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IF you should hunt the country over you would hardly find a more remarkable family than the six Price brothers and one of the remarkable things about them is that they were brought up on a little eighty-eight acre farm in Ohio.

Here are the six: Ira M. Price, Ph. D., LL. D., the oldest, Professor of Semitic languages in the University of Chicago; S. Eber Price, President of Ottawa University at Ottawa, Kansas; Enoch J. Price, practicing law in Chicago; Milo B. Price, Ph. D., Principal of Pillsbury Academy, Owatonna, Minn.; Rev. Orlo J. Price, Ph. D., pastor of the First Baptist Church, Lansing, Michigan; Homer C. Price, Dean of the Agricultural department, Ohio State University.

These are the six living brothers. Mark E., a farmer, died three years ago, and Asa E. died in

HOMER.

IRA.

First, the farm to bring them up on-only eighty-eight acres. Second, their father, Thomas David Price. If he had had a big plantation of a thousand acres on which the boys needed only to scratch. and not to dig and help their father make

a living for the family, thereby making a living for themselves, they might not have achieved such success.

The proximity of Denison University enabled Mr. Price to keep up the habit of work, in his boys, as well as to gratify his desire to give them an education. Go off to college and spend

their patrimony? Not exactly. When Ira, the oldest, started, he walked, the first year, back and forth each day. The second year, he rode horseback. The third year, having kept his constitution up to standard, he boarded at the school and got down to business in a still more thorough way. The rest of the eight boys followed the same schedule, walked one year, rode one year, boarded the remaining years. Ira is now fifty-five years old, Homer thirtyThat shows how long the Price procession was in passing through college.

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THE MOTHER.

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ENOCH.

six.

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ORLO.

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the stream as though driven by a cata-
pult, and countless expeditions were
halted while vain search was made for
drowned voyageurs and lost goods.
Many a successful trapper, floating his
bales of furs to St. Louis, after a season
or two of hazard on the beaver
streams at the Missouri
headwaters, was caught

by a snag in the boiling,
muddy river, or
thrown against a
sandbar in mid-
stream, and was
heard of no more.
The small steam-
boats that navi-
gated the Missouri
in later days had to.
combat a swifter cur-
rent and a more uncer-
tain channel than the big
boats that plied the Mis-
sissippi.

in watering adjacent lands in time of drought, and in unwatering the land back of the protecting levees in time of flood

but the Sacramento is gentleness itself compared with the Missouri. Operating pumping steamers in a current that averages eight or nine miles an hour, would be clearly impossible. Anchors would be ripped out of the muddy bottom, if not by the force of the current itself, then by the impact of the great trees that come hurtling down stream when the June freshet is on. To establish an ordinary concrete pumping plant was equally out of the question, as the engineers at such an institution would be likely to wake up some morning and find their pumps empty, with the Missouri gurgling mockingly half a mile

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ONE OF THE
FIRST PROBLEMS
THE ENGINEER
MET WITH.

A siphon was put in
to carry over the wa-
ter for the Williston
pumping project.

In seasons of heavy floods and succeeding droughts, there has been a variation of nineteen feet in the Missouri river level at Williston. The main channel has been known to shift half a mile, for no apparent reason.

away.

H. A. Storrs, the government engineer in charge of the work, finally decided to

HARNESSING THE "BIG MUDDY"

install a power plant at Wil

liston, from which electrically conveyed power could be transmitted to pumping barges. One of the barges was to be stationed at Williston and power would be conveyed to the other barge, twenty-eight miles distant, to irrigate the Buford-Trenton project. In order to solve the problem of anchorage, it was decided to fasten the barges to the bank by means of extensible overhead booms. These booms, swinging clear of the river, allowed the floating debris to pass beneath them. Ordinary floating booms would soon have caught an immense amount of debris, and would have wrecked the entire plant.

271

of each barge were presented

to the current.

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He built

a floating dike-for there is no other description that will fit his device-encasing iron pipes in boxes made of heavy planks. By filling or emptying these pipes with water, the sectional boom thus constructed could be kept at any height desired. By sinking it until the top was awash, the boom was converted into an impregnable defence. Trees and logs, which came down the stream like immense sea serpents, struck this improvised rampart, and were fended off by pikemen who were on guard night and day in times of flood.

LAND IRRIGATED BY THE WATERS
OF THE BIG MUDDY."
Looking south from Buford, N. D.

In the matter of attaching pipes to the barges, another problem was presented. Stationary pipes were out of the question, owing to the shifting nature of the channel, so pipes with rubber joints were attached. These could be shortened or lengthened as the channel shifted its position.

Mr. Storrs realized that the question of floating debris would be a serious matter, even though no more than the prow

Generally when such an object in a stream strikes an obstacle, it dives like a huge fish. This would be disastrous to the pumping machinery on the barges, but, by sinking the protecting booms in the manner described, the engineer had put the center of gravity of the defence below the center of gravity of the attacking object. The big trees were veered off by the pikemen, and floated on down the Missouri, without having harmed the pumping barges.

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THE PLANT AT WILLISTON FROM WHICH ELECTRIC POWER WAS TRANSMITTED TO PUMP WATER OUT OF THE MISSOURI, AT A POINT TWENTY-EIGHT MILES AWAY.

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