The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-05-27

of our country. It comes from 9 diff
 ferent states, and fro man area equal
 to one-third of the. union. The deposits
 range in depth up to 20OO or 5000 feet
 and on the top of it vegetation has grown
 and decayed until 1t is covered with a
 layer of hurnus foot or SO deep, which
 contains a maximum of nitrogen, one oi
 the most costly kinds of plant food. Ac-
 cording to Herman F. Baer, soil chem
 fst of the Illinois university, the soil
 of southern Louisiana has enough plant
 food to produce a thousand crops oi
 corn at 50 bushels the acre without artificial fertilization
 have recently travelled over a great part of this country. Tn coming from Memphis to New Orleans on the Illinois
 Central I passed many plantations of
 rich black loam which are close to the
 swamps and the soil makes the best crops
 of cotton and corn. The Queen and Cres-
 cent railway from Birmingham to New Orleans goes through large area of swamps and there are other extensive regions that will have river and rail transportation when the land Is re- claimed.
 I have also come up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico through the flood of silt flowing out into the ocean
 The water Is as thick as pea soup. The
 ocean is muddy for miles before you reach the mouth of the Mississippi river and little further up the banks of the river are covered with gardens and or ange groves. The highlands of the delta about New Orleans are said to be more thickly populated than Holland or Bel gium, and the swamps when reclaimed l will undoubtedly support vast number of people
 The geographers of the geological sur vey have already made topogra phic maps of a large part of this territory They have gone over 1t section by section, ex- ploring the swamps foot, on horse back and in boats. making their charts The charts are peppered with figures each of which shows the height of land or depth of water under the spot which lit marks. They give every hill and hol- low, and every stream. The bayous are drawn to a scale. and the whole dis trict is so shown that the civil engineers can easily make working plans for its drainage.
 This is being done by the national government. In addition, the states are enacting drainage laws to enable their people to drain the swamps for them selves. Here in Louisiana the land own CTS of any draina ge district can forth an organization and issue bonds to raise funds for levelins, digging ditchns and building pumping plant The plans must be approved by the state engineer and the interest on the bonds 1 is paid by an annual drainage tax which rages from $2 to $3 per acre 1 After the work is completed. the cost of keeping the land drained is, it is said between 50 and 75 cents an acre per annum. The drainage pumps have to be operated something like 25 days of the 1 year. and the land produces so many crops that the tax is said to be non nal
 l There are now something like a5 companies at work draining the swamps not far from New Orleans The projects are of various sizes, and they cover upwards of a half million acres Some of the tracts are devoted to small farms, others to orchards and others to grain. corn and cotton. They are now working on one tract of 16000 acres which is to be given over to ranchine and stock raising. I am told that many | thousands of acres are involved in the plans of the companies at work. and
 that a large part of the money invested 1 is that of the bankers and other capi-
 talists here at New Orleans.
 1 In connection with this subject have had a talk with Waltar Parker the
 general manager of the New Orleans Association of Commerce. He tells nlo that 5000 acres form the most economic unit for drainage, and he estimates that ] it costs about s35 an acre to put in llevees, canals and pumping plants This cannot include the clearing of the land of trees and stumps, which is no small
 matter
 Said MT. Parker: "This region is de-
 veloping rapidly through the object les
 son shown by the success of the drain-
 age works established in the city of
 New Orleans. We find that if we have
 levees of proper height and strength
 around any district we can put in
 pumping plants and lower the water to
 six feet or more below the surface of
 the earth by pumping it into lakes and
 streams that have their outlets in the
 Mexican gulf After that, such tracts
 are in the same position that New Or
 leans is now Before we installed our
 present drainage system, water was
 found within a few inches of the sur
 face anywhere in the city. Now tho
 earth is dry to an excavation of six
 or more feet, and we are beginning to build cellars and basements
 Moreover the swampy tracts thus reclaimed will have wonderful trans portaton facilities South Louisiana
 drains into the gulf through a network of navigable bayous, rivers and lakes and we have made navigation canals to connect this network with the harbor at New Orleans In this way every bit of the new farms has easy access to the city by boat, and from here by river and railroad to all parts of the world ' I asked MT. Parker as to the prices of land. He replied: Swamp land is worth from S5 to Sz5 per acre, and drained lands can be bought for from $100 to $500 an acre It depends very much on the location and the surroundings. This is low in com parison with the lands of Egypt and Holland. In the valley of the Nile farms bring as much as $75o an acre, and in Holland from $500 to $loo0 is paid for good land.
 'In Holland the cost of reclamation Is much greater than here. The dikes there have to hold back the sea, with It's daily tide of 31 feet. I understand that 3S per cent of the cultivated lands of the Dutch kingdom are below the level of the sea at high tide. On the
 basis of the population of the reclaimed
 lands of Europe.s the territory about New Orleans, if it were drained would SUD-
 port population of 100000 to 15,OO0, ,Wv peonle, and on the basis of Holland alone IL would furnish homes and farms for
 more than 100000 souls"