approximately $2,000,000 in order that these people might have the chance to go in there and develop these lands and to continue their operation?

Mr. DRIVER. Yes; in which the holders of those securities very gladly joined in an effort to work out that salvation.

Mr. ZIMMERMANN. And that that condition had been brought about largely by the flood conditions in the St. Francis Basin? Mr. DRIVER. Entirely.

Mr. ZIMMERMANN. I will ask you if it is not a fact that in Clay County-and you are familiar with Levee District No. 7, which started near St. Francis, Ark., and continued south on the Missouri side that levee was built according to the Government grade and section, and it has held and fully protected the people through every succeeding flood from that time?

Mr. DRIVER. And your levee district immediately to the south of it was shot to pieces.

Mr. ZIMMERMANN. And your levee on the other side was also shot to pieces?

Mr. DRIVER. Yes; that is true.

I can give you another instance here. Mr. Pfeiffer appeared before your committee this week, and he is a splendid citizen, who has developed some valuable lands across the river, in Clay County, the chairman of the board of commissioners of three districts, that constructed a levee down in front of the levee you mentioned on the Arkansas side, and the R. F. C. a few days ago expressed its willingness to lend to those three districts the money with which to adjust their securities, but based on protection from the floods or they would not put a dollar in there.

In other words, if we had a bill from the Congress authorizing the engineers to put on these flood works, that district and its securityholders are ready to adjust that matter. But, without such a bill, the people that they want to pay that money to will be without their money, and the abandonment of those lands will mean they will never get a dollar of it back.

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, for the patience with which you have listened to this presentation.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. There are three of my colleagues here, and we have 350 miles, or one-fourth of all of the levees in the lower Mississippi River, and I would be glad for them to make their statements. The CHAIRMAN. They will be heard.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Do you desire to go on now?

The CHAIRMAN. I think that we will go on now.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. There are Mr. Doxey, Mr. McGehee, and Mr. Ford here.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Ford, I believe that you said that you had an emergency call.

STATEMENT OF HON. A. L. FORD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Mr. FORD. I had an engagement, Mr. Chairman; it was not an emergency.

The CHAIRMAN. We will hear you.

Mr. FORD. If it is convenient, I can come back some other time. The CHAIRMAN. There is nothing before the House that requires our being there just now, so you may proceed.

Mr. FORD. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I thank you for this opportunity to make a brief statement and disclose the interest of the people in the district that I represent in this matter.

I have not had an opportunity to study the whole plan, and, of course, if I had had such an opportunity, the plan is of such magnitude that I would not be in position to express an opinion perhaps as to the whole plan.

I want to direct my thoughts to the Yalobusha and the Schooner Rivers, that affect the people of my district. I am advised by the engineers that the plans proposed are for a reservoir on the Yalobusha, in Grenada County, at or near the town of Holcomb, Miss., with an elevation of about 195 feet, which will embrace 29,200 acres in Grenada and Yalobusha Counties.

I cannot speak for the people in Yalobusha County, because that happens to be in the district of my colleague, Mr. Doxey.

I am also advised that they plan to construct a reservoir in Grenada County, that will give an elevation of 239 feet, which will embrace lands in Grenada and Carroll Counties, over an area of approximately 25,500 acres.

I am also advised that it is planned to construct a reservoir in Calhoun County, on the Skuna River, which will embrace lands in Yalobusha and Calhoun Counties, over an area of approximately 12,600 acres, with an elevation of the water surface of 244 feet.

My purpose in appearing here is to express the sentiment of the people living along these tributaries, and their sentiment is, of course, that they will be putting up the entire area for this flood on the Yalobusha River there. In other words, as it stands now, they are not affected by the high water, by the backwaters, except when we have unusual rainfall.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you point out which is the Yalobusha on the map?

Mr. FORD. The Yalobusha is right here [indicating]. It runs very close to Holcomb, Miss., and down through Grenada, Miss. It rises in Calhoun County, and comes down through Calhoun and Grenada Counties, and comes down here into this section here [indicating] and, of course, I refer to the Yalobusha River and then to the Skuna River, that rises up in Calhoun County and comes down through Calhoun and makes its way across Yalobusha County and then into the Yalobusha River.

Those people, as they have expressed their sentiments to me, are very much opposed to these reservoirs as proposed in this plan. They think that the proper way to drain the country and to take care of the flood waters up there is by levees, and in doing so they will not have to give up so much acreage in these counties, where they are not suffering from these flood waters.

With the permission of the chairman, I asked Mr. Ferguson, when he was on the stand the other day, if that theory had been investigated from an engineering standpoint, and he told me that it had and there was no difference insofar as protection is concerned, whether through reservoirs or levees, and there was some difference in the price, and he said that he would furnish the figures to the

committee. I am advised by the clerk that he has not yet done so, so I do not have the figures and do not know what the difference in cost would be.

I dislike to come into a committee and oppose any plan that will help a large number of people that are suffering from these backwaters. I have no criticism to offer of the plan except to say that these people in the immediate area where these reservoirs will be located in Grenada and Calhoun and Yalobusha Counties will be deprived of that property up there, and, according to the statement and plan of the engineer, they will be paid one and a half times the assessed value.

Well, now, a great many of you are familiar with the values of lands and the manner in which they are assessed in the various counties in the States that you come from, and you know that that frequently would not be the fair value of the lands, and if those people have to give up their property there, for the protection of the people down below them in the flooded area, for the chief benefit of the people down below them, certainly some plan should be worked out by the committee and the Congress to provide reasonable compensation in payment for those lands.

