222 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



I now come to the second problem in the great river system — the Lower 

 Mississippi. I favor the amendment providing for an outlet, and regret that the 

 committee have not incorporated it in their bill. 



I regret also, Mr. Speaker, that this question has been allowed to drift into 

 an antagonism that demands the sacrifice of one or the other plan. There is no 

 necessity for this, but on the contrary there is every reason why both should go 

 together. 



I have shown that the problem of the upper river was too little water; that 

 of the lower is too much water. Is it not a common-sen'^e proposition that you 

 cannot treat these two problems by the one method? In the one case you have 

 to control the water within the river banks so as to provide at shoal places a 

 deeper channel. In the other it is to get the superabundant waters within the 

 river banks. Will the plan of the one answer for the other ? It is simply impos- 

 sible, because the trouble is in the two cases directly opposite in character. 

 •^ -^ ^ ^ -^ -^ 



We know that the money already appropriated has not been expended be- 

 cause the flood-waters have been in the way. Now, we contend that if the river 

 had had more discharging capacity the waters would have been within the 

 banks and that money have been expended for the use intended. And why not 

 open more discharging capacity? What is the cause of the overflows of the 

 Lower Mississippi? It is, stating it broadly, because the mouths of the river are 

 not big enough. This fact comes from two causes, the slow current near the 

 sea, and the consequent precipitation of sand and mud held in suspension. 

 These causes result in narrowing the channel as it approaches the sea. The fact 

 that by actual measurement the inflow at average floods at Cairo is 1,475,000 

 cubic feet of water per second, and that after receiving the waters of all rivers 

 below, the flow at New Orleans is only 1,100,000 cubic feet per second, tells the 

 story of the disastrous annual overflows. This surplus water must go somewhere, 

 and the only place for it is to overflow the adjacent country. To confine this- 

 iramense flood within artificial walls, built of the mud the river takes up and car- 

 ries down to choke up its own discharge, is, I submit, one of those stupendous 

 follies which sometimes fascinate men merely from the fact of their magnitude 

 and from the vast sums of money involved. 



That new mouths will draw off" the water just in ratio with their capacity is 

 as plain a propositron as that a barrel of water will be depleted by opening the 

 bung-hole. The river below New Orleans, with a fall of one and one-half inches 

 to the mile, has a flow of six feet in a second. The proposed Lake Borgne out- 

 let, with a fall of two and three-fifths feet to the mile, would have a correspond- 

 ing increase of current and consequent discharging capacity. But only calculat- 

 ing the flow at ten feet per second, with a width of one mile and ten feet deep, 

 its discharge would be 528,210 cubic feet of water per second, or one-third of the 

 whole inflow at Cairo. But the current would be more than twenty feet per sec- 

 ond, or a capacity nearly equal to the whole river at Cairo. The mere statement 



