ENGINEERING PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES. 337 
All American works are constructed for a constant supply, and most of those 
first built had a capacity far in excess of the then demand, which caused the for- 
mation of habits of wastefulness which it has been found difficult to check when 
the limit of the capacity was nearly reached. 
The magnitude of the interests involved in this branch of engineering, may 
be judged from the fact that there are now in the United States and Canada 
569 towns with a public water supply, having a population of about twelve mill- 
ions, to whom there are daily distributed over six hundred millions of gallons of 
water, through thirteen thousand miles of pipes, of which about ten thousand 
miles are of cast iron. 
About one-half of these towns are supplied by gravity, many of them how- 
ever, having supplemental pumping power. ‘The total capacity of the pumping 
engines now in use being about 1 goo millions of gallons per day. 
Meanwhile improvements in plumbing and house distribution have greatly 
added to the convenience about our homes, and we now virtually have a spring 
of cold, and another of hot water, in almost every room of our city homes, to 
put on tap at will. * “3 Zs * a = ae 
RIVER IMPROVEMENTS. 
We have as yet done little toward regulating and improving our rivers. 
Blessed with a magnificent system of internal navigation, which, as Mr. Fink 
and Mr. Blanchard have recently shown, virtually compete with and regulate 
freight upon almost all of our railroads, we have directed our attention rather to 
the craft that navigate them than to the streams themselves. 
The further demand for cheaper transportation, however, as well as the 
higher spring floods and the lower summer waters, which come with the destruc- 
tion of the forests, make it necessary that we should within a few years begin ex- 
tensive river works. Colonel Mason, late member of this Society, showed us in 
building the St. Joseph Bridge that even the Missouri River was easily controlled, 
and made to flow wherever the engineer desired, by throwing out cheap and ap- 
parently frail brush dikes. A much greater and more original work has since 
been accomplished by the same simple means by our distinguished member, Cap- 
tain James B. Eads, who, taking in hand the smallest and most unpromising 
pass of the Mississippi River, with seven feet of water over its bar, bas in four 
years transformed it into the best access from the river to the sea, with thirty 
feet of water over the bar, at the cost to the nation of only $5.250,000, while 
‘the ship canal which had been proposed by other parties was estimated to cost 
$10,000,000. 
The same far-seeing engineer is now engaged in studying the remainder of 
the course of the Mississippi River, and devising plans for its control and im- 
provement. You have probably read the report to Congress of the board on 
which he has been acting, in which, differing widely from their predecessors, 
‘they propose to regulate the depth and flow of the river, by reducing its width 
at those points where it spreads into shallow sand bars. 
IV—22 
