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 The Present Aspect 
 
 of the 
 
 Mississippi River Problem 
 
 “Nor must Uncle Sam’s web-feet be forgotten 
 
 Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay and the rapid river, 
 but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground 
 was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.” — 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 There was a time in the geologic past when the water of 
 Lake Michigan had an outlet southward by way of the Illi- 
 nois and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The Chi- 
 cago drainage canal has re-opened that outlet to the extent 
 of its flow. The idea of connecting the Great Lakes and the 
 Gulf by a navigable channel along that line is an old one. 
 It was suggested first, so far as is known, by Joliet in a 
 letter written Aug. 1, 1674, from his camp at the foot of Lake 
 Michigan, close to the line of the present drainage canal. But 
 for a century and a quarter it was only a thing to dream about, 
 as was the Isthmian canal for three centuries and a half after 
 Balboa, Sept. 1, 1513, “stood silent on a peak in Darien,” and 
 saw the Pacific Ocean at his feet. After the revolution and 
 the adoption of the constitution, the United States govern- 
 ment began to take a languid, intermittent and ineffective 
 interest in the subject : and for fifty years it was kept alive 
 by various proposals, surveys and reports. Then came the 
 railroad era, and then the war, and then more railroads. It 
 was not until the City of Chicago had cut through the divide 
 wdth its drainage canal and established an actual flow of water 
 from the lakes to the Gulf, and the inability of the railroads 
 to meet the demands of commerce, present and prospective, 
 had forced itself upon the attention of the public that the 
 do-something stage was reached. Within a few months past 
 the subject has received a great accession of interest, and 
 there seems to be a probability that a Lakes-to-the-Gulf water- 
 way will be undertaken in earnest in the near future. The 
 subjects of its feasibility and the methods of its construction 
 are thu£ in order for consideration by those citizens who like 
 to keep a little lookout ahead. 
 
 The work naturally lays itself off into three great sub- 
 divisions ; the first from Chicago to the mouth of the Illinois 
 river; the second from the mouth of the Illinois to the mouth 
 
2 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 of the Ohio ; and the third from that junction to the City of 
 New Orleans, where inland and ocean commerce meet; or, if 
 we choose to put it so, to the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Of the first of these sub-divisions, and so much of the sec- 
 ond as lies between the mouth of the Illinois and the City of 
 St. Louis, surveys and estimates have been made under au- 
 thority of Congress, which show a probable cost of about 
 $31,000,000 for a channel fourteen feet deep from Chicago to 
 St. Louis. 
 
 The remainder of the second subdivision — that lying be- 
 tween St. Louis and Cairo, is probably the most difficult part 
 of the whole undertaking. The Mississippi river between those 
 points receives a large amount of sediment from the Missouri 
 and scours another large amount from its own banks, so that 
 it builds bars rapidly, and at the same time its volume is not 
 sufficient to respond effectively to any form of improvement 
 depending upon concentration of flow, and extending to con- 
 siderable depth. It is not a difficult stream to improve to 
 secure a small depth of channel, such as six or seven feet; 
 but to secure fourteen feet will be very difficult. It is not 
 impossible that it may be found more economical to dig a 
 canal from St. Louis to the mouth of the Ohio, as has been 
 recommended for the reach between the mouth of the Illinois 
 and St. Louis, than to attempt to use the bed of the river 
 for a fourteen feet channel. 
 
 It is mainly of the third great natural subdivision of the 
 proposed Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway — that extending from 
 the. mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans, that it is proposed 
 to speak in this paper; of the origin, methods and results 
 of the work which has been done already in the lower Mis- 
 sissippi in the improvement of its channel; of the extent to 
 which that work is valuable as a large, beginning of the greater 
 work of producing the larger channel; and of the further de- 
 velopment of means and methods which will be required for 
 the complete accomplishment of that work. 
 
