TENNESSEE RIVER IMPROVEMENT 



421 



159 miles, of the portions of less than 

 five feet depth at mean low water, 

 81,850 feet, measured along the line of 

 the channel, have a sand and gravel 

 bottom, 77,800 feet are of gravel and 

 rock and only 27,900 feet are rock. Nor 

 did he say that in this section between 

 Guntersville and Hobbs Island there are 

 a number of gravel bars on which the 

 1903 report on p. 1595 says shoaling 

 is occurring and from which over 

 200,000 cubic yards of gravel have been 

 removed in recent years. Captain 

 Johnston also fails to quote from p. 2441 

 of the 1901 report concerning this same 

 section in .which the committee had 

 been assured there was no loose, mov- 

 ing, bar making material, that "at the 

 entrance to both divisions of the 

 [Muscle Shoals] canal also a large 

 amount of silt accumulates at every 

 high water, and constant dredging 

 therefore is required to keep the canal 

 cleared." And all of this in a section 

 that Captain Johnston would have the 

 committee believe had no loose material 

 in the bed of the river ! 



Captain Johnston told the committee 

 nothing whatever of the lower section 

 of the river, 226 miles in length, where, 

 as in all normal rivers, because of its 

 slight slope, more gravel and sand lodge 

 than in the upper reaches. Had it not 

 been so thoroughly out of harmony with 

 the idea he was trying to impress on the 

 committee, he might have quoted from 

 pp. 1712-13 of the engineer report of 

 1908 that some of the bars there per- 

 sistently reform and require dredging 

 every year or two, or from p. 566 of 

 the same report, that while in 1896 there 

 were forty-nine shoals all but two or 

 three being of gravel in this lower 

 section, several more have since devel- 

 oped ; that 1,127.660 cubic yards of sand 

 and gravel had been removed at about 

 thirty-one of these localities in the last 

 few years ; and that as to the results 

 of dredging, the best they themselves 

 can say is that results appear to be 

 fairly permanent at about two-thirds 

 of the places improved. None of this 

 fitted into his picture of a river prac- 

 tically free from sand and gravel, and 

 so was most convenientlv omitted. 



Captain Johnston continues quoting 

 from the writer's testimony in 1908 as 

 follows : 



I have here a table, which I will not read, 

 giving the streams in the south that are nav- 

 igable, the length of navigation in each one, 

 and the total expenditures of the United 

 States government in 1790 to 1907, inclusive. 

 On that Tennessee River over $8,000,000 have 

 been spent. Under present conditions, there 

 is no chance to permanently improve that 

 navigable channel, because of the incessant 

 inrush of the sand and gravel. If the ma- 

 terial is checked before it ever starts, up in 

 the mountains, and kept there by keeping 

 forests on those steep slopes that ought never 

 to be cleared, then the necessity for this con- 

 stant dredging would be greatly decreased, 

 or perhaps obviated entirely. Merely as a 

 business proposition, is it better to bale out 

 sand forever from the stream and take no 

 means for preventing it from getting in 

 there, or is it better to go to the root of 

 the trouble and hold the sand where it was 

 made, on those steep mountain slopes, and 

 keep it from ever getting down into navi- 

 gable streams? 



He then states that only $1,700,000 

 of this total of $8,000,000 has been 

 spent in open river work, and contrasts 

 it with to quote in his own words 

 "Professor Glenn's inference of over 

 $8,000,000 having been wasted." At 

 this point the chairman of the com- 

 mittee interrupted and added: "The 

 statement was made here that it had 

 cost $8,000,000 to dig out of the Ten- 

 nessee River the detritus that had 

 washed down from the slopes." No 

 such statement was made by the writer. 

 His statement was that the total ex- 

 penditure had been over $8,000,000, 

 and in the same testimony the distinct 

 statement had been made and was in- 

 cluded in the first quotation made by 

 Captain Johnston, as given above, that 

 army engineers had to step in and be- 

 gin with their dams and locks and 

 spend millions in improvement. This 

 distinctly recognizes lock and dam work 

 on the Tennessee as costing millions. 

 If the river is kept free from sandbars, 

 these millions spent on locks and dams 

 may not be wasted, but if the bars are 

 not kept dredged out, then these mil- 

 lions are wasted, for no matter how 

 many locks and dams there are, a single 

 sandbar across a river will render it 

 useless for tarffic just as surely as a 



