The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1903-10-24
INTERESTS AT STAKE.
They Reach From Pittsburs to Mon

tana, From Bismarck to the Gulf.
The Washington Post, which is al
ways we'll informed concerning South
ern matters, as it is about the country
generally, in speaking about the big
levee convention, has this to say:
Great interest attaches to the forth
coming levee convention, which is to
assemble at New Orleans October u,
1903 That interest is felt in nineteen
of our greatest States. The immense
territory drained by the Mississippi
river and its MISUNDERSTANDING which
we may mention the Missouri, the
Ohio, the Red, Arkansas, Tennessee,
Cumberland, Wabash and Yellowstone
is as large as Europe. Its population
is numbered by the tens of millions;
its resources are almost incalculable;
its possible development beggars de-
scription. Yet all this gigantic region
and most of it's inhabitants are init
mately concerned in the navigation of
the Mississippi Industries too vast for
computation are affected. Financial
considerations which can hardly be
expressed in figures touch the question
of inland water transportation from
the agricultural, mining and manufac-
turing districts to the sea.
1T is not true, as so many good peo-
pie in this part of the country too has
tily assume, that levee convention at
New Orleans or elsewhere represents
nothing more than the comparatively
Insignificant interests of few cotton
and sugar planters in Louisiana, Mis-
sissippi and Arkansas. The fact is
that the navigation of the Mississippi
river and it's innumerable affuents is
a serious factor in the prosperity of
nineteen rich and growing States.
Throughout this prodigious area, the
dominating question is that of the es-
tablishment and the permanent main
tenance of cheap water transportation
for it's products. To the extent to
which this communication can be es-
tablished and maintained, the farmers,
manufacturers and miners will be
profited. Every penny saved in the
cost of transportation is a penny left
In the pockets of the producer. And
that constitutes problem in arithme-
tic before which the most vivid imagi-
nation must surrender.
"The levees? In. a word, they make
the question of overshadowing import
ance at this time. Science assures us
that by combining the current, holding
it inexorably within certain fixed linn
its, and compelling the entire volume
of water to travel to the sea by pre-
scribed path, we can best deepen the
channel and secure unrestricted and
safe navigation at all seasons of the
year. There have been controversies
and counter claims without number,
but the weight of authority is with the
embankment theory, and the teachings
of experience sustain it. Most of our
leading engineers, civil and military,
congressional committees time and
time again, have declared that levee
system affords the most effective
agency of permanent and profitable
navigation in our great silt-bearing
streams. No other plan has given
satisfaction. In no other expedient
has rational or substantial promise
been discerned.
1T is to consider the question of
securing levee system, therefore, that
the New Orleans convention of the
9th instant, has ben arranged. The
interests at stake reach from Pittsburg
to Montana--from Bismarck to the
Gulf" :
To which the New Orleans Picayune
adds:
1T would be difficult to state the
situation more intelligently or more
forcibly than it is done in the editorial
from the Washington Post, printed
above. Too many people take up
the narrow and ignorant notion that
the levees along the Mississippi river
are only of local and private interest,
when. on the contrary, they are of ma
tional Importance. This is not only
true from the standpoint of industry
and commerce, but it is so from the
fact that the Mississippi river was the
chief factor in inducing the purchase
by the United States of the territory
Of Louisiana, and it was just as import
ant an instrumentality in saving the
Union as it was in extending its limits
and enlarging its boundaries.
When the independence of the thir-
teen English colonies which formed
the original union of the American
States had been acknowledged by
Great Britain in 1888, the territory of
west from the Atlantic ocean to the
Mississippi river, and from the great
lakes on the north to the Spanish and
French dominions on the south. The
people of the United States owned only
one-half Of the Mississippi river from
its source, in what is now Minnesota,
to where it entered the French prov
ince of Louisiana, but while they pos
sessed the right to navigate this vast
interior waterway through the greatest
part of Its length, they could not reach
its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico ex-
cept by passing through foreign terri
tory.