Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1908-03-13
A new DEPARTMENT
TO GOVERN TRANSPORTATION
AND PUBLIC WORKS.
Take From Department of War River
and Harbor Work-BiIl by Repre-
sentative RansdelI--Seat in Cabinet
plan May Include Functions of In
terstate Commerce Commission.

Representative Ransdell of Louisi-
ana has introduced bill which makes
good the prediction last fall that a
movement has been launched for the
creation of a new executive depart
ment Of transportation and public
works, which is part of plan of mem
bers of the national congress and of
the rivers, harbors and inland water.
ways commission, as we'll as promi-
nent officials of the government here.
to take from the war department au-
thority over engineering works on riv-
ers and harbors; from the treasury de-
partment, public buildings; from the
agricultural department, national for
estry; from the interior department
irrigated and arid lands, and give them
to the proposed department, as we'll as
the reclamation of 8O,0OO,000 acres of
swamp, overflow and wet lands of the
south and middle west
Mr.. Ransdell is a member of the in
land waterways commission and-presi-
dent of the rivers and harbors con.
gress.
The war department has been ad-
viSed for many months of these plans
and quietly has been preparing to pre-
fend against legislation which would
rob it of it's traditional function to
take care of the nations engineering
works and of the rivers and harbors.
So far as that department is con-
cerned, there will be intense opposi-
ton, but it is now we'll known Chief
Forester Pinchot and Chief Newell of
the reclamation service are favorable
to the proposed radical change.
1t has been alleged by friends of the
proposed new department that Presi-
dent Roosevelt is of the opinion that
some such plan should be wrought out,
his utterances in messages and
speeches on numerous occasions being
cited in support of that claim.
That the matter will arouse acri-
monious debate is indicated by the al
legged fact put out last fall by pro-
ponents of the movement that army
engineers are Anticipated, and citation
of the history of jetty building at the
mouth of the Mississippi so years ago
by Captain Eads, when the army is
ais ged to have laughed at the jetty
id, 4, which Eads proceeded to prove
to be the bets means of deepening
channels at the rivers mouth. They
claim vast sums of money have been
wasted by the war department in
handling inland river works.
On the other hand the army fairly
scorns the pretensions of supporters
of the new movement. The department
says friends of this new idea have pre-
sumed to speak positively on ques-
ton which has not yet even been
slightly probed; that the nation is alb
solutely unprepared to say whether or
not the plan proposed is good or bad.
The bill even comprehends also sub
traction from the interstate commerce
commission of supervision over road
beds and rates, and inclusion in the
functions of the proposed department
of activities of the bureau of stand
ards, now in the department OF COM
merce and labor; the geological sur
vey, now in the interior department;
the office of public roads, now in the
agricultural department, and the Gre
alton of bureau of mining technology
for the new department.
The general movement, OF winch
Representative Ransdells bill is the
first phase which has gone before con-
gress directly, contemplates the most
sweeping changes in the makeup OF
the several executive departments
which have ever been proposed since
the republic was founded.
The army, as soon as the bill pc
came a law, would be merely an army
with an engineering corps reduced 10
an inconsequentiality The transpor-
tation, forestry, irrigation, drainage
geological and other bureaus, now SO
important parts of their respective de-
partments, would carry to the pro
posed department enormous authority,
such as would enable the secretary Oh
transportation and public WORKS u
compete with the secretary OF state LOT
premiership in the cabinet