The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1927-05-02
Can the River Be Controlled?


One who knows the river will promptly aver
not aloud but to himself-that ten thousand river
commissions with the minds of the world at their
back, cannot curb it confne it, cannot say to 1T
Go here or Go there and make it obey; cannot
save shore it has sentenced, cannot bar its path
with an obstruction which it will not tear down.
dance and laugh at"
SO Mark Twain of the Mississippi river
more than forty years ago. Few have known the
mighty river as Mark Twain knew it, and time and
again since his Life on the Mississippi" was writ
ten, the river has seemed to make good his words
Yet the people of America do intend in some
manner to control this river
On the continent of Africa is another river of
comparable size-the Nile. 1t carries in the course
of a year volume of water equal to that of the
Mississippi.
Each year it floods vastly greater territory
Yet the Nile remains the great benefactor of that
part of the world not the periodic menace that the
Mississippi is. This is because effort 10 made to
control it. Its floods sweep the Egyptian deltas
enrich the soil and subside. II is the this
year as last and the same centuries ago
The people adapt themselves to its ways and
the river is not problem.
On this continent we live differently IN a short
century and half we have gone so far towards
serves to tame it's own waters. We have hard sur.
faced roads and Streets concrete cutters and sewers
carrying the rainfall into the rivers, where once
we're swamps and marshes that held the rain for
time and gave it up gradully We have engineers
draining lakes in far Minnesota to make farms and
home sites-and turning the water of these lakes
into channels that carry it eventually to the Gulf
of Mexico, perhaps drowning levee workers in Green
vile, Mississippi New Orleans on the way.
The things have done are wonderful in their
way, but annual disaster is the result disaster that
grows greater as the process of American cviliza-
ton proceeds
Now We confronted with the task of pre-
venting the disasters We would do it without
abandoning the cities towns and rural developments
that help to cause them. We would do it without
becoming another Egypt nor yet revertng to alb
original America.
1t is a national problem, not a problem merely
of that section hard hit by the consequences
The Mississippi valley, with its tributaries, EN-.
braces nearly half of the United States and the
necessity of flood control is not limited to this valley
You never heard Of the Mouse river perhaps but
that little stream can and does a million dollars
worth of damage in of North Dakota,
year or so. You never heard of the Boggy
river, but it's violent and excessive overfows are
the Mud river, but it floods thirty or forty thousand
acres of fertile Kentucky land each year. thick
book would be needed merely tosst the rivers which
enjoy seasonal rampages at the expense of thrifty
American communities
How to control the rivers is not a settled ques-
ton. Some engineers along the Mississippi say
higher and higher levees; some say spllways, some
say reservoirs to hold the upper waters in check,
some say reforestration Most say little of all
these ways
The belief, however, grows that control there
can be.
Not only that but the vast volume of water car
ried by the rivers can be turned to almost entirely
benefcent purposes-irrigaton, instance, and
transportation, that enough water could be with
drawn near river sources in flood time and then
released in the dry months to provide navigable
depth all the year round in streams little used
That the very water which now destroys wealth
fcoud be made to create wealth by irrigation in arid
areas near the various headwaters
1t is a problem worthy OF American genius. 1t
is job that should be undertaken.
The Memphis Press Scimitar, demanding
tional attention the task of protecting the South
has nominated Herbert Hoover for the job. 1t be-
lieves it offers him opportunity to greater thing
than Goethals did when he cut the canal across
Panama Hoover may be the At the moment
he is engaged in the sort of work that first made him
internationally famous-relief work. He is seek
ing to save all that can be saved from the present
catastrophe Doubtless he would not shrink from
the greater job if it is offered him.
Meantime the couDtry-even while it gives with
both hands to aid the stricken people of the South
must begin thinking in national terms of this flood
problem That the best brains of the nation should
be put to work on it cannot be argued.
ri