The Green Forest tribune., 1912-10-04
WOULD HAVE THE WORK
 DONE IN FIVE YEARS
COL. ROOSEVELT TAKES STAND IN FAVOR OF FEDERAL SUP
 REVISION AND AID.
IOB TOO BIG FOR STATES
Governor-Elect Robinson of Arkansas, Also Declares Government Should Render Financial Aid in Complet- ing Work.

Western Newspaper Union News Service
 Memphis.-Resoluti asking the appropriation Of $35,00000O by the federal government for building of levees and the revetment of the banks of the Mississippi river. were adopted by the Interstate Levee Association at its meeting in Memphis. The govern ment is asked to undertake the com pletion of this work within the next five years. The association took this action after considering carefully the various methods proposed for controll- ing the flood waters of the Mississippi and alter reaching the conclusion that the completion of the Ievee sys- tenn, as already begun, offers the best and only protection against recurring floods in the lower river.
 Col Theodore Roosevelt. the Pro gressive nominee for president, in a speech before the convention, declared strongly in favor of the federal gov ernment taking charge of the leyee problem.
 Tt is evident he said, that no one state can so much as make an eff cient beginning in the endeavor to gc2pple with this subject. Each state mere'8 treats the subject from it's own standpoint. Fortunately this mat ter has become of pressing importance at the very tine when the nation has learned by actual experience that it is amply able to undertake the most colossal engineering jobs and has, as in incident thereto, collected the plant with which it can undertake sQther job of the same size.
 "The Panama canal is now nearinS completion and the skill and trained ability and the machinery used in it's construction are available for use within our own borders in developing a proper national control of the wat CTS of the Mississippi basin in their entirety.
 Tt is useless to go into such q project unless we go into it on a broad scale, and the attempts to prevent the breaking Of the levees in the lower part of the river will not alone meet this need. How should we have come cut had we attempted to dig the Pana- ma canal by picemeal, as our levees nave been built? We had to tackle hat job in it's entirety and now it is nearly done.
 These freshets from the sources of the rivers can only be controlled at their sources.
 "The problem of dealing with the Mississippi river is much greater than in merely keeping the water off the lands of any one set of men. It really concerns changing the conditions un- der which half the continent is drain ed and turning our giant internal river system into a gigantic national asset
 "The problem is a national one, not for the state, because what threatens each state with ruin is often not any thing which can be made beneficial to that state. The federal government should harness the waters of the Mis- sissippi river drainage basin. No one state can do even a small part of the work in first class fashion
 Take Louisiana, for instance. AL though the great drainage ditch of the Mississippi flows right through Loui- siana, the drainage of Louisiana her. self does not flow into this ditch, but into the gulf. Louisiana spends mill lions to keep the drainage of other states off her fertile cane and rice and vegetable plantations.
 "She even maintains a great levee line, wholly within the state of Ark ansas as a necessary link in her pro- lection. Yet she has no control over the states where the flood comes from.