conflict and confusion is that no one is in possession of the facts.

The Mississippi River Commission, in its absolute faith in the traditional doctrine of "levees only," has held that, except for working out conditions relating to levees and bank revetment, it had all the facts necessary, and has discouraged the thorough, patient and widespread work which must be the basis for any adequate and economical plan. Its members have stated repeatedly and unequivocally that there is no material uncertainty about the cost of complete and final protection. It has discouraged thorough investigation by its statement to the effect that the work was rapidly approaching final completion. Yet today it is unquestionably true that never in the history of the Mississippi River Commission have its estimates of the cost of completing its work been more than 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the true cost. That tragic result of rule-of-thumb engineering would have been unnecessary if the methods of modern engineering analysis had been in control.

A THOROUGH STUDY OF THE
PROBLEM NEEDED

What should be done?

First, we should know the facts. Second, we should have a scientific analysis and interpretation of them. And, third, after a comparison of all possible methods and combinations, a comprehensive plan should be adopted.

An emergency is to be met, and first of all we should know what is necessary to bring the river back to its past stage of control. Already much of this work is being done.

With the immediate emergency cared for, the necessary time should be taken and expense incurred to make a study of all phases of the river problem, and to prepare plans for permanent control. Such a study probably would take ten

years or more, though much effective work will be possible during that time.

USE FOR A HYDRAULIC LABORATORY

We must understand the behavior of the river. To this end a part of the necessary studies can be made best on the river itself, and part in a hydraulic laboratory. The establishment and maintenance of such a laboratory would help greatly to solve many perplexing problems of river control. It is possible on a small scale to discover many of the laws and characteristics of water flowing on a large scale. Some of the finest hydraulic design ever worked out under the writer's direction was developed by that method.

Along with the hydraulic laboratory there should be a far more thorough and intimate study of the river than has ever been made. At what velocities does it deposit silt? At just what velocities and under just what condition does it cave its banks? To what extent does the whole river bottom move during high water? What would be the effects of outlets and spillways? What conditions are necessary to prevent a shallowing of the channel?

We need to know more about the origins and possibilities of floods. How much has each tributary contributed in the several floods? (Far too little is known on this point.) What is the probable maximum flood on each tributary in 10, 25, 50, 100 and 500 years? What is the probability of coincidence of floods on various tributaries? How would such coincidence affect floods on the main river? What is the effect of levees on these lower tributaries in forcing the water into the main river?

A STUDY OF VARIOUS METHODS NEEDED

We need to know about the feasi bility and value of every possible

method of flood control on the Mississippi, and of every possibility of combination of different methods. It might seem on first thought that this would mean an endless job of comparing an infinite number of possible combinations, and that no final and conclusive best ever could be reached.

This is not the case. Such an analysis can proceed from the smaller components to the greater, with the orderly, methodical elimination of the less desirable methods, so that the problem moves surely and steadily to the one best solution, which probably will be a combination of many methods. So far as the writer is aware, the first clear statement of such a process of large scale definitive engineering analysis is given in the technical reports of the Miami Conservancy District.1

There must be a study of the possibility of diversions and outlets from the main river and from its tributaries, of reservoir control, and of spillways, as well as of control by levees and revetments. There has been much heated argument for and against these alternative methods, but no adequate study of them. There must be a study of the greatest possible combination of flood which it is wise to protect against, and of the methods and devices for limiting damage in case that maximum is exceeded.

For 50 years the public has been made to believe that the Mississippi problem lay in a choice between levees and other methods. Such is not the case. A final correct design without doubt will be a combination of several methods, each used in the places and to the extent that is most effective.

There should be a study of the re

"Hydraulics of the Miami Flood Control Project." Technical Reports, Part VII, Chapter XII. Published by the Miami Conservancy District, Dayton, Ohio.

sponsibility for flood damage, to determine whether and to what extent any habits of the northern states have increased flood damage below. The writer is of the opinion, from the most careful study available, that the case of the Lower Mississippi against the north in this respect is almost absolutely unsupported by any evidence. If there is such evidence it should be discovered and carefully weighed.

Unless the Lower Mississippi is to become permanently a pauper region to be cared for by the National Government, there should be a study of the equitable distribution of the cost of protection.

NEED FOR A REVIEW OF THE LEGAL NECESSITIES

The legal necessities of the whole situation should be reviewed. The writer believes that an amendment to our National Constitution may be necessary to give the National Government the power to do work wherever it is most necessary and to assess the cost in an equitable manner. We are now living under a hypocritical fiction. Improvement of navigation, being under federal control, is made the excuse for flood control. By gradual accumulation of precedent we are, in fact, amending the Federal Constitution, but in such a partial and inefficient manner that the Federal Government is acquiring obligation for flood control without the necessary powers for its proper execution. To try to solve the problem of the Mississippi without improved legal machinery will result in distortion and monstrosity. The legal structure of flood control should be as well built and as comprehensive as the engineering design.

Such are some of the types of information that should be collected, and of preparation to be made. Perhaps ten years will be required under good ad

ministration to accomplish those purposes.

Given the information, the task remains of synthesizing a comprehensive program. During the whole period of preparation this synthesis would be made tentatively again and again to throw light on the process of gathering information. When a general plan is finally adopted by this method it will have the respect and confidence of the engineering profession and of the nation, and there will not be the conflict of opinion among representative engineers that now characterizes a discussion of the Mississippi problem.

A HASTY SURVEY IS INADEQUATE The hasty survey now being made by the War Department, in an effort to make up for half a century of unfounded assurance, cannot accomplish in a year or two what is necessary for the preparation of an adequate plan. To present a plan to the present Congress that would, in fact, commit the nation to a far-reaching policy for the Mississippi, would be a great national disservice.

