The Forrest City times., 1912-10-04
cot. ROOSEVELT TAKES STAND IN FAVOR OF FEDERAL SUP
 REVISION AND AID.
JOB TOO BIG FOR STATES
Governor-EIect Robinson of Arkansas, Also Declares Government Should Render Financial Aid in Complet- ing Work.

Western Newspaper Union News Service. Memphis s-Resolutions asking the appropriation of $35,000, 900 by the federal government for building of levees and the reyetment of the banks of the Mississippi river, were adopted by the Interstate Levee Association at it's 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 after reaching the conclusion that the completion of the levee 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 speech before the convention, declared strongly in favor of the federal gov ernment taking charge of the levee problem.
 Tt is evident he said, that no one state can so much as make an eff cient beginning in the endeavor to grapple with this subject Each state merely treats the subject from it's own standpoint. Fortunately this mat. ter has 'become of pressing importance at the very time when the nation has learned by actual experience that it is nt 1f,1 11 to T f.lr colossal engineering jobs and has. as in incident thereto, collected the plant with which it can undertake another job of the same size.
 'The Panama canal is now nearing 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 project unless we go into it on a broad scale, and the attempts to prevent the breaking of the leyees in the lower part of the river will not alone meet this need. How should we have come out had we attempted 10 dig the Pana- ma canal by picemeal, as our levees have been built? We had to tackle that 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 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 Lou- 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 ner fertile cane and rice and ypgetahla nlantations
 she even maintains great levee line. wholly within the state of Ark lnsas as necessary link in her pro- ection. Yet she mas no control over he states where the Hoo comes from