CHAPTER XXXIIPrevious Great Floods and Tornadoes
THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR—THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY—THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE—DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE—THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO.
Floods are not usually so dramatic and awe-inspiring as tornadoes, but they are even more destructive of life. The Johnstown flood of 1889, however, was dramatic and even spectacular—so swiftly did it come and so certainly could it have been avoided. It destroyed 2,235 lives, swept away ten millions of dollars worth of property, and carried unutterable grief into countless happy homes.
Lying in a narrow valley were eight villages, aggregating 50,000 to 80,000 inhabitants, the largest of the eight being situated at the lower end, with about 25,000 inhabitants.
Far up in the mountain, 300 feet above the chief village of the valley, hung a huge body of water. As nature had designed it, this had been a small lake with natural outlets, which prevented it from being a menace to the valley below. But the hand of man sought to improve the work of nature. An immense dam, 110 feet in height, held back the water till the lake was more than quadrupled in size.
THE SWOLLEN WATERS
These were the conditions on May 31, 1889. There had been heavy rains for several days. The artificially enlarged lake was really a receiving reservoir of the water-shed of the Alleghany Mountains. Every little stream running into it was swollen to a torrent. The lake, which in ordinary times was three and a half miles long, with an average width of over a mile, and a depth in some portions of 100 feet, was swollen into a volume of water of enormous proportions. Between it and the valley below there was a dam nearly 1,000 feet wide, 100 feet high, ninety feet thick at the base and twenty at the top. This barrier gave way and the water rushed into the valley in a solid wave with a perpendicular front of forty feet.
It swept away the seven smaller villages like straw, hurled them, together with uncounted thousands of their inhabitants, upon the larger village, and then, with the accumulated ruin of the whole eight, dashed upon the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley. The bridge withstood the shock, and a new dam, as fateful with horror as the first had been, was formed. It held back the water so that the whole valley was a lake from twenty to forty feet in depth, with the remains of its villages beneath its surface. The wreckage of the ruined villages, piled from forty to sixty feet high, against the bridge, spread over a vast area, with countless bodies of the living and the dead crushed within it and struggling for life upon it, caught fire, and burned to the water's edge.
When the flood came—a terrific punishment for the carelessness of the past—the doubters saw their homes washedaway, their dear ones drowned; in some cases they did not even live to see the extent of the havoc wrought. Whole families were drowned like rats; houses were shattered to pieces or floated about on the water like wrecked ships.
Intolerable was the suffering that followed—grief for the loss of dear ones, actual physical hurt, hunger and want. The problem for many in the eight towns was to begin life all over—and that without hope. Immediate suffering was in some measure prevented by the speedy help rendered by neighboring towns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the entire nation. But nothing could undo the fearful damage of the past.
THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY
Great as was the Johnstown flood, it shrinks into insignificance before the appalling hurricane-brought flood of Galveston, which devastated the city and swept thousands of its inhabitants to their death. There is little in the new city which arose to remind one of the awful tragedy—unless it be the strong sea-walls constructed to keep out future floods.
The storm came over the bay from the gulf before daylight Saturday morning, September 8, 1900. At 10A. M.the inundation from the bay began, but even then no alarm was felt. The wind took on new strength and the waters were carried four blocks through the business section into Market Street. Ocean freighters dragged anchors in the channel and were soon crashing against the wharves. The wind reached the hurricane stage, blowing at something like one hundred and twenty miles an hour, and buildingsbegan to crumble. By this time the bay water had reached a high point on Tremont Street. The gulf, however, was quiet.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The wind suddenly shifted from the north to the southeast, the hurricane increased in fury, and, picking up the waters of the gulf, hurled them with crushing force against the four miles of residences stretched along the beach. There was nothing in the way of protection, and houses were knocked over like so many toy structures.