The more courageous and honorable attitude would be to face the issue and to inform the American public of the true facts. It is not impossible that, by the premature adoption of a policy for the Mississippi, the country may be led to the wasting of hundreds of millions of dollars, to find itself 20 or 30 years from now faced with another tragedy, and still lacking the fundamental information on which an adequate plan can be based.

No similar problem of similar size ever has been mastered by men. The issues transcend rule-of-thumb methods. Only a thorough analysis into fundamental elements, with a new and creative synthesis, is adequate. Just as the architect of the skyscraper had to escape from the stone mason, and as the railroad creator had to escape from the horse and wagon, in order to fulfil their destinies, so the engineers who conquer the Mississippi must be able to see over the tops of the levees and to think and to design as scientists. They must stoop to the study of minutest elements, and must reach to a mastery of the whole. That attitude has yet to be in evidence.

THE

HE first need of life on this planet is water. A man can live nearly as many weeks without food as he can live days without water. Moreover, it is the supply of water, and not the area of land, which will limit the number of people who can live in the United States. We have land enough for vastly greater crops and hence for a vastly greater population than we have water enough to sustain or produce.

Running water in rivers and source streams, therefore, is the most important of all natural resources, more important in certain ways even than the forest, and that is a large admission for a forester. Twenty years ago the studies of McGee showed for the first time the real position of water in the economy of the Nation.

Not only food supply, but the supply of clothing and the supply of wood are dependent upon the presence of water in sufficient quantity for vegetable growth. Water, moreover, is a cheap carrier of bulky goods, a source of vast and perpetual mechanical power, a carrier away of noxious wastes, and a giver of health, vigor, and delight through recreation.

At the same time water uncontrolled may become a destroying agent of the first rank. The greatest natural calamity in the history of the United States is the recent Mississippi flood. That such calamities are confined to no one river system is proved by the still more recent disaster in northern New Engand.

Soil conservation is largely water Conservation. The prevention of ero

sion is a question of handling water, while the getting or foregoing of new acreage through swamp drainage likewise depends upon the handling of our water supply.

In dealing with water, the law gives the public a freer hand than in dealing with other natural resources. Land, for example, may be owned absolutely in fee simple. But running water in its nature is a fugitive thing, and it is not subject like land to absolute private ownership.

You may use the stream which runs by your door, but it is not your stream. Others have rights in it also. The law, consequently, gives the state large powers over it, much larger than any powers the state has over land.

As to water, the public right is dominant, the private right subservient. Moreover, wherever its use affects navigation, albeit indirectly, the authority of the Federal Government is supreme.

We have made but a poor use of these large public powers over water. Our dealings with our rivers have been haphazard, uncoördinated, wasteful, political. It is well to remember that famous river in Texas where it was proposed to spend the money of the Nation not only to dig a navigable channel, but to build pumps enough to put water in the channel when dug.

Our dealing with water has been the result of viewpoints and habits acquired when we had abundant water supply for a sparse population in a humid climate. These habits, legal and otherwise, were found to be un

suited to the same sparse population in an arid climate. We were obliged to adopt legal principles outside the English common law to meet physical conditions outside the experience out of which that common law had sprung. Eventually we shall have to consider how far the common law principles have become unsuited to a dense population even in a humid climate, but that time is not yet.

Nation, state, municipality, corporation, and individual citizen have each Idealt with water here and there from time to time as need arose without comprehensiveness of view, consistency of purpose, unity of method, or coordination of effort. The times are ripe for a change in policy.

Two decades have passed since Roosevelt's Inland Waterways Commission, in a sane and courageous report, summoned all men of intelligence and vision to unite behind a wise and foresighted policy for the control and development of our river systems. Such a policy, to take the place of the selfish, scrambled, local policies which have hitherto stood in the way of the comprehensive and effective development of our rivers, must be built upon principles or considerations such as the following:

WATER CONSERVATION PRINCIPLES

Every stream and every river system is a unit from its source to its mouth, and common principles and one general policy should control in all uses of it and dealings with it throughout its whole extent.

The common plan and policy should take carefully into account all of the different ways in which water can be made to serve mankind, such as domestic water supply, industrial processing, sewage and waste disposal, irrigation, draining, power, navigation, and recreation.

When any of these uses are mutually exclusive, preference must always be given to the higher use over the lower. usually in the order of domestic supply. waste disposal, irrigation, power, and navigation.

All uses of the water and benefits to be derived from its control should be kept carefully in view. One of the greatest dangers to wise and effective stream development is that undu emphasis on local or temporary advantages will make forever impossible the complete utilization of the resources of the stream.

The authority and undertakings of Nation, states, municipalities and individuals should be pooled to attain a common object and execute the several parts of a common program.

In executing such a common program it is of the first importance that all existing National, state, and municipal public rights of control and public property rights shall be maintained unimpaired.

In establishing control of any stream or any river system for flood prevention or any other purpose, every useful and available means of establishing such control, including levees, spillways, soil conservation, forest conservation. storage reservoirs, and any others. should be considered and made use of to the fullest practicable extent.

In all projects for stream control, the feasibility of securing repayment, in whole or in part, of the expense of such control from the development of electrical power through storage and other reservoirs, and from assessment of resource values directly created by such reservoirs, should be fully considered and put to use when available.

The execution of the new policy and plans under it should be taken wholly out of politics and put beyond the hazards of annual appropriations.

The allotment of costs between the