The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-09

eating away it's banks. The course of the river has been more or less straight ened out by natural and artificial means 1t is a curious fact. for example. that in l75 years ending in 1875, the Mississippi Is known to have shortened itself by PAP miles, A characteristic example was in 1722 when a neck of land half a mile wide. rear Port Hudson, Louisiana. was cut by the liver. which heneeforth avoid ed a great loop 35 miles long. Much ar tiheial work in the same direction has been done.
 Withal there has. of course, been the constant work on the levees-a persist ent fight conducted for more than 1S0 years. and, in fact. ever since Sieur Bien- ville threw up the first rude embank- ment to protect the infant city of New Orleans against the overflow of the mighty stream The Crescent City, which, as an old writer once put lt has a mortgage on the great west and the Rocky mountains, payable in annual in- stalments" has set an example of what engineering experts say should he done in many places along the river to supple ment the levee work and to make navi- gation safer.
 Relation to Canal.
 Considering the very direct relationship between the improvement of our inland waterways and the building of the Pan ana canal, an undertaking which will always be associated with the name of President Roosevelt, 1t is particularly ap- proprlate that the chief executive who has already witnessed the flying of the dirt on the isthmus. should now interest himself in studying at first hand the traffic on America's largest river system. The outlet of American goods to the Orient by way of the Mississippi and the port Of New Orleans Is directly con- cerned Improved conditions of river communication will enable the manufac- turer ir the faiddle west or in western Pennsylvania to send his products to the Orient by the very cheapest possible form Of transportation, with only sin gle trans-shipment. This opportunity was foreseen as long ago as 1868 by writer in Putna ms magazine, who pre- dicted: ''rhe world is just beginning to appreciate the value of cheap and rapid communication as an element of eivili- zatlon. When we shall at last have real ized that dream Of the century-a direct western passage from Europe to India and shall have srasEed the rich prize of Asiatic traffic, then will the real value and significance of ths great river sys- tenn bn understood. Tor until then will It's levees be properly rebuilt, will It's currents be made to flow in even and regular channels and this magnificent Mississippi become In the hlghest sense a liquid highway of the millions of peo- pie living on It's banks.
 President Roosevelt has so highly ap- proved of the work of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress in It's en- deavor to arouse public opinion to the necessity of supplementing the service or the railroads by improvement of the waterways that he has no doubt accepted with alacrty this Invitation to make a. journey which will be replete for him with historical and present-day interest and will be glad of the fact that his visit will help to fix the attention of the civ- ilized world upon some of the most m teresting of modern engineering projects.