The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1890-05-10
Gle Vstibotlaux Sentinel,
SATURDAY, MAY 10. 1890.
A GREAT GOVERNMENT SHOW
ELING SAND.

an annual menace and peril to q nil
hon of our people. There are no
richer lands this side of the Nile Del
ia than the broad bottoms now unde
water. The Me leaves a blessin.
with its subsiding floods; the Mis-.
sisslppl desolation may be ~pestilence
The kilograms from the breakin!
levees are as thrilling as those that in
the early sixties told us of battles lost
or won. This morning they tell OF 4;
Mississippi yillag" wiped out, Will,
warnings go TO New Orleans to pre-.
pare for the worst. BY this time there
may be Il hundred breaks in the miser-
able levces, the wild water pouring
through %crevasses whose width men
guess ut, and deep enough TO float oil
houses that have been homes. For Il
week the papers will tell Of "cattle
drowned, ''homes desolated," shelter
less women and children" poor ruin
ed people fleeing for their lives"
There is terror from Cairo to the
Cult. These things are not happen
lhs along the banks of the yellow
RN err i'll China, sweeping away whole
villages full of wretched coolies
things II reads OF at breakfast as
mere news items, are they not heath
en- all9 These horrors are here, in the
United States. The informed people
say that the big river grows more
dangerous each year; certainly the
victims of its fury find it so.
The methods used to protect the
people from this annual danger would
have discredited antiquity. We read
of "levee commissioners" i'm this OAR
ish and the other-iE this country and
III that. There is IA capable man here,
any sort there, an absentee youder.
There are different States, counties
parishes, with chance-work, guess
work, no-work intermixed. En-
gineers here, blunderers there science
In one place, blind experiment in an
other. All is chaos. just now there
Is enormous energy, with great outcry
and much running to and fro, as When
villages fight tire-with buckets, bell
ringing, yelling. and general smashing
OF furniture. There are farmers with
held-hands, railroads with their
track-hands, ''levee commissioners
with any hands-tighting, for the
most part, like Jackson's old rihcmen
at New Orleans, "on their own book.n
Government also, with more or less
red taplsm, taking hold, here and
there, when it is too late to nrevent
disaster. Tomorrow, Government
half walked up, will tissue rationsn to
Its alf-drowned citizens.
That government may touch tha
Mississippi problem is proved bv its
actually taking hold of it now when
the peril is at its height-when the
army oil Aerxes could not STAY the
Hood. What a satire on Government |
methods! Little steamers shooting up
and down, official telegraphing for !
thousand or a million OF sacks to fill
with dirt to fling into the wide ere
vases ; the most certain outcome be-
ng scarcity of sacks when wanted for
something else. II there is an absurd
IL thing in history | know it not. IN
ess it be the Chinese beating TO
away bad spirits that direct
storms and floods in the Celestial En-
pre-. The Signal Service people give
heir warnings weeks in advance.
When the flood breaks across a coan-
y some department" or other. or
commissioners of l~evees'' rises
Up with a squirt of energy and begins
% shovel sand and soft dirt. and r.
lunt about for "sacks'' while the fierce
laughs them to scorn. Woul1
Pharaohs have handled Egypt so ?
)r Nebuchadnezzar have waited till
Enphrates had well-nigh devour-
ID Babylon ;tselfP
What matters it if a great city like
New Orleans is declared by Govern
officials to be in deadly peril?
hen 1T Is destroyed Government can
appoint a commission to investigate
{" and tissue rations and tentsn for
miserable survivors.
Meantime Congress goes on with
endless palaver and tongue-work for
home consumption" There is end
ess "crlmination and recrimina:ionn
mere foods of foolish and bitter
ak; quarreling about PENSIONS
ash for patriotism-and tariff, each
eeklng to protect his own, cutting in
@ all the rest, an3 civil service re-
that neither party believes in
to practice it. Government
'nows the certainty Of this river peril,
it waits till it comes rushing down
lp0n the people. Then it wades knee
leep iuto the muddy water, wetting
is pretty ''knickerbockers," filings
llrt about, and fills up little sand
ags.
The sufferers are not altogether
'lameless. If such Il terror as the
Mississippi flowed through New Eng
and, OF the Middle States, petitions a
nile long would be unrolled before at