By three o'clock the gulf had spread over the city and mingled in the streets with the waters of the bay. The violence of the wind continued. Higher and higher rose the water. Buildings began to collapse. Shrieks of agony were heard. One family of five took refuge in four different houses, abandoning each in turn just in time to save themselves. Hundreds, struck by the flying wreckage, fell unconscious in the water.
SCENES OF HORROR
When night settled down over the city the whole bay side was in process of destruction. Wreckage was thrown with the force of a catapult against houses which still offered resistance. Electric light and gas plants were flooded and the city was in darkness.
In the cemeteries the dead of years were washed from their graves and carried across to the mainland. A tramp steamer was carried over to Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through three bridges. The steamers "Alamo" and "Red Cross" were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and when the wavesretreated were left high and dry upon the sand. Yachts and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars loaded and empty were carried into the bay, and miles of track torn up and washed away.
THE RECEDING WATERS
Between ten and eleven the wind fell and the water began to recede, almost as rapidly as it had come. Before daylight the streets were clear of water, but covered with slime and choked with wreckage. It was not necessary to go to the beach to find the dead. They lay thick along the streets.
A Committee of Public Safety was organized, and all men, white and black, were asked to assist in the removal of the dead. The superstitious negroes refused, but were finally compelled at the muzzle of guns to gather in the bodies. It was suggested that the burials be made at sea. Society men, clubmen, millionaires, longshoremen and negroes took up the work, loading the bodies on drays and conveying them to barges. The dreadful procession lasted all of Sunday and Monday. Three barge loads of dead were taken out to sea and given back to the waves. The weights, however, were not properly attached, and soon the corpses were back in the surf, washing on the beach.
After the storm the weather turned milder. By Monday the city reeked with the smell of a charnel house and pestilence was in the air. The bodies of dead animals lay in the streets; the waters of the bay and gulf were thick with the dead.All the disinfectants in the city were quickly consumed. An earnest appeal for more was sent to Houston and other places. Tuesday a general cremation of the dead began. Trenches were dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in, covered with more wood, saturated with oil, and set on fire. Later, bodies were collected and placed in piles of wreckage, and the whole then given to the flames. Men engaged in this horrible task frequently found relatives and friends among the dead. The men wore camphor bags under their noses, but frequently became so nauseated that they were forced to stop work. The fire purified the air, however, and disinfectants began to come in in answer to the appeal. The streets were covered with a solution of lime, and carbolic acid was showered everywhere.
GALVESTON NOT THE ONLY SUFFERER
And not only Galveston was a sufferer in this storm. For fifty miles along the coast, on both sides of the city, the storm found victims. The waters of the sea were carried inland ten miles all along the coast. The total loss of life in Galveston and near-by places amounted to 9,000; the property damage to $30,000,000.
THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE
"The Mississippi River in flood," says a recent writer, "takes everything with it. To watch the endless procession which the swift current carries by is to see all the properties of tragedies. The Mississippi in flood is the despoiler of homes. Houses come floating down the stream, outbuildings, furniture andmyriads of smaller things, tossed by waves in the 'runs' or sailing on serenely in the broader stretches. Great trees go by. They are evidence that the Mississippi has asserted its majesty somewhere and has cut a new channel to please itself, eating away bank, growth, and all. Carcasses of cows and horses and dogs float down the stream, carrying a pair of buzzards, those scavengers who have so much work to do after the floods have receded. It is a terrible and a melancholy sight."
THE FLOOD OF 1912
In April and May, 1912, the Mississippi reached a height never before equaled, and the great river went tearing through levee after levee on its resolute course to the sea. The river reached a maximum width of sixty miles, killed 1,000 persons, rendered 30,000 homeless, and caused damage to the amount of $50,000,000.
