316 FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
overcome is to let things go as they are, trusting blindly to chance 
to deal more kindly in the future. This swpineness of spirit and the 
enervating reliance upon indefinite future relief through the agency 
of the Government mist be replaced by self-reliance, and these great. 
industrial centers must rise in their own might and free themselves 
from their bondage to these ever-recurring catastrophes. In Boston, 
Chicago, Galveston, San Francisco, and even that lusty young giant 
of the Northwest, Seattle, are examples enough of what an aroused 
civic spirit can do in the direction of self-aid.* 
The part that reservoirs will play in the larger problems of channel 
improvement and flood control on the great rivers will be in the 
nature of an insurance. Every cubic foot of water taken from the 
crest of a flood and released when the rivers are lowest is pro tanto 
a benefit. If the great floods of the Mississippi can be cut down by 
so much as a foot through reservoir storage, it will be an immense 
gain; and the same will be true if the low-water stages can be in- 
creased by 2 or 8 ft. Whether the much greater results expected by 
Mr. Leighton can ever be realized is a question which the future 
alone can determine. 
A word, finally, concerning the legal obstacles in the way of a@ 
broad Government policy looking to the development of National 
forests and the storage of water on an extensive scale. The expan- 
sion of Government work into fields of obvious utility is often blocked 
by the structure of our Government through the bar of constitutional 
prohibition or at least lack of power. It is said that the purchase of 
lands for the rearing of forests for timber alone is unconstitutional, and 
that the same is true of the storage of water for any other purpose 
than navigation; and yet, forests for timber and reservoirs for power 
must always remain the reai justification for public expenditure 
along these lines. To the average understanding the distinction be- 
tween things constitutional and things unconstitutional is often hard 
__ *The writer is not closely familiar with the situation at Pittsburg and Cin- 
cinnati, but he is familiar with that at the two Kansas Cities where, in 1903, the 
greatest loss occurred that any American city ever sustained at the hands of a 
river flood. He speaks from the results of careful study on the ground when he 
states with the utmost positiveness that, for approximately $10 000000, with such 
aid as might reasonably be expected from the Government on the Missouri River 
front, the flood problem of the Kaw and Missouri in that hive of industrial enter- 
prise known as the West Bottoms can be solved absolutely; the too small area of 
these bottoms can be increased by upward of 200 acres; two-thirds of the bridges in 
the same area can be eliminated; that prodigious barrier to free movement—the 
Kaw River—can be practically removed or placed where it will not be in the way, 
.and the general situation can be so improved that the resulting benefits, wholly apart 
from that of flood protection, would be well worth the cost. . 
