The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1866-12-30

We have received lengthy petition
with the compliments Ex-senator james
L. Alcorn upon the subject of thu
levee system of the State of Mississip
pi. 1t is addressed to the Senate ant
House of Representatives Of the Uni
ted States. It is well written and pre-
sents many forcible reasons why Con
gress should step forward and preserve
from inundation the valuable cotton
lands bordering the Mississippi river
in the States of Mississippi, Louisiana
and Arkansas. We have only room
| for a few extracts from the petition
| That notwithstanding it's wonderful pro
! ductiveness as a field for cotton, the country
! lying between the Mississippi and the YazoO
has, as a result of the war, reverted back to
| substantially the condition of trdSte from
which it had been reclaimed, and that the
people who have as a consequence been
ruined with it, are not only now as they
were previous to the grant of the General
Government, face to face with the lmpOsSi-
BILE task of building new levees without
money or credit, but are actually excluded
from the performance of the work still fur
Their than then, by formidable debt.
That the work of TecOnStrucing the Mis-
sissippi levee is one of great magnitude.
That a labor of ten years in the effort, with
the donations of The General Government,
added to several millions of money derived
from local taxation, all faithfully applied,
and yet the task barely accomplished at the
outbreak of the war, forces the unmistaka-
BILE conviction that the effort now being
i Al Al. -
BILE attempt of a feeble and impoverished
people to accomplish by industry great
public work which, without the nations
generous help, they can never perform.
That the destruction of the capital inves-
ted in that branch of agriculture has to a
very great extent crippled its old energies
and has placed it under conditions that
amount in themselves to very serious diff
culties.
That the work of Improvement which will
place the people of the tract bounded by the
Mississippi and the Yazoo in a position to
add fifteen millions of dollars to the gold in
come of the country, will if carried out now
that it is impossible of execution otherwise,
at the cost of the public treasury, prove
still more than it did in the past, a sound
measure of financial policy.
That while the alluviOns of the Mississip-
pi lowlands offer in their yield of ten bales
to the hand, as compared with that of fire
bales to the hand on the cotton uplands, a
means ofaverting that public disaster, there
is no hope whatever of rescuing them for
that purpose from inundation, save by the
enlightened craftsmanship, which demands
that the helpless ruin of the levee interests
be restored generously by tho resources of
the General Government.
That inasmuch as in addition to the con-
siderations thus glanced at, the construction
of the LeveeS of the State of Mississippi
will add to the basis of Federal taxation
100, 900 bales of cotton, the outlay made on
those works will therefore yield an income
under the head of cotton tax" of upwards
of one million six hundred thousand dollars
per annum.
That to restore special ruin made by mil
itary necessity; to repeat an act which prov
ed itself one of sound policy in our public
arithmetic; to promote high interests of our
commerce and our finance; to maintain the
supremacy of the country as the cotton pro-
Queer of the world; to give home to the
freedmen, and preserve them In the future
from idleness, poverty, and barbarism; to
bring back our cotton supplies in the face of
even deficient labor to it's old standard of
prosperity, your honorable bodies will do
that which remains in your power before
the close of this session of Congress to as
suage as far as possible a public sense of
wrong by applying the money derived from
the cotton-tax of Mississippi, Arkansas, and
Louisiana, respectively, to the reconstruc-
ton of the works necessary for placing the
luxuriant lowlands of those States at the
service of the general posterity.