The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-11-13
Terrible and Disastrous Results OF Ohio's
Prolonged Drouth now on.

Terrible and Disastrous Results OF Ohio's
Prolonged Drouth now on.
Washington, Nov. 12-Delegates from
towns and cities along the Ohio river
had a convention in Cincinnati the 9TH
er day. They agreed that navigation
conditions were most unsatisfactory
and that something should be done to
better them. Though none of the visi-
tors was a stranger to the Ohio's at
tenuajted appearance, one of the steam
boat companies invited them to spend
an afternoon in cruising about near the
city. Nearly all the delegates Joined in
the excursion. Their steamer, strug-
Cling against the difficulties of low wat
err, ran upon a rock and stove an ugly
hole in her hull. The passengers re-
turned to the convention hall more con-
WINGED than ever that the government
should be called upon for appropria-
tions.
The Ohio was very low at the time of
the convention, but it has been still low
er since the delegates dispersed. Navi-
cation has been suspended except for
a few small steamers, and even these
have been forced to spend a great share
of their time on sand bars. Things have
been worse on the river, but not much.
Authorities do not agree exactly on the
point. Some old steamboat men insist
that conditions were worse about ten
years ago; others aver that not for thir-
ty years has the stream been quite so
useless for their purpose as has been
the case in the last few weeks.
Enormous quantities of coal are held
near Pittsburg, awaiting the rise which
shall make it possible to take lows down
the river. 1t has been a good many
months since there was water enough
for the coal fleets.
The fact is that the low stage of the
river is only one of the effects of one
dry year followed by another. Other
evidences of the extent to which the
droughts have been felt are easily
found. Readers of newspapers publish
ed in the Ohio valley cities have been
RECALLED recently with somewhat fire.
quent references TO the advantages of
irrigation. For years these journals
have had more or less to say of con-
quests OF arid regions, of deserts made
green and productive, of fortunes borne
to enterprising farmers and on the
streams flowing through their canals
and bitches. But up to a few months
ago such articles dealt with the sub
ject as something remote, both in place
and mportance-Something TO be class
ed with floods in China, or the rabbit
plague in Australia, or eclipses visible
only in a particular inaccessible corner
of Africa-something in short, to keep
company with other bits of miscellan-
eous information, interesting only in a
general and far-off fashion. Now, how
ever, the tendency is TO treat irrigation
as possessing possibilities of local i'm
portance-if ''locaP' can be applied TO
a region including a large portion OF
five states and a smaller slice OF a sixth.
A third misunderstanding season
would mean, of course, a further aggra-
walton of the evils which were IN some
way worse in the summer of 1895 than
in that of 1894. A very large amount Of
money would be required TO make good
the damage done by drought, while
there has been in some, cases. physical
suffering not to be measured in dollars |