparatively small area of the territory. The total annual 

 rainfall is very close to forty inches. If you take twelve inches of 

 rainfall over that territory and put it into the form of a flood on 

 the Ohio you will have about 100 miles from Pittsburgh to Cairo. 

 You would have a flood 1,000 miles long, 1 mile wide and 200 feet 

 deep, if that twelve inches ran oft' all at once. Why don't you have 

 it? Because the great reservoir Nature provided in mother earth 

 absorbs the water and regulates the flood. 



I have not any more time to take up with these details. The New- 

 lands bill does for the lower Mississippi valley what it needs. There 

 is nothing; that can be thought of that the national Government can 

 do in the Ohio valley that is not provided for. The keynote of the 

 Newlands bill is cooperation, unification and construction. In other 

 words, cooperation between the nation and the states and municipali- 

 ties and districts and individuals. It is true that the Newlands bill 

 does not make it a condition precedent that the state or lesser dis- 

 tricts shall cooperate, and therein lies one of the most fatal defects 

 of the Humphreys bill. It says the nation can do nothing unless the 

 local district has previously provided one-third of the necessary ex- 

 pense, or given satisfactory evidence of its intention to provide. If 



the lower levee district in Arkansas is broke, or discouraged, or dis- 

 honest then you leave absolutely at the mercy of the local levee board 

 all the lower end of the state of Arkansas that might be and has 

 been flooded by breaks in the section of the river which it controls. 

 The Newlands bill gives the national government a free hand without 

 being held up by any local levee board for any reason whatsoever. 



Under unification.it considers the entire river system as a whole. 

 In point of construction this bill provides first an appropriation, then 

 machinery for its expenditure and the proper making of all plans. 

 It gives the President of the United States the same position of over- 

 sight that must be occupied by the executive of any successful cor- 

 poration. It provides for immediate construction and we will come to 

 an eu.l of this intolerable period of perpetual political investigation 

 and pass to a period of actual development, if this bill becomes a 

 law. 



There are three engineers appointed by the President and in addi- 

 tion the chief of engineers of the United States Engineer Corps, the 

 chief of the United States Eeclamation Service, the chief forester 

 and the chief of the Topographical Survey. You want to get these 

 men all on the board and you want the head of the Eeclamation 

 Service there who has spent $80,000,000 in building reservoirs. You 

 want the chief of the Topographical Survey, the chief of the Forest 

 Service, who has in hand the preservation of timber at the headwater. 

 You can not disconnect these men from the proposition any more 

 than you could disconnect the pole of the wagon from the v.lieels and 

 expect it to run. When you have got these men together, what does 

 the bill provide for? I will quote briefly from the index of its 

 divisions. 



First, the appropriation of $60,000,000 annually for ten years. 

 If you are going to appropriate $60,000,000 for the lower Mississippi, 

 how much more for the Ohio? the Missouri? for the whole West? 

 for the upper Mississippi? Whenever you get to a point where you 

 have provided for the entire country by any system of specific local 

 appropriations you will have appropriated more than $60,000,000 an- 

 nually. You nmst recognize the rights of the people of the other 

 sections to protect themselves through their members and they will 

 never vote for $60,000,000 for the lower Mississippi unless recog- 

 nition is given to the needs of their own constituents. 



The bill further provides for the cooperation of states; the coordi- 

 nation an cooperation of government bureaus; reference to and in- 

 structions from the President; provisions for information and edu- 

 cation of the people, which in my judgment is the only opening from 

 the political evils so eloquently presented by one of the gentlemen 

 who addressed you yesterday. If these different departments of the 

 Government are at present entitled to existence then they are entitled 

 to have their work made specific and effective in protecting the 

 country from such disasters. The Newlands bill does that, and that 

 is all it does. 



Alabama's Timber Resources 



'pHE University of Alabama, at Montgomery, has just published 

 ••• a book of 230 pages on the forest resources of that state. The 

 work was written by Dr. Roland M. Harper, a well-known botan- 

 ist and geologist, who has compiled a number of excellent reports 

 on southern resources, particularly in relation to Georgia, Ala- 

 bama, and Florida. The present work shows the result of care 

 and thoroughness on every page. Those who may be interested 

 in Alabama's timber will find Dr. Harper's report of great value, 

 as it covers the state, region by region, and lists the various 

 woods and gives the best available information in regard to quan- 

 tity and quality. The total number of tree species in Alabama 

 is placed at 121. Some of these, of course, are of little com- 

 mercial importance, while others possess great value. It may be 

 noted that the writer expresses a refreshing hopefulness in the 

 future. He believes that Alabama will have a good deal of good 

 timber for a long time. The prospectus announces that it will 

 be sent to any interested party who remits seven cents for post- 



