Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-03-21

| the President last week will be held in
| Washington before the end of the present
| week. Chairman Burton of the commits
| sion is now out of town. but is expected
| back within a few days, and when he
! arrives the commissioners will get to-
| gether and try to map out plan of cam
| paign- Up to date they can scarcely be
said to have more of a plan than was out
| lined in the Presidents letter appointing
| them But the work is one of such magni-
tude that they will have plenty to do
| after they get started to keep them busy
| for a long time to come.
| Membership of the Commission.
The membership of the commission seems
| particularly adapted to deal with a compre-
| hensive plan. Representative Burton is
| the chairman of the rivers and harbors
| committee of the House, and is in touch
| with all the general subject of river and
| harbor work Senator Newlands has made
| one of the most extensive studies of rail-
/ road transportation of any man in the
| Senate, while Senator Warner and Repre-
| sentative Bankhead are both we'll posted on
| the general subject of rail and water trans
portaton. f. H. Newell, the director of
| the reclamation service, is probably more
closely in touch with river conditions west
| of the Mississippi than any other man in
| the country.
| The part of the work in which his ex-
perience Will be particularly valuable is in
| relation to silt-bearing streams. water set
| Ting and sediment control. Clifford Pin
| chot. the chief forester, who is one of the
| most actively interested members OF the
commission, is valuable in the same way
| through his experience in reforestra ton of
headWaterS. He aims thus the same
| end by different method that is appl
| cable to a wider range of country. Gen.
Alexander Mckenzie is an army engineer,
| and such familiar with all sorts of
! gneering problems. Herbert Knox Smith,
! chief of the bureau Of corporations of the
| Department. of Commerce and Labor might
not at first sight be supposed to have any
essential business in a deep waterway
| scheme, but a matter of fact most of
! the work that Is now being done in the
| utilization of stream power, the settling of
| water for manufacturing purposes and
much of the work of stream control in one
way or another is done by the big corpora
| tions. of the country, and they are init
mately concerned in matters of stream
| management. Prof. w MCGEE is well
known in Washington. having been for
years connected with the geological survey
and the bureau of ethnology He is now
| the director of the proposed ST. Louis Mu-
| scum and has devoted much of his time to
the study of stream management and to
the transportation problem. He has writ
ten a valuable government work farm
| destruction in the south caused by the
washing and cutting of the abandoned
fields, and was the one to suggest the SIM
pie method of contour cultivation by which
Immense Work Before It.
The commission, has been said, has an
| immense work before it, Primarily the
members to devise a comprehensive
| plan for utilizing the inland waters of the
| country, to make a system of aux
| iliary transportation whereby the great
| crops and the slow moving heavy freight
may be transported cheaply and as quickly
| as need be independent of the railroads.
The roads now confess they incapable
of coping with the situation and will be
for many years to come. The growth of
| the country has been such that production
| has outrun transportation, and there are
| now hundreds of thousands of bushels of
grain rotting beside the tracks in the west
and northwest because the farmers cannot
| get it to market.
| The same lack of transportation is ham
pering the development of the country by
| holding back the supplies of coal and iron
| At the same time the railroads are unable.
| or say they are, to move even the bulk of
| manufactured goods presented to them. All
| of the merchants in the great jobbing
centers of the west complain that it takes
| a month to deliver freight to their Gus
| toners that ought to reach them at the
outside In ten days and most of the job
| bling freight that is shipped from Chicago.
| st. Louis and similar centers these days is
! accompanied by a provision in the blIl of
| lading specifically protecting the merchant
| from any damages on account of delay in
| transmission.
Much may be done in helping the trans
! portation problem by a comprehensive sys-
| tenn of deepening the existing waterways
| and making and keeping them naVigabe.
| But there is much more that be done
| by the construction of connecting canals.
| some of them short Ones, affording cut
| off in long water routes and others tapping
| country that cannot now be reached by
| water There was time in the history
| Of the country, before the development
OF railways, when canals played an i'm
| portant part in the transportation of the
| eastern part of the country. They have
| fallen very largely into disuse with the
| development of fast freight lines, but they
| are likely to be revived all over the coun-
try as an auxiliary means of transporta
! ton.
| Bound up with the transportation prob
| lem, the commission will have to look into
| the subject of stream control in the line
! of preventing freshets and in preventing
| the running of fields by rain and river wash.
| With the removal of forests from the
| headwaters of our river systems, floods
| have vastly increased in volume and dam
| age. The recent freshet cost about $20,
| 100000 around Pittsburg and in the Ohio
| valley, and the conditions are getting worse
| each year AS a sample of what the coun-
! try has suffered in this line, the destruction
of the rice fields in the Carolinas may be
pointed out. This was once the greatest
rice belt of the world, and the work Of
raising rice was easy, because the floods
! and river tides could be nicely calculated
| by the farmers. and the forces of nature
could De mace 10 90 MOST Oh the Work OF
| irrigation at small expense. But with the
deforestation Of the headwaters of the
| streams. the floods in the rivers of the
section increased beyond all control, and
! the farms were washed away, SO that the
region has been ruined a rice-producing
area forever.
Damage Done Annually.
| Almost the same conditions were reached
after the war in many of the dead fields
| of the southern states. This is now being
| checked somewhat by cultivation, but the
damage never be wholly eradicated. 1t
| is impossible to calculate the amount of
| damage that is done annually to the farm
| lands Of the United States by the fertile
! food-borne sediment carried down by the
rivers 1t is thought by the commissioners
| in a general way that much Of the erosion
| {, he