Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1908-03-14
A new DEPARTMENT
To GOVERN TRANSPORTATION
ANDiPUBLIC WORKS.
Take From Department of War River
and Harbor Work-Bill by Repre-
sentative RansdelI-Seat in. Cabinet
plan May Include Functions of In
terstate Commerce Commission.

Representative Ransdell of Louisi-
ana has introduced a bill which makes
good the prediction last fall that
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 well 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 well as
the reclamation of S0,000,000 acres of
swamp, overflow and wet lands of the
south and middle west.
Mr.. Ransdell is 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 fore
fend against legislation which would
rob it of it's traditional function to
take care of the nations engineering
e
So far as that department is con-
cerned, there will be intense opposi-
ton, but it is now well 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 antiquated, and citation
of the history of jetty building at the
mouth of the Mississippi so years age
by Captain Eads, when the army is
alleged to have laughed at the jetty
idea which Eads proceeded to prove
to be the bets means of deepening
channels at the rivers mouth. They
claim vast sums of money have beer
wasted by the war department il
handling inland river works.
On the other hand the army fairly
scorns the pretensions of supporter.
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 beef
slightly probed; that the nation is alb
solutely unprepared to say whether o.
not the plan proposed is good or bad
The bill even comprehends also sub
traction from the interstate commerc'
commission of supervision over road
beds and rates, and inclusion in thu
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 tn
agricultural department, and the ere
alton of a bureau of mining technolog
for the new department.
The general movement, of whic
Representative Ransdells bill is tn
first phase which has gone before cor
gress directly, contemplates the mos
sweeping changes in the makeup O
the several executive department
which have ever been proposed sine
the republic was founded
The army, as soon as the bill be
came a law, would be merely an arm
with an engineering corps reduced t
an inconsequentiality The transpol
tation, forestry, irrigation, drainage
geological and other bureaus, now S
important parts of their respective d.
partments, would carry to the pre-
posed department enormous authorit.
such as woi Id enable the secretary {
transportation and public works
compete with the secretary of state fo
premiership in the cabinet