By April 2d, Columbus, Missouri, was buried under fifteen feet of water, and in some parts of the town residences were wholly submerged. New Madrid was not much better off, and Hickman, Kentucky, looked like a small city of Venice. President Taft sent a hurry call to Congress for half a million dollars, and within fifteen minutes after his message was read, the lower house had passed an appropriation bill and sent it to the Senate, which laid everything else aside to give it right of way. By April 5th, the Reelfoot Lake district, covering 150 square miles of Kentucky farm land, was an inland lake and the river at Cairo, Illinois, had risen to nearly fifty-four feet, the average depth from St. Louis to New Orleans beingordinarily but nine feet. Cairo was for days surrounded by the torrents from the Ohio and the Mississippi beating at the levees, while to the north of the city factory buildings were immersed to their roofs or even entirely covered. By April 7th, the levee in Arkansas, seven miles south of Memphis, had a gap a mile long and Lake County, Tennessee, had no ground above water but a strip six miles long by four wide. By the middle of the month, the levees at Panther Forest, Arkansas; Alsatia, Louisiana; and Roosevelt, Louisiana, had succumbed, and a thousand square miles of fertile plantations were from five to seven feet under water.
FARMS AND PLANTATIONS SUBMERGED
Rain-storm after rain-storm caused the stream to swell, undermined dikes, and broke new crevasses all the way from Vicksburg to New Orleans. Hundred of farmers and their families, a majority of them negroes, were cut off and overwhelmed by the flood. For several weeks the people of New Orleans were under the fear that a large part of the city might be submerged and ruined. Near by vast sugar plantations were under water, while the prosperous town of Moreauville was inundated. Refugees' camps were established and relief work began. Many vessels assisted the army. Pitiful stories of famished and suffering victims of the flood were told, and the miles and miles of desolated country struck horror to the heart. They have a pregnant saying down there: "Come hell and high water." Some day, it is to be hoped, we are going to take the force out of that expression.
DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE
Disaster by tornado is not so easy to avoid as disaster by flood. One of the most destructive storms of recent years was that which swept over Louisville, Kentucky, in the evening of March 27, 1890, killing 113 persons, injuring 200, and destroying property to the amount of $2,500,000. The storm came from the southwest and cut a path through the heart of the city three miles long and nearly a half mile wide. Nearly every building in its course was leveled to the ground or otherwise damaged. Outlying towns were also devastated by the storm, and flood calamities occurred simultaneously along the Mississippi.
About eight o'clock the storm was raging with tremendous force. The rain fell in sheets, the lightning was constant and vivid, the wind blew ominously. The streets were soon miniature rivers, and telegraph and telephone poles began to snap. By 8.30 there was alarm all over the city, but before any measure of safety could be adopted the body of the mighty tempest dashed itself on the houses along Fifteenth Street and tore itself diagonally across the city, leaping the river at Front Street to Jeffersonville.
The passage across the city was not continuous and in uniform direction, but the storm lifted itself up, fell with furious force on a block, then rolled over into adjacent blocks, when it rested a moment, then dashed furiously up and forward again, launching to the right and left with demoniacal whimsicality.
Everything it touched suffered. Church steeples fell,crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business houses—the annihilated work of years. On the river the storm found full sway. The tawny water of the swollen Ohio became a lake of seething foam. Steamboat after steamboat was driven from its moorings and tossed like a drop of spray in the boiling stream.
CITIZENS MADDENED WITH GRIEF
Almost immediately after the storm had passed thousands crowded into the distressed district; maddened men and women fought and struggled through the debris trying to find some loved relative or friend. From every side arose the groans of the wounded and dying. About the Falls City Hotel groups thronged waiting for news.
Fires burning in several places added to the horror, though no great damage was done by these. Crushed and blackened ruins marked the spot of the Union Depot, which collapsed during the storm, crushing a train which was just ready to depart. Every building, tree and telegraph pole in the district struck was leveled, and almost all the railroads entering the city were obliged to suspend all passenger and freight traffic.
RESCUE, RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION
The work of rescuing the mangled dead was bravely carried on the following day and before many hours the American genius for organization, order and action had met the demands of the overwhelming disaster. While the dead were still lying awaiting burial, plans were made to rebuild and resume again the work of life.