That may be the intention of the committee, and of the Congress if they pass this legislation, but I want to call your attention to the fact that if those people are forced to go into condemnation proceedings, they will be forced to take their cases to the Federal courts, and they will have to leave their immediate vicinity and go some distance to the Federal courts, which usually requires them to hire some of the best trained lawyers of the country, at pretty high prices, and then they will probably have to prosecute appeals to the circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, for that district, and they might have to bring those cases all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, and you know that these people, with these small properties, would be entirely unable to prosecute their demands against the Government for reasonable compensation for their property, and I think that that is something we should give serious consideration to before we pass legislation here that will deprive these people of their property down there.

I know that it is not the intention of any member of the committee to do that, but I think that we should work out some plan here, whereby we may know that they will be reasonably compensated before we pass legislation that will take their property from them.

I appreciate the fact that something has to be done, because the people down in the lower valley in Mississippi, and on the Mississippi down below where these streams run down, have suffered almost yearly from high floods, but I do think that we could work out some plan, as testified to by the engineers, to construct levees all the way down these streams that would properly protect the people down in the lower Mississippi Valley and would not take so much property from the people up there where the reservoirs will be constructed, and would divide the burden equally, and these other regions that are really in the flood danger zone and that will really get the benefits from it should put up a little property as well as those people up there where the reservoirs will be constructed.

There is another thing that I want to call your attention to, that it might provide employment for a large number of people up in

that section if we should construct these reservoirs, but it has been my observation that whenever the Government undertook to construct anything, they import the people from far-off sections and bring their own labor down there, and so very little employment is given to the local people.

That is why I appear here before this committee, to express the sentiment of the people down in this immediate section. I cannot speak for all of them, but I do speak for a large number of them who have written and wired me about this proposition.

The CHAIRMAN. You speak of reservoirs on the Yalobusha. Do you oppose the construction of those reservoirs?

Mr. FORD. The people in that section oppose them for the reason that they think that the levee method of taking care of the situation on the Yalobusha is far better than the system of reservoirs or spillways as proposed or planned in this report.

The CHAIRMAN. I understood your statement to be that the territory immediately where the reservoirs are located has not been subject to floods. Is that true?

Mr. FORD. Not except when there was an unprecedented rainfall. In some seasons of the year there might be a regular waterspout, and they would have just a temporary flood there, but it did not cause very serious damage in the past.

The CHAIRMAN. But there would be a local benefit from the reservoir?

Mr. FORD. Would there be a local benefit?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; to the territory adjacent to the reservoir. Mr. FORD. Mr. Chairman, there would be some small benefit, but no appreciable benefit.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Is my colleague aware of the fact that in the execution of the flood-control project along the lower Mississippi River and elsewhere, so far as the Corps of Engineers is concerned, only local labor is employed, except where skilled labor is required? For instance, along the Mississippi River in Mississippi, the labor must be taken from the counties adjoining the Mississippi River.

Mr. FORD. Mr. Whittington, that might be true in your section, but it has been my observation that whenever they wanted to employ people outside of your district, they could always do so by saying that the people in your district are not skilled.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. There are a great many common laborers employed in levee and dam construction, and I will say to my colleague that they must be employed from lists furnished by our State bureau of employment, from the territories adjacent to where the works are being constructed, and that the same agency that does that work on the Mississippi River is provided to do the work on the tributaries, on the Yazoo, the Skuna, and the Yalobusha Rivers.

Also, let me remind you again that the measure of damages, both on the St. Francis project and in the Yazoo-Tallahatchie-Coldwater project, is not one and a half times the amount of the assessment. It is contemplated that those reservoirs would be used every year and that the ordinary measure of damages would obtain, both in the St. Francis and in the Yazoo districts, if constructed. This proposition of a suggested one and a half times the assessed value is con

fined to the so-called "Eudora " and other floodways along the Mississippi River.

Mr. FORD. Then, what measure has been provided for?

Mr. WHITTINGTON. The same measure that obtains with respect to any other improvement that might be made where dams or reservoirs are used.

Mr. FORD. What is that?

Mr. WHITTINGTON. The value of the land, if taken, or the value of the flowage rights, including all damages to the land.

Mr. FORD. If I understand the proposition, our Supreme Court has never passed upon the proposition definitely, except in an injunction proceeding that originated down in Monroe, La., known as the "King case."

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Do you mean the United States Supreme Court?

Mr. FORD. The United States Supreme Court.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. That case did not involve reservoir construction.

Mr. FORD. It involved flowage rights.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Yes, sir; through the Boeuf Basin.

The CHAIRMAN. And there was no question as to how much should be paid?

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Oh, no. On the Mississippi River the only thing that occurs to me is in the Bonnet Carre Spillway, and in that case they acquired the lands in fee.

Mr. FORD. If there should be a disagreement between the appraisers sent there by the Government and these property owners, the only method they have got is through condemnation proceedings in court, instituted by the Government, and my colleague knows what that would mean to those people with small means in these sections, to have to go to the Federal courts to prosecute their case.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. I can appreciate that that is not only the case with reservoirs in Mississippi but with reservoirs elsewhere, reservoirs for flood control and for power development.

At all events, the measure of damages would be determined by the Mississippi laws.

Now, you spoke a few minutes ago, Mr. Ford, about elevations. Do you mean the mean Gulf elevation?

Mr. FORD. Yes.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. You do not mean the height of the reservoirs? Mr. FORD. I take it from the statement of the engineer that he means the water surface of the reservoir.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. That is right; and I suggest that that means. the mean Gulf elevation. For instance, it is one hundred and twenty and-some-odd in the Delta, but when you get up in the hills it is up to 200.

Mr. FORD. I understand that.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. For the benefit of the record, the so-called "Grenada Reservoir ", at its maximum height, would be 83 feet, as shown by the report, Document 192. The Holcomb Reservoir would be 6912 feet, and the Skuna or Coffeeville Reservoir, which is smaller than any other reservoir that has been suggested in these hearings, except Arkabutler.