The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1908-12-08
INLAND WATERWAYS.
Action to Improve Our Navigable
Rivers Urgently Needed.

Action should be begun forthwith.
during the present session Of congress,
for the improvement of our inland wa
terways-action which will result in
giving us not only navigable but
navigated rivers. We have spent
hundreds of millions of dollars upon
these waterways, yet the traffic on
nearly all Of them Is steadily declin-
ing. This condition Is the direct re-
suit of the absence of any compre-
hensive and farseeing plan of water
| way improvement. Obviously we can
| not continue thus to expend the rev.
enues of the government without re-
turn. 1t is poor business to spend
money for inland navigation unless wa
get it.
Inquiry into the condition Of the
Mississippi and its principal tributa-
ries reveals very many instances Of the
utter waste caused by the methods
which have hitherto obtained for the
SO called Improvement" of naviga-
ton. A striking instance is supplied
by the Improvement" of the Ohio.
which, begun in 1924, was continued
under single plan for half a century.
In 1876 new plan was adopted and
followed for quarter Of a century.
In 1902 still a different plan was adopt
ed and has since been pursued at 4
rate which only promises navigable
river In from twenty to a hundred
years longer.
Such shortsighted, vaciilatfng and
futile methods are accompanied by de-
creasing water borne commerce and
increasing traffic congestion on land.
by increasing foods and by the waste
OF public money. The remedy lies In
abandoning the methods which have
SO signally failed and adopting new
ones In keeping with the needs and
demands Of our people
In report on measure introduced
at the first session of the present con-
gress the secretary of war said, This
chief defect in the methods hithertD
pursued lies in the absence of execu-
tive authority for originating compre-
hensive plans covering the country or
natural divisions thereof In thix
opinion I heartily concur. The pres
ent methods not only fall to give us
inland navigation, but they are fnju-
rious to the army as we'll What Isl
virtually permanent detail of the
corps Of engineers to civilian duty nee
essarily impairs the efficiency of our
military establishment The military
engineers have undoubtedly done eff.
cient work In actual construction, but
they are necessarily unsuited by their
training and traditions to take the
broad view and to gather and trans
NIT to the congress the commercial
and Industrial information and fore
casts upon which waterway improve
ment must always so largely rest
Furthermore, they have failed to grasp
the great underlying fact that every
stream is a unit from its source to Its
mouth and that all Its uses are inter-
dependent. Prominent officers of the
engineer corps have recently even gone
so far as TO assert In print that wa
! terways are not dependent upon the
! conservation of the forests about their
| headwaters. This position is opposed
| to all the recent work Of the scientific
! bureaus of the government and to the
| general experience of mankind A
physician who disbeieved in vaccina-
! ton would not be he right man to
handle an epidemic OF smallpox, nor
should we leave a doctor skeptical
about the transmission of yellow fever
by the stegomyia mosquito in charge
of sanitation at Havana or Panama.
So with the improvement of our riv-
ers. 1t is no longer wise or safe to
leave this great work in the hands of
men who fail to grasp the essential
relations between navigation and gen.