The local police and militia kept order. The city authorities and board of trade organized relief corps. The brave spirit of self-reliance triumphed over the appalling calamity. Money for relief was sent to the city from many sources, and it is interesting to note that the citizens of Johnstown, who had suffered from the great catastrophe of the previous year, were among the first to offer help. They knew what desolation meant.
THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO
A far more terrible story of death and destruction is that of the St. Louis tornado of May 27, 1896, which lasted but half an hour, killed 306 persons and destroyed property to the amount of $12,000,000.
The same tornado visited many places in Missouri and Illinois, causing an additional property loss of $1,000,000.
The sky grew black at 4P. M., the sun was eclipsed in the whirl of driving dust and dirt, mingled with the branches and leaves of trees, the boards of buildings and other loose material torn off by the wind. At times the wind blew eighty miles an hour. In that mad half hour, while property was crumbling and hundreds of human lives being snuffed out, thousandsof maimed and bleeding persons were added to the awful harvest of devastation.
FREAK DESTRUCTION
Over in East St. Louis, where the houses were all frail structures, the destruction was greatest. The great Eads Bridge was twisted all out of shape, and freight cars were tossed to and fro, tumbled into ditches and driven sometimes into the fields many yards from where they had stood. The great Vandalia freight house fell in a heap of utter ruin, burying beneath it thirty-five men who had there sought refuge.
The swath cut was three blocks wide and four miles long. The top of the bridge was knocked off as well as the big abutment. The Martell House was blown into the Cokokia Creek and many were buried in the ruins.
To add to the horrors of the night the electric-light plants were rendered incapable of service, and the gas lamps were also shut off, leaving the city in utter darkness. Fire broke out in several portions of the city, and the fire department was unable to make an effective fight because of the choked condition of the streets and the large number of firemen who were engaged in the imperative work of rescuing the dead and wounded.
ANNIHILATION
The City Hospital, which fortunately survived the storm, was filled to overflowing with the injured. In addition to those who were killed in their houses and in the streets, scores of dead were carried away by the waters of the MississippiRiver. Many steamers on the levee went down in the storm. From the "Great Republic," one of the largest steamers on the lower river, not a man escaped. The word "annihilation" is perhaps the only one that can adequately describe the awful work of the tornado.
The rising of the sun in the morning revealed a scene of indescribable horror. The work of carrying out the maimed and dead immediately began, but it was a task of big proportions, as many bodies were totally buried under the debris. Hundreds of families were rendered homeless, and the business portion of the community was almost in absolute ruin.
Lack of food added to the misery. Bread sold for fifteen cents a loaf. A large number of military tents were shipped into the city and many families found shelter in freight yards. The Ohio and Mississippi railroad companies issued permits for the use of their empty cars. Contributions to aid in the work of rebuilding and relief were received and the city council voted $100,000.
It was several weeks before the city began to resume a normal existence. The presence of armed men and endless piles of debris, the suspension of traffic, the grief for departed dear ones, and the sight of the many injured, all contributed to a condition of solemnity and sorrow. "The memory of the strange and awful scenes that have been presented by East St. Louis for the past three days," said one clergyman of the city, "will live in the minds of its inhabitants for years. But our people are too courageous and energetic to be deterred from repairing the physical havoc wrought."
PREVIOUS GREAT DISASTERS
Floods
Johnstown, Pa., breaking of the Conemaugh dam, May 31, 1889; 2,235 killed.
Galveston, Tex., tidal wave, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed.
Mississippi Valley, May, 1912; 1,000 killed.
Wind Storms
Adams County, Miss., May 7, 1840; 317 killed. Same county, June, 1842; 500 killed.
Louisville, Ky., March 27, 1890; 113 killed, 200 injured; property loss, $2,500,000.
