the Great Flood

By M.A.Rose

When what is believed to have been the greatest flood ever known in the lower Mississippi valley destroys one hundred million dollars worth of property and takes fifty lives, decisive action by the Federal Government can no longer be delayed. The Republican national platform of this year pledges the party to take such engineering steps as may prevent a recurrence of this great calamity. Theodore Roosevelt, a little before the Chicago convention, proposed that the machinery used in digging the Panama Canal be put to work for this purpose in the periodically overflowed areas. This article by Mr. M. A. Rose is one of unusual timeliness and significance. Mr. Rose is a resident of New Orleans, and was an eye witness to some of the most dramatic incidents in connection with this fight against the Great Flood.

R

AIN is sloshing down, a downpour after a day-long drizzle. The water rushes in little torrents down one side of a gigantic rampart of sodded earth which zig-zags off before and behind. On the other side, the drops pelt the surface of a mile-wide stream into the semblance of brown stucco.

Standing on the dike, one may study the roofs of a plantation home behind it. Turning, one can stoop and dabble a hand into the muddy river, so near is it to the top of its barrier.

The smooth, true line of tawny water and green grass on the river side is broken by an ugly box of raw pine which projects into the stream an arm's length, and parallels the embankment forty feet, and into this box, negro convicts in their striped garb, free laborers, the village

NEAR VIEW OF A In the background can be seen the piling which is being that will close the crevasse.

mayor, the village doctor, the wealthy planter, the banker, every able-bodied man within a radius of miles, is packing burlap sacks, filled with dirt.

Above the queer chant of the negroes comes a shout from a convict guard, rifle in hand. Before the gaze of the toilers, a bit of the dike further upstream sinks, at first gradually, an inch, two inches, three inches. A yellow geyser spouts up in the road, forty feet behind the levee. Then the great wall of earth

will be straddling the ridgepoles of their cabins, shouting at every passing motor boat or skiff.

A month, and the young corn and cane, the ploughed but yet unplanted cotton fields and the little truck farms a hundred miles away will be under water while the carcasses of hundreds of stock furnish roosts for myriad buzzards; while the white landowners are accepting the hospitality of friends in a neighboring city, and the negro tenants are living on Government rations in a cotton compress which serves as a refugee camp.

Floods in the lower Mississippi Valley caused a loss of $100,000,000 this spring, it is conservatively estimated. Five important crevasses in the main levees of the Mississippi River, three breaks in the Atchafalaya, three minor breaks in the Mississippi did the damage. One hundred millions is an estimate, but it has no solid basis. No one knows what the crops in the overflowed area might have been-they might have been bumper yields, and they might have been nipped by frost or curtailed by drought. It is almost impossible to compute the number of farm animals drowned, the houses destroyed or damaged, the fences swept away, the fields denuded of soil and cov

ered with sand. It is impossible to reckon how much some plantations may have been enriched by soil deposits.

At least 2,500,000 acres were under water in Louisiana, including a score of small towns. This is close to one-eleventh the area of the State. The overflow in the upper Mississippi Delta, that famous cotton-growing region, and in Arkansas, brought the total above 3,000,000 acres. At Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and a dozen smaller points, over 200,000 refugees, the big majority negroes, were fed by the Government and clothed and housed by the States and by private charity.

It was the highest water the Valley has ever known. Extension of the levee system tends to increase floods each year, for the natural reservoirs are cut off. Denudation of the forests acts in the same way, for a forest, too, is a natural reservoir for rainfall. Perhaps never before was the Mississippi called upon to carry the "peak of the load" of the floods in the Ohio, the Missouri, the

PHOTO, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N. Y.

A SMALL TOWN AFLOAT IN LOUISIANA. Two hundred people in this street alone were obliged to camp out of doors.

of hills, the Mississippi River levees and the levees of the Red, converging at the peculiar bit of country where the Mississippi, the Red, the Old River and the Atchafalaya are united. This is the critical location, and levee engineers made a hard fight, but lost, and the great levee at Torras gave way, by far the most disastrous crevasse of the present flood. Meanwhile, the levee at Beulah, Miss., on the east-left-bank broke, flooding the upper Delta, which includes Sharkey, Issaquena, Bolivar and Washington

Water from the Torras break spread over a vast area, and the break itself widened to a gateway for the roaring waters more than half a mile wide. Still the gauges below climbed, and at last, the levee at Hymelia plantation, about forty miles above New Orleans, but on the opposite, the right bank, gave way.

There were minor breaks. At Angola, La., the state penitentiary farm was flooded. Bayou Sara, La., was inundated, and a small break near the Gulf did a little damage. A populous trucking and cane region in Avoyelles parish was flooded by a break in the levees protecting Bayou des Glaizes. Three crevasses in the Atchafalaya River levee system, above and below Melville, La., inundated that town, and a large surrounding area, much of which was swamp. This prac

"SACKING" A LEVEE'S TOP NEAR BATON ROUGE, LA.

tically completes the

list.

In the face of all this, one of the most extensive planters in Louisiana, a man whose personal loss is heavy, says: "If this leads to Federal control of the entire levee system, I shall feel that it has been gain."

The sentiment is echoed throughout the lower river States. At present, the United States, theoretically, simply preserves the Mississippi River as a navigable stream. When it builds levees, it does so upon the principle that it is improving a steamboat lane, not upon the idea that it is protecting marvelously rich land from overflow. Be the theory what it may, Government levees are the best levees, and the need of unified control of the 1,486 miles of the system, from New Madrid, Mo., to Fort Jackson, La., is recognized. So far, the States have stood two-thirds the cost of the system, their share amounting to about $80,000,000. It has been money well spent, for it has been their own faith in the work and their own zeal which has prompted what governmental aid has been given, and which has made it not improbable that within a few years, the United States will take over the control of the banks as well as of the stream.

The levee system now is divided into districts, each district in charge of its

UNLOADING DIRT FROM A FLAT CAR FOR USE IN FILLING SACKS TO TOP A LEVEE.

own board. The boards are composed of planters, physicians, railroad men, business men, and

-let it be whis

some

times a politician slips in. Usually these boards are efficient. They employ the best engineers they can. But

no one argues

that this disjointed, uneven, locally-influenced plan can vie with the efficiency of the War Department. Whatever the muck-rakers may say of our Army, no one yet has suggested that the engineering corps harbors many bunglers. Witness Colonel Goethals. En passant, there are enthusiasts who urge that in 1915, when the greatest canal has been opened, Colonel Goethals be given the bigger job of harnessing the greatest river, and protecting the lands behind it.

Much of the news which has been printed concerning the great flood this year must have been a riddle to the general public. To the average citizen who lives far from the Mississippi, a levee means a dike which holds off water, and no more. What care is expended in building these embankments, and what money, time and skill, never has concerned him.

Levee building is an art which has