334 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



to the Continental divide of the Rocky Mountains on 

 the west, to Canada on the north, and to the crest of 

 the Alleghenies on the east, where the Ohio river has 

 its source. And if it is expected in the years to come 

 to control that great flood by building the levees higher 

 and higher, I have only to say to the people of the 

 lower Mississippi valley, the sugar bowl of the conti- 

 nent, that the time will come when they cannot build 

 them higher and the country will go back to a swamp 

 and be as desolate as it is to-day where the St. Francis 

 basin is covered with water through which you may 

 look down and see the tops of the trees that once grew 

 on dry land. How are you going to prevent that? 



I say to you as a commercial proposition, if you look 

 at it solely from that standpoint, as a proposition of 

 cold, hard figures, that it is the duty of the national 

 government to conserve that flood of water so that 

 every drop of it can be used in the State where it falls 

 before it finds its way into that great river and goes 

 down to destroy the plantations. And that year by 

 year the use of that water, if it were all used for power, 

 for irrigation, for the navigation of the streams in the 

 summer season (because the water would be in the 

 streams then in the summer season), that it would 

 more than double, more than treble, more than quad- 

 ruple the productive power of more than one-third 

 of the United States. 



Isn't it worth doing? 



Let us carry the picture in our minds a little farther 

 up the river and look at Kansas City and that great 

 flood that came so near destroying its business section 

 that same winter. Look at the Ohio River flood in 

 the Pittsburg vicinity that same winter. Look at the 

 Allegheny Mountain region a year later. I came 

 down from Harrisburg to Washington last spring 