Cherokee, Buena Vista and Pocahontas Counties, Iowa, July 6, 1893, 89 killed; property loss, $250,000.
Little Rock, Ark., October 2, 1894; 4 killed; property loss, $500,000.
Denton and Grayson Counties, Tex., May 15, 1896; 78 killed and 150 injured; property loss, $165,000.
St. Louis and East St. Louis, Mo., May 27, 1896; 306 identified killed; property loss, $12,000,000. Same tornado visited many places in Missouri and Illinois, causing an additional property loss of $1,000,000.
West India hurricane, September 29 and 30, 1896, covering Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York; 114 killed; property loss, $7,000,000.
Eastern Michigan, May 25, 1897; 47 killed, 100 injured; property loss, $400,000.
Galveston hurricane, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed; property loss, $30,000,000; estimated wind velocity, 120 miles an hour.
CHAPTER XXXIIILessons of the Cataclysm and Precautionary Measures
NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT—THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE—THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY—INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE—THE GREATEST LESSON—MEASURES AGAINST REPETITION OF DISASTER—UTILIZING NATURAL RESERVOIRS—PROMOTION OF FORESTRY—CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS—SECRETARY LANE'S PLAN—A PROBLEM FOR THE PANAMA ENGINEERS.
With each succeeding dispatch from the districts stricken by flood and tornado it became clearer that the first impressions of the disaster, shocking as they were, fell not far beneath the dreadful reality.
Hundreds overwhelmed in the rushing floods, hundreds of thousands spared from sudden death only to suffer hunger and thirst and hardship and the perils of fire, cities submerged, villages swept away, countless homes and vast industries destroyed, miles upon miles of populous land drowned under turbulent waters, and over all the grim shadows of starvation and disease—this catastrophe defies picture and parallel to express its desolating horror.
The widespread calamity, which smote with its cruelest force the beautiful city of Dayton, is one of those for which no personal responsibility can be placed. Like the tidal flood which devastated Galveston and the earth upheaval which laid San Francisco in ruins, it is a convulsion which could not have been foreseen or stayed.
NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT
In the presence of such a fearful disaster there are few persons who will say, but there are some who will think, that this is in some manner a visitation decreed upon the communities which suffer. The very magnitude and superhuman force of it will suggest to many minds the thought of an ordered punishment and warning for offenses against a higher power.
Such a concept, happily more rarely held than in earlier times, is, of course, revolting to sober judgment and to the instincts of religious reverence. For it would imply that multitudes of the innocent should suffer indescribable cruelty; it would attempt the impossible feat of justifying the smiting of Dayton, where the inhabitants lived lives of peaceful, helpful industry, and the sparing of communities where men serve the gods of dishonest wealth and vicious idleness.
This was no vengeance decreed for human shortcomings. It was superhuman, but not supernatural. It was but a manifestation of the unchangeable, irresistible forces of nature, governed by physical laws which are inexorable. Nature knows neither revenge nor pity. She does not select her victims, nor does she turn aside to save the good who may bein her path. As her concern is not with individuals, but with the race, so she is moved not by mercy, but by law.
To the limited vision of man, with his brief life, nature seems incredibly cruel and wasteful. Her teachings must be learned at fearful cost. Men will ask themselves what lessons are taught by this overwhelming sacrifice.
THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE
There is made plain, first, the utter powerlessness of man when he pits his strength against the full demonstration of the laws of nature. It is revealed, again, that there are forces which before all the might of human intellect remain unconquerable. The same grim lesson confronts the scientist whose babe is snatched from him by death; it confronts the millionaire who feels the chill of age creeping upon the frame that has upheld the finances of a nation and has made and unmade panics with the crooking of a finger.
THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY
But there flows from such a catastrophe a brighter and better influence than this. With all its horror and shock, there comes inevitably a great joining of minds and hearts. The whole world feels the thrill of kinship and a common humanity. For the time being all conceptions of social caste and class distinction, the most unworthy thoughts of beings fashioned all in the image of their Maker, are leveled and forgotten. Indifference and selfishness disappear. Throughout the nation, throughout the world, there thrills the upliftingcurrent of brotherhood, the consciousness that "we be of one blood."
Wherever civilization has exercised its beneficent influence upon the minds of men there is felt, for a little time at least, the sense that all humanity is one; that the strife of man against man and nation against nation is but a pitiful thing, and that we may better concern ourselves with trying to make the common lot brighter and so soften the rigors of the existence we all must face.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WEALTH
Specifically does not such an appalling event serve to awaken responsibility among the wealthy and powerful toward the poor and the weak? When all goes well, when there are no thunderous warnings such as this of the helplessness of man against the forces arrayed against him, the fortunate do not realize that for millions mere existence is a poignant struggle; that hunger and cold and disease prevail even when there are no ghastly floods to make them vivid and picturesque. We do not doubt that there are many who will be stirred by the shock of this dreadful story to a deeper and more sympathetic understanding with the conditions that surround them on every side.
INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE
If any further good can come from a catastrophe so cruel, it may be in the stimulating pride of race which it engenders. Such experiences have a unique effect upon the American nature. The greater the calamity which falls upon a communitythe greater seems to be the rebound. Destruction and hardship seem to open great reservoirs of latent energy, inventiveness and enterprise.
Galveston, suddenly overwhelmed by a convulsion of nature, apparently was doomed to molder away in forgotten ruins; but her people cleared the wreck and built a greater city than before. Before the ashes of the old San Francisco had cooled the vision of a better community rose before her inhabitants, and they made it real.
Calamity sets free such a flow of creative power that destruction itself makes for progress. These disasters concentrate upon constructive enterprise stories of emotional energy that in other times are expended in the fierce struggle of competitive existence.
THE GREATEST LESSON
But the great hidden teaching of disaster is that the laws of nature are eternal and inexorable; that they move with unerring precision and resistless force. And this truth applies not only to the tremendous powers of the hurricane, the flood and the earthquake, but to economic principles, which are simply a translation into human terms of the laws manifested in inanimate nature.
The woman whose health is wrecked by overwork, the child whose body and mind are stunted by early labor, the tenement dweller who falls victim to disease because of unwholesome conditions of living—these are sacrifices to natural laws as much as are the thousands swept away in the floods. But, while the flood deaths are due to an outburst of the elementswhich man cannot control, these others are the result of his defiance of the laws of nature.
There is another difference: The victims of economic wrongs due to cupidity and indifference outnumber a thousand to one the victims of natural causes beyond control. All the deaths in these fearful floods are less than those caused every year in a single large city by conditions that might be remedied.
Nature decrees that those who do not have certain amounts of fresh air and food and rest shall die; the law is inexorable. But it is civilization which defies it and brings down the penalty.
THE AWAKENING TO OTHER LAWS OF NATURE
A stranger thought is that many whose hearts are melted by this disaster and whose checkbooks open to the suffering survivors are habitually indifferent to the more deadly conditions existing on all sides of their homes. Men contribute generously to the relief funds who, if asked to surrender a fractional part of their dividends in order to make work safer and more healthful and more humane for employees, would berate the suggestion as anarchistic.
This is not due to hardness of heart; it is due to faults of vision. Men display such sympathy in one case and such ruthlessness in another simply because civilization has not yet advanced far enough to create generally the sense of responsibility which is called social consciousness.
There are those who believe that the good impulses aroused by such events as now appeal to us tend to awaken this consciousness;on the other hand, a $5,000 contribution to a flood relief fund may, by salving the conscience of the giver, close his mind to the need for changing industrial conditions or expending some of his tenement rents for decent sanitation.
Our own belief is that each calamity brings the minds of the nation into closer sympathy and hastens the day when all men will understand that the society they have builded is guilty of causing miseries just as great as those we are now witnessing, the defying the laws of nature because of indifference and greed.
