Arizona republican., 1908-12-09

pursued at a rate which only prom ises a navigable river in from twenty to one hundred years longer.
 Such shortsighted, vacillating, and futile methods are accompanied by decreasing water borne commerce and increasing traffic congestion on land, by increasing floods, and by the waste of public money. The remedy lies in abandoning the methods which have so signaly failed and adopting new ones in keeping with the needs and demands of our people.
 In a report on a measure introduced at the first session of the present congress, the secretary of war said: The chief defect in the methods hitherto pursued lies in the absence of executive authority for originating comprehensive plans covering the country or natural division thereof" In this opinion l. heartily concur. The present methods not only fail to give us inland navigation, but they are injurious to the army as well. What is virtually a permanent detail Of the corps of engineerss to civilian duty necessarily impairs the efficiency or our military establishment. The mili- tary engineers have undoubtedly done efficient work in actual construction, but they are necessarily unsuited Dy their training and traditions to take the broad view, and to gather and transmit to the congress the commer- cial and industrial information and forecasts, upon which waterway i'm provement must always so largely rest Furthermore, they have failed to grasp the great underlying fact that every stream is a unit from It's source to it's mouth, and that all its uses are interdependent. Prominent officers of the engineer corps have recently even gone so far as to assert in print that waterways are not de- pendent 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 ex- perience of mankdind. A physician who disbelieved in vaccination wouiG not be the right man to handle Sn epidemic of smallpox, nor shoulI we leave a doctor skeptical about the transmission of yellow fever by the Stegomyia mosquito in charge (: san- dl I1dN dlst UT A'C with the improvement of our rivers; it is no longer wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of men who fail to grasp the essential rela- tions between navigation and general development and to assimilate and use the central facts about our streams.
 The Time Has Come.
 Until the work of river improve ment is undertaken in a modern way it can not have results that will meet the needs of this modern nation. These needs should be met without further dilly -dallying or delay. The plan which promises the best and quickest results is that of perma- nent commission authorized to co-or- dinate the work of all the govern ment departments relating to water ways and to frame and supervise the execution of a comprehensive plan. Under such a commission the actual work of construction might be en- trusted to the reclamation service; or to the military engineers acting with a sufficient number of civilians to continue the work in time of war; or it might be divided between the reclamation service and the corps of engineers. Funds should be provided from current revenues if it is deemed wise-otherwise from the sale of bonds. The essential thing is that the work should go forward under the best possible plan. and with the least possible delay. We should have a new type of work and a new or ganization for planning and directing it. The time for playing with our waterways is past. The country de- mands results.
 National Parks.
 I urge that all our national parks adjacent to national forests be placed completely under the control of the forest service of the agricultural de- partment, instead of leaving them as they now are, under the interior de- partment and policed by the army. The congress should provide for su- perintendents with adequate corps of first-class civilian scouts, or rangers, and further, place the road construc- tion under the superintendent instead of leaving it with the war depart ment. Such a change in park man. o6SAAANAAN "OAAb ANSdAl III tSOilOillg avoid the difficulties of administra- tion which now arise from having the responsibility of care and protec- tion divided between different depart ments. The need for this course is peculiarly great in the Yellowstone park. This, like the Yosemite, is a great wonderland, and should be kept as a national playground. In both all wild things should be protected, and the scenery kept wholly unmarred
 l am happy to say that I have been able to set aside in various parts of the country small, well chosen tracts of ground to serve as sanctuaries and nurseries for wild creatures.
 Denatured Alcohol. |
 I had occasion in my message of, May 4, 1906, to urge the passage of some law putting alcohol, used in the arts, industries and manufactures, ! upon the free list; that is, to pro- vide for the withdrawal free of tax ! of alcohol which is to be denatured for those purposes. The law of June ', 1906, and it's amendment of March 1 ?, 1907, accomplished what was de- | sired in that respect, and the use of l denatured alcohol, as intended, is | making a fair degree of progress and |