The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1907-03-28
WASHINGTON
From our Regular Correspondent.

Washington, d. c. Mar. %, 1907.
While the Waterways Commits
sion appointed by the President last
week is not yet even organized,
Chairman Burton of Ohio is ex.
pected back in Washington within
a few days, and then the commits
sion will meet to see what it can do.
People i'll many parts Of the country
may not realize what all enormous
task the commission has before it
and how much good it will be able
to do if it plans wisely, and if its
wise plans are carried out The
scheme is nothing less than map
ping out an efficient system of in
ternal water transportation for all
of the country that can be now
reached by water, and in fact put
ting in canals where they will do
the most good To merely map out
this much of the work seems like a
stupendous task. 1t is almost as
though the whole railroad system
of the country were lacking and a
few scattered horsecar lines doing
all the hauling and someone in att
thority suddenly proposed to eX-
tend the scattered horse car lines
into the present steam road system
and equip it for business with the
latest improvements Of engineering
skill.
OF course what the Waterways
Commission can do is only to make
a start and prepare comprehensive
plan for the approval of Congress
But one of the things it is to do i'll
a general way is to map out an eff
cient auxiliary system OF water
transportation for slow freight that
will take off the shoulders of the
railroads the burden of moving the
immense crops which they now
frankly confess they are unable to
handle. The people of the middle
west realize the need of water trans
portation perhaps more keenly than
any other pait of the community.
St. Louis is one Of the greatest job
bing cities Of the country, and a
member OF the commission said this
week that he was assured by the
big merchants there that they had
not shipped bill of goods in tie
past year without a proviso that
they were not to be held response
BILE for delay in delivery. The
farmers of the middle west and
northwest know to their sorrow the
impossibility Of getting their crops
to market by the railroads as now
run, and thousands of bushels Of
last seasons grain is now rotting in
the fields and beside the railroad
tracks because OF the inability Of
the railroads, real or professed, to
cope with the traffic. If the Com
mission is able to map out com.
prehensive plan of water highways
that will serve the needs of the peo-
pie in moving the heavy aud bulky
produce, the railroads will be left
free to handle the fast freight and
passenger traffic much more effect
ually.
But this is not all the Waterways
Commission is expected to do. To
make effective and navigable the
larger streams will be large and
important work, but it is planned
also to control so far as possible all
the streams of the country, and
thus save the millions of dollars
lost annually by floods aud the in
calculably greater loss by washing
and erosion of the farm lands OF the
country. This is going at the
problem of stream control with
vengeance. Clifford Pinchot, the
chief of the Forestry Service, Is one
Of the members of the commission
and one of the prime movers. His
plan for the control of streams
erosion and flood loss looks mainly
to reforesting the headwaters Of the
streams and thus preventing the
sudden down pour of melted snow
and ice that makes the floods in the
spring and has just caused fully
$40, 900, 900 of loss around Pitts
burg and the Ohio valley.
The people of the South realize
this loss also, and have constant
object lesson before them in the de-
struction of the greatest rice belt i'll
the world through the two Carroll
mas where the fields washed out
after the forests had been cut out