THE NEED FOR ACTION
This country has suffered from many great floods in past years, but none so awful in its scope and terrible consequences. The present calamity must bring the country to its sober senses and make us see the positive necessity—the inevitable MUST—of taking immediate and adequate measures to guard against the repetition of such a disaster. "Strike while the iron is hot," has been the battle-cry of men of action throughout the world! And today, while the iron of adversity is hot in the bosom of the Republic, is the time to strike upon the ideas that are to make the heroic surgery of healing.
What is the remedy for these mighty floods that are sweeping and ruining the interior country? Beyond the supreme consideration of the loss of life they are the financial tragedies of the century. They occur at rare intervals in Ohio and Indiana and in New York. But in the valley of the Mississippi and in the Ohio Valley they are almost an annual or bi-annual scourge of waters, terrific in suffering and appalling in cost.
NOT A QUESTION OF COST
No expenditure of public money is too great that will strengthen the defenses of the people against the giant forces of destruction in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. No cost in national expenditure for permanent defense against such catastrophes would approximate the cost in a single decade to the pockets of the people, not to speak of the uncountable value of human life. Governor Cox, of Ohio, estimated that the damage in Ohio alone by the recent floods was more than $300,000,000—nearly as much as the cost of the Panama Canal. The total cost of the recent flood is vastly greater than that of the Panama Canal!
The American Government can no longer stop to consider money in dealing with the problems of internal economy and of elemental humanity. The floods create an emergency as definite and imperative as war. It is time now to start some movement for the preservation of life and property against such occurrences.
MEASURES AGAINST REPETITION OF DISASTER
It is not the mission of this book to prescribe plans for meeting the situation. That must be the work of a corps of trained engineers who shall study the whole problem comprehensively and in detail. Rather it is our purpose here to bring home the overwhelming need for prompt action. We may be permitted, however, to point in a general way, and on high authority, the general lines that the necessary remedies must take.
The river problems in the great central valleys presentcertain difficulties which engineers have been unable to overcome. If levees are constructed, it is found that the bed of the stream rises also, so that the situation is not materially changed. If channels are deepened, the fury of the floods is increased. If the construction of reservoirs is proposed, there are very important questions of location and danger.
UTILIZING NATURAL RESERVOIRS
In many places the Mississippi River, closely diked, flows high above the lands adjacent. Even at New Orleans, 107 miles from the Gulf, it is during high water ten to fifteen feet above the level of the city. Obviously the levee system, while useful everywhere and in some localities adequate, is not a universal remedy. Reservoirs properly constructed should be of service in storing the waters of many such rivers as those that have caused the havoc in Ohio and Indiana, but to meet the requirements they would have to be of enormous size, very numerous and costly, as Professor Willis S. Moore, chief of the Weather Bureau, points out.
Nature itself has provided in lowlands throughout all of these valleys receptacles which, before men came, took up the surplus waters. We have reclaimed millions of acres of these lands on the theory that we could confine the rivers which once overflowed them, but thus far we have failed to establish the theory.
It is probable that any successful national work for the control of rivers will have to start with the idea of utilizing some of these natural reservoirs. The lands would not behabitable of course, but for agriculture they would be enriched instead of, as now, devastated. To depopulate some such tracts would not be as costly or as terrible as to leave them to the sweep of irresistible torrents, repeated year after year.
PROMOTION OF FORESTRY
Despite Professor Moore's very positive denial of the value of reforestation as a preventive of floods, it is claimed by many authorities that much of the destruction is due to the fact that the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois have been almost denuded of such forests as originally stood there. No impediment is offered to the flow of water and disastrous results follow. But in any event there would have been great floods because of the location of the rainstorms as noted.
CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS
The topography of the country must be taken into account. Both valleys, the Miami particularly, are veined with streams tributary to the rivers, and in times of flood the water rises with amazing rapidity and spreads far and wide over the valley floor. The level character of the region in which Dayton itself lies and the fact that there is not enough pitch to the land below to carry off the water accounts for the depth and extent of the floods. Dayton has had many of them. What Congress can do to prevent or minimize them in future by putting the army engineers at work to construct dams for the collection and restraint of waters in the valleys north of the threatened cities must be done, whatever the cost.
SECRETARY LANE'S PLAN
Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, has outlined a plan for preventing such floods as devastated Ohio and Indiana. The plan hinges on the deepening and widening of the channels of all streams that are liable to flood conditions. Mr. Lane hopes to see the idea carried out through the cooperation of the Federal Government, with the aid of the states immediately endangered.
Aside from the perpetual protection against flood, which he believes his plan would give to settlers in low regions, there are widespread districts along the Mississippi and many other rivers that would be thrown open to settlement. The land thus reclaimed from the swamps might go a long way, in Mr. Lane's opinion, to reimburse the states for the appropriations they would be called upon to make. Mr. Lane says:
"The rainstorm, I know, was phenomenal, and even with the system I have suggested would have doubtless resulted in material damage and the loss of some lives. But flood conditions reappear every spring in some noticeable way, and my plan would obviate most of the resulting damage.
"It will not do for Ohio or Indiana or even the two states together to spend their money generously in clearing the beds of the streams within their boundaries. That would merely carry the flood more swiftly to the state lines to the south, and the water would back more angrily than ever into what would quickly be great lakes. The thing is too large for the states alone. A harmonious, scientific system must be worked out by the federal authorities, and the states mustthen make their contributions in the way that will do the most good to the whole valley affected."
SENATOR NEWLAND'S PLAN
Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, who has made a long study of the whole subject of reclamation and conservation, and who speaks with authority on the subject says:
"The appalling disasters in Ohio and Indiana bring home more forcibly than ever the conviction that our present method of dredging, levees and bank revetment in limited districts is fundamentally inadequate. These things will not protect dwellers on the lower reaches of our rivers so long as there is no control of the headwaters.
"We must adopt an adequate system for the control of the run-off at the headwaters of the tributaries of the Mississippi. The people of Pittsburgh and Dayton are entitled to this, no less than the people of lower Mississippi are entitled to levees. I trust these floods will rouse the American conscience in these matters."
Senator Newlands has urged that $50,000,000 a year be used for the next ten years to develop a comprehensive scheme of storing the excess flood waters at the heads of rivers.
The Democratic platform contained a plank which promised the support of the party to a national scheme of river control. This has already been brought to the attention of President Wilson. With the horrible scenes of the inundated towns of Ohio and Indiana before them, this pledge is likely to become a living promise to the party in power.
A PROBLEM FOR THE PANAMA ENGINEERS
There is one thing to remember. Our stupendous enterprise of the Panama Canal will soon be completed. Its vast equipment of the world's newest and best machinery for digging and filling will be unemployed. The world's greatest engineer, Colonel Goethals, will also be at leisure. Why not then provide for the transfer of all the wonderful machinery at Panama, under personal charge and direction of Colonel Goethals, to the supreme necessities of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys? The whole American people would applaud and approve this disposition of our great engineer and his great equipment.
This new national necessity is as vital and even more pressing than the Panama Canal. It is worthy of the great Republic and of the great engineer—an achievement if successful which would twin with Panama and make Colonel Goethals immortal and our country's beneficence and enterprise famous through all time.
We have no force and no leader in this tragic emergency more potent for the defense of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys than Colonel Goethals and his Panama machinery. Let us send cheer to the flood-ravaged regions of our country by the assurance that this great man and this incomparable equipment will soon be consecrated to their relief.
* The 32 pages of illustrations contained in this book are not included in the paging. Adding these 32 pages to the 320 pages of text makes a total of 352 pages.