The Sentinel=record., 1909-10-26
WATERWAYS
 WAS TOPIC PRESIDENT TAFT AND CANNON WERE THE MOST PROM.
 WENT SPEAKERS. Meeting Took Place on the Eve of the Journey Down the Mississippi
 Furthering of Roose-
 velts Plans.

St. Louis Oct Waterway i'm provements as part of national policy of conservation of the streams, the la nds adjntiniohgcmfwypcmfwy the lands adjoining them and the for ests at their sources was the theme of two notable gatherings in this city and in East at. Louis, H., today. in which President Taft. Joseph C. Can- non, speaker of the national house Of representatives. and Governors Din cen of Illinois and Hadley of Mis- souri took the leading roles, Vice President Sherman was also at the East St. Louis meeting. his presence making the list of notables gathered for the occasion the most complete roster of officialdom that has assembled at any place west of the Alleghenies.
 Cabinet members, United States senators and representatives and min isters hom foreign governments, lis-
 
 of the meetings. Added to these were state and municipal officials of all degrees and close to 100000 citi- zens from the ranks who had flocl1ed to the two cities to see and hear their officers.
 Tonight the president, the speaker,
 
 the diplomats, legislators and several hundred representatives of conner ciai organizations of Illinois, Missouri and other states in the Mississippi Valley are speeding down the Missis- sippi river aboard fiotilla of paddle wheel steamers bound for New Or 1 leans
 There they are to assemble with 1 hundreds of others in the annual con- vention of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Wat erways Association, whose present | project Is the creation of permanent ] fourteen foot channel from the mouth of the Illinois river to the Gulf of Mexico.
 While the presidents utterances On waterway improvement were not so far reaching regarding the creation of the fourteen foot channel as these of President Roosevelt on similar occashDn-,and therefore not entirely cheering to the advocates of an im- mediate commencement of the work yet the fact that Speaker Cannon un- qualifiedly endorsed the chief execu- tive's stand regarding bond issues for such projects, gave these same advo- cates encouragement. The general good was the test which the presi- dent prescribed for the undertaking of ambitious works.
 We are on the eve of a great jour- ney down the Mississippi river" the president began in his Coliseum ad- dress, and cursed be he who calls it junket. The journey, as Governor Hadley has said, has reference to the problem of transportation and rail- ways and waterways. It is, however, only a part of still greater move ment inaugurated by Theodore Roose- I velt and properly called by him the conservation of our natural resources. ? The mention of Mir. Roosevelt's name called out prolonged cheering. l The president said the people of the Mississippi Valley were only in terested in the improvement of in- land waterways and the preservation of the forests as means of putting an end to the floods, which were car rying so many of the farms in Mis- sourl, Iowa and other states, down to tse delta of the Missippi.
 The president said the government of the United States had been exceed ingly generous in parting with it's lands in the past. and that the time had come for the adoption of a new policy in that regard He spoke of the necessity for new legislation re- sarding water power sites to prevent moropolies from gaining control