No. 4.] DRAINAGE PROJECTS. 113 



Mr. McCrory. The muck soils are not so firm; we have to 

 handle them differently. 



Question. I would like to ask Mr. McGrory if in these 

 salt marshes around here it wouldn't be considerably different 

 from the middle western swamps, and if there would not have 

 to be considerable work done to keep the tidewater from com- 

 ing back on the ground. 



Mr. McCrory. On your tidal marshes you would have to 

 protect them by levees to keep the tide off. The drainage 

 could be accomplished in two ways: one would be to have 

 sluiceways with gates in them to operate at low tide, — that 

 is the common method; another method, probably more satis- 

 factory, would be to make a continuous levee along the front 

 of the project and install pumps. We have been working 

 recently on a project of that character in South Carolina, — 

 an old rice field that had been in cultivation for two hundred 

 years. They have a levee along the front, and this particular 

 tract has about 100 sluiceways with gates to keep the tide out, 

 which we call trunks. We are taking out all those trunks and 

 putting in pumping plants and making a larger area of land 

 suitable for cultivation, doing away with the shallow field 

 ditches 50 feet apart. The great advantage of pumping is 

 that you get much better drainage. In the middle west, where 

 we had an exceedingly wet year, the pumping projects along 

 the Mississippi River came through in better condition and 

 yielded better returns than any others in the country. 



Question. Do they use gasoline? 



Mr. McCrory. For the smaller plants they use an internal 

 combustion engine, generally; not gasoline, but a cheaper oil. 



Question. I want to ask if drainage ditches always enhance 

 the value of the land? 



Mr. McCrory. Well, that is a pretty hard question to 

 answer yes or no. In general, the results of drainage improve- 

 ments throughout the country have been to advance land 

 values. In some cases the advance has been very' marked, in 

 others not so marked. I think the factor that would deter- 

 mine that more than anything else would be the demand for 

 the land after it was reclaimed. There is a tendency in the 

 country to-day, in some thinly settled parts, to go ahead and 



