MISSISSIPPI RIVER IMPROVEMENT. 



535 



by the Russian Government. In times of 

 peace, the facilitation of communication and 

 transportation has been the proof of enlarged 

 and liberal statesmanship. In a distant prov- 

 ince, India, the British Government has ex- 

 pended $500,000 on this sole object. The 

 United States have not been niggardly in these 

 respects. Nameless streams, which can scarce- 

 ly be traced upon a map, have had a portion 

 of the public bounty. The Pacific Railroad 

 cost the Government $90,000,000. The Wel- 

 land Canal is about to be widened at an ex- 

 pense of $40,000,000. The Cumberland River 

 has received $6,000,000; the Harlem, $2,500,- 

 000 ; the canal round the Des Moines Gap, $4,- 

 500,000. Nearly as large an appropriation has 

 been made for the canal at Portland, on the 

 Ohio. At a cost of $5,250,000 the jetties have 

 succeeded in opening and maintaining a chan- 

 nel twenty-eight feet deep, in which the Great 

 Eastern may safely float. Yet the great river, 

 a little way above it, is little better than a 

 shifting network of shoals and bars. During 

 four months of the year, just when the grain 

 and other crops of the Northwest ought to be 

 moved, the agriculturists of the valley of the 

 Mississippi are deprived of their natural outlet 

 to the sea. Thus freed from river competition, 

 great corporations have only to combine and 

 fix the rates of transportation. A difference of 

 five cents a bushel makes $75,000,000 a year 

 saved or lost to the farmers of the great basin. 

 The Mississippi flows from the northern to the 

 southern limit of our country. It belongs to 

 no special district, whose representatives con- 

 centrate their efforts on its interests. No in- 

 fluential corporation asks a subsidy. Yet it is 

 not to be doubted, that when the people are 

 roused to a knowledge of its condition, the 

 recommendations of the national commission 

 will be enforced. They will demand a solid 

 bank and safe channel, deliverance alike from 

 destructive floods and obstructed navigation. 

 Systems of levees must be continuous or they 

 are futile. The States are constitutionally pro- 

 hibited from forming combinations for such or 

 any purpose. They are legally debarred from 

 exacting tolls or imposts, through which such 

 works could be constructed or maintained. 

 The Constitution reserves to Congress the right 

 to regulate commerce, and provides that it 

 shall have power to dispose of and make all 

 rules and regulations respecting the territory 

 or other property belonging to the United 

 States. The Mississippi by purchase, by treaty, 

 by law, is national property. Its levees were 

 originally built with the proceeds of public 

 lands set apart by the national Government 

 for that purpose. For ten years, before the 

 war, the Government maintained a Mississippi 

 River Commission to investigate methods of 

 protection. 



The recommendations of the present com- 

 mission ask an outlay, small in proportion to 

 the benefits to be attained. Their plan is no 

 mere untried theory. So early as 1817, on the 



river Rhine, contractions were made between 

 the French frontier and Gerraersheim, and the 

 system has been continued to our time, with 

 the invariable result of a deepening of the bed 

 and a sinking of the flood-surface. In 1869, 

 according to the report of M. Henri Grebe- 

 neau, inspector of public works atGermersheim, 

 "the fall of the water-surface of the Rhine 

 amounts to 2 T \ 5 7 metres, and all the spots ex- 

 posed to inundation before 1817 continue now 

 to remain dry." 



The jetties afford proof positive of the adap- 

 tation of the contraction system to the peculiar 

 formation of the Mississippi. President Hayes 

 and the Secretary of War alike advert to the 

 improvement of the Mississippi as a measure 

 of " transcendant importance." In his letter 

 accepting the nomination to the Presidency, 

 General Gar field writes: 



Fortunately for the interests of commerce, there is 

 no longer any formidable opposition to appropriations 

 for the improvement of our harbors and great navi- 

 gable rivers, provided that the expenditures for that 

 purpose are limited to works of national importance. 

 The Mississippi Eiver, with its great tributaries, is of 

 such vital importance to so many millions of people 

 that the safety of its navigation requires exceptional 

 consideration. In order to secure to the nation the 

 control of all its waters, President Jefferson negotiated 

 the purchase of a vast territory, extending from the 

 Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. The wisdom of 

 Congress should be invoked to devise some plan by 

 which that great river shall cease to be a terror to 

 those who dwell upon its banks, and by which its 

 shipping may safely carry the industrial products of 

 twenty-five million people. The interests of agricul- 

 ture, which is the basis of all our material prosperity, 

 and in which seven twelfths of our population are en- 

 gaged, as well as the interests of manufactures and 

 commerce, demand that the facilities for cheap trans- 

 portation shall be increased by the use of all our great 

 water-courses. 



It is to be borne in mind that there have 

 never before been any save local surveys on 

 the Mississippi. There has neither been tri- 

 angulation nor levels. The Mississippi River 

 Commission are continuing the work begun by 

 General Comstock and the Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey. According to their last report, their 

 intention of continuing their observations be- 

 low St. Louis, extending over the year, on 

 and below each of the main tributaries, has 

 been defeated by the reduction of the appro- 

 priation by Congress. This part of their pro- 

 ject having been reluctantly postponed, the 

 commission turned their attention to the river 

 above St. Louis, a work of inferior importance, 

 but all that the appropriation justified. The 

 commission made two tours of inspection from 

 St. Paul to the mouth of the Illinois. They 

 report as follows : 



The drainage basin comprises 33,719 square miles 

 above St. Paul, 52,399 square miles on the right and 

 48,156 square miles on the left bank above the mouth 

 of the Illinois. The immediate valley has an aver- 

 age width of about three miles ; often, however, dou- 

 ble this. . . . The rocky limits of this valley have 

 been filled, in some places one hundred feet deep, 

 with sand and gravel, in which the present river ex- 

 cavates and shapes its bed, in curves to which the 

 bluffs are tangents, but never reaching the bed-rock 



