ing regularly all along the lower Mississippi.

The levees along the lower Rhine rarely break. Holland feels tolerably secure behind its dykes. They are not annually passing the hat for flood sufferers along the Po, in the plains of Lombardy, where levees have been holding back floods for two thousand years.

Of course, there is a good reason for the monotonous recurrence of breaks in the American levees. Pork, national and local, is the principal of these reasons.

A great flood rolled down the Po in 1872. It demonstrated that, 248 miles of levee were of insufficient height. In five years the deficiency was made up, the levees were safe.

It is sixteen years since the flood of 1897 demonstrated the need of a new grade along the lower Mississippi, and 586 miles of levee are below this grade, insufficient by five feet, to this day.

What poverty-stricken, tax-ridden Italy accomplished in five years this "wealthiest nation on earth" has not started to do in fifteen!

Do not place all the blame on the national pork barrel. A four-thousand-foot gap in the Lower St. Francis Levee was left wide open for two years because of a squabble over the right-of-way. Criminal indifference of the directly affected districts, local peanut politics, jealousy, distrust, private greed, incessant bickerings, and quarrels between districts and States that should be pulling together, all these factors, resulting largely from the national attitude toward public business, contributed their share. For a goodly portion of the annual flood damage the territory flooded must itself assume the responsibility.

Compare the gap in the St. Francis Levee with the work of the Upper Yazoo district. Its 126 miles of levees were fully up to the specified height and width, were efficiently patrolled and well maintained. This levee did not break, the entire district escaped unhurt, thanks to the crevasses in other levees.

The average height of the Mississippi levees varies from eleven feet in the Reelfoot district to eighteen feet and a half in the Upper Yazoo. In the light of this year's and of the 1912 floods, the

increased in height by a minimum of five feet and their cross section will have to be enlarged materially if the 26,000 square miles behind them are to enjoy a reasonable degree of safety. Can it be done? Will it pay to do this tremendous amount of construction work, supplemented by a continuous revetment of both banks at a cost of $60,000,000? Can the river valleys be made safe by levees?

Perhaps the results achieved and the methods used in the reclamation of the delta formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in California will throw some light on these questions.

Compared with the "Father of Waters," the Sacramento is a puny infant. It is fed by a watershed only onefortieth the size of the Mississippi's drainage area, but in flood times its discharge rises to one-fourth of the Mississippi's maximum volume. Proportionately, the Sacramento's floods are ten times worse than the Mississippi's, yet private parties unaided by the nation find it profitable to reclaim the overflow lands in comparatively small tracts, to protect these reclamations of agricultural land by levees, the like of which cannot be found along the Mississippi.

So long as the levees along the Mississippi and the Sacramento were built with wheelbarrows and scrapers, by "cheap" labor-black in the South, yellow in the West-the cost of the levees was high and their crown low. Floods playfully broke through these "hand-levees" in both places, went through them at will year after year. A decade ago the engineers of the Sacramento districts began to develop and adapt heavy dredging and excavating machinery for levee building. They realized that men and horses never could hope to defeat the river, just as horses and men long ago proved inadequate to handle the traffic of the cities. They enlisted the science of mechanics in their battle with the floods.

Today all the new Sacramento levees are built by gigantic dragline excavators, by clamshell dredges with booms 200 feet long, with buckets lifting six and seven cubic yards at a bite, with electrically operated suction dredges deepening the channel and raising the levees in the same operation. Dozens of these great clam

commanding the crowd's interest; two quivering shapes of steel that have outstripped all rivals. One is painted red, an ugly snorting monster that seized the lead when the race had been but ten miles run and held it from morning into afternoon. Behind its steering wheel sits the cool De Palma, veteran of countless races, a driver crafty and daring who always makes the pace as he sees fit.

But in the other car is a younger man. The "Kid", they call him, Joe Dawson, scarcely more than a boy. And Dawson guiding his trim machine isn't making the pace as he sees fit. For his race is being

directed-directed by a group of men, quiet, unnoticed. In the repair trench they stand, watching Dawson as he speeds by, watching the other cars, making calculations -and waiting.

Up in the stands thousands of people, watching a big scoreboard know that Dawson is second. And being only spectators they reason that Dawson will drive these last miles at a speed he has never before dared. Obviously it is the youngster's only chance to cut De Palma down. For being average racegoers they don't know all concerning the work of the men in the pits the side of the race that the public does not

see.

As Dawson rushes after the smoking car of his rival, three men in a little tent on the other side of the Speedway, are busy painting a large white numeral on a movable blackboard. More than a mile from the grandstand is their little post, and as Dawson whirls toward them he is driving almost ninety miles an hour. Sighting his car rounding into the back-stretch, the men jump from the tent to the trackside and raise the blackboard above their heads. On it is a code message.

"S-75" it reads, "Slow down to 75 miles an hour."

When he sees it Dawson can scarcely believe his eyes. Here is the race almost over with De Palma leading. Yet the signal tent has ordered him to drive slower! He cannot understand, but he obeys orders. He has been taught to do

that from the time he became a race driver. So he slackens speed and drives on impatient at the restriction laid upon him; drives until he sees the big machine he has trailed so long standing still and De Palma and his mechanician tugging at the wheels, trying to push it round to

of some death-daring race. But their work was accomplished in three hours at the most. Months have been spent in preparing for those three hours. And to show how this is, to reveal the countless details that the public never sees, we must begin at the factories. For it is there that the cars are constructed and tested, an intricate and tiresome process, and wonderfully important.

Last spring I visited an automobile factory that was preparing two cars for the Vanderbilt Cup Race. The race was months away. In that factory one of the drivers was experimenting with the ma

THE LATE GEORGE ROBERTSON

"He was the type of driver to whom the dust of an opposing car was infuriating."

the finish line.

can make it go.

It is the only way they Dawson is in first place now for the breakdown has put De Palma out of it.

What had happened?

As De Palma passed his rival's pit at the grandstand, one of the attendants reached for a telephone. The wires led directly across the oval to the second station, the trackside tent. Telephoning the attendant said:

"Tell Dawson to cut down his speed to 75 miles an hour. That will be enough to win. It will save the car. De Palma's machine is going to pieces."

Shrewd mechanical observers, you see, had detected the signs of an inevitable breakdown. They knew that De Palma's car couldn't last another lap. So they advised the tent station to signal with the blackboard to check Dawson, who, like De Palma, might have literally driven his car to pieces.

And he is checked in time and drives on, winning easily.

Now that's the way many long races are won. It's the phase of the race that is known only by those who may be taken into the confidence of team managers. As a matter of fact, the actual driving of a car is about the easiest part of the whole proposition. That may sound exaggerated when you recall the grimy, drawn faces of men you have seen helped down from the driver's seat at the end

HARRY GRANT

"He astonished all motordom by winning the Vanderbilt Cup for a second time,"

chine he was to drive on Cup Day. As he came in from a spin over a frightfully bad bit of country road-selected because of the harsh test it would give a carhe said:

"The weight of this car must be changed. Its balance is wrong. The distribution of the weight must be altered. There is too much strain on the rear tires. And I want the wheel base lengthened. The car behaves badly on the turns."

One of the factory engineers took notes on what he said. Later, the driver was called into consultation. Each little detail of the alteration was discussed and planned. As I afterwards learned, the alterations didn't suit the driver and before he pronounced that car ready to try for the Vanderbilt Cup, four distinct