332 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



been caused by the River Commission and its friends who want to close all out- 

 lets and build levees. 



The consummation of the outlet plan upon New Orleans would be that in 

 the first place it would drain the entire valley from overflow, giving that city the 

 products of nearly all the land in the valley below Cairo, which would amount to 

 hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Second, the flood line of the river 

 being lowered fully fourteen feet it would make that city high and dry, and render 

 a system of sewerage possible which would entirely free that city from yellow 

 arid malarial fevers, which would do away with the quarantine except as at other 

 cities, which now operate detrimentally to her commerce. When New Orleans 

 is properly sewered and has such sanitary regulations as other cities enjoy, the 

 yellow fever and other epidemics will not spread there any more than in New 

 York and other northern cities. There is no doubt that New Orleans has degen- 

 erated very greatly within the past twenty-five years as a commercial centre, as 

 compared with other cities, owing to her epidemics and her lack of a deep outlet 

 uo the sea. As an evidence, in i860 the cotton crop of the United States was 

 3,200,000 bales, of which New Orleans handled 2,200,000 bales. The crop now 

 is 6,500,000 bales, of which New Orleans does not handle to exceed 1,700,000 

 bales. Then of the tobacco crop produced in the country in i860, New Orleans 

 handled 88,000 hogsheads, and now, when the crop is fully three times as large, 

 she does not handle 10,000 hogsheads. Then in i860 New Orleans imported 22 

 per cent of the entire imports of the United States, while at present her imports 

 do not exceed 2 per cent. At that time New Orleans imported 80 per cent of 

 the coffee consumed in this country, and now out of 200,000,000 pounds imported 

 annually she handles less than 20,000,000 pounds. 



*' As another fair illustration of this decay, when I was in New Orleans a 

 few days ago I saw but two steamers loading for foreign ports, and but three or 

 or four sailing-vessels at the ■ wharves, while twenty-five years ago I have seen 

 200 sailing-ships and from fifty to 100 steamboats at the landing at one time load- 

 and discharging cargoes from all portions of the world. Now there are to be 

 seen only a few local packets. The fact is that fully 90 per cent of the commerce 

 of the Mississippi valley which should go to New Orleans now goes off east by 

 the railroads. The people of the great northwest and especially of Kansas City, 

 are as deeply interested in the prosperity of New Orleans , the reclamation of the 

 valley lands of the Mississippi ; an improved river and opening of a deep outlet 

 for your commerce to the Gulf as are the people of that city and valley them- 

 selves. For with these things accomplished it will place your grain in Liverpool 

 for fifteen cents per bushel, while it now costs you thirty cents to New York, and 

 this in a nnt-shell explains the reason why so many plans are adopted in order 

 not to improve and open that river, and is the secret of all the opposition to what, 

 we propose to accompHsh by the Lake Borgne outlet and auxiliary work." 