 The Mississippi River Commission was created by Act of 
 Congress approved June 28, 1879. The law provided that it 
 should consist of seven members, of whom three were to be 
 from the Engineer Corps of the Army, one from the Coast and 
 Geodetic Survey, and three from civil life, of whom two were 
 to be civil engineers by profession. Its duties were defined in 
 part as follows; 
 
 “To take into consideration and mature such plan or 
 plans and estimates as will correct, permanently, locate, 
 and deepen the channel and protect the banks of the Mis- 
 sissippi river; improve and give safety and ease to the 
 navigation thereof; prevent destructive floods; promote 
 and facilitate commerce, trade and the postal service.’ ’ 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 3 
 
 This law was the result of the successful opening of the 
 mouth of the Mississippi to the commerce of the world by the 
 Eads jetties. Men immediately asked, “Why cannot the same 
 principle be applied to the improvement of the whole chan- 
 nel?” Mr. Eads thought it could be done, and his opinion 
 carried great weight. He was made a member of the Com- 
 mission, and it was commonly known for some years as the 
 “Eads Commission.” Its first report embodied his views. It 
 recommended a plan of improvement comprising bank protec- 
 tion and contraction works in the channel to secure an approx- 
 imately uniform low water width of about 3,000 feet, and 
 levees on the banks to confine the flood discharge and utilize 
 its energy in scouring out and deepening the thus regulated 
 channel. The cost of bank protection consisting of mattresses 
 and stone revetment to prevent caving was estimated at $12 
 per lineal bank foot ; and the cost of the whole improvement at 
 $33,000,000. 
 
 The execution of this plan, with some important modifica- 
 tions, which need not, however, be described here, has been in 
 progress since under appropriations made by Congress which 
 have amounted in the aggregate to $55,179,555, (including, 
 however, appropriations for a number of works not embraced 
 in the commission’s plan and estimate), with the general 
 result that in recent years a minimum low water chan- 
 nel depth of nine feet from Cairo down has been maintained, 
 and a levee system has been carried well on toward completion 
 ’which now protects from overflow almost all the land in the 
 alluvial basin which can be protected in that way. 
 
 It will facilitate a clear understanding of the suggestions 
 which it is in mind to offer in what follows to consider for a 
 moment the conditions and forces that will have to be dealt 
 with in making the lower Mississippi part of an inter-Lake- 
 and-Gulf highway. If the channel of the Mississippi could be 
 emptied of its water, so as to expose it to the bottom, dry and 
 bare, the appearance would be surprising to most of us. In- 
 stead of a comparatively level bed corresponding in a general 
 way to the. surface of the river and its adjacent banks, there 
 would be found a succession of great sand hills and interven- 
 ing crescent shaped depressions. Passing through one of these 
 depressions the observer would find himself, it might be, a 
 hundred feet or more below the top of the bank on the con- 
 cave side. Within a few thousand feet he would encounter a 
 sand hill stretching across the channel perhaps seventy-five 
 feet high. Having crossed the top of this, he would descend 
 into another basin, then climb anther hill, and so on. When 
 the channel is filled with water the crests of these elevations 
 approach the surface and constitute the bars which obstruct 
 navigation. 
 
4 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 The action by which the bars are produced is somewhat as 
 follows : At flood stage a volume of water several times as 
 great as that which goes over Niagara Falls descends 322 feet 
 in flowing from Cairo to the Gulf. Its path is a series of alter- 
 nately reversed bends. In these bends the current hugs the con- 
 cave bank, flowing with high velocity and scouring out of the 
 bottom of the channel and from the face of the bank a greater 
 or less, and sometimes a very large quantity of sand and loam. 
 At the foot of each bend the main flow crosses to the other 
 side of the river and follows the concave bank on that side; 
 and so back and forth, from bend to bend. The place in the 
 channel where the flow thus crosses from the concave face of 
 one bend to the concave face of the next bend below is called, 
 in the vernacular of the river, a ‘ ‘ crossing. ’ ’ 
 
 As the watei passes over the crossing the velocity of its 
 flow falls off a little, to be renewed in the bend below. This 
 slackening need be very little to cause the flowing water to let 
 fall part of the load of sand and loam which it took up in the 
 bend above, the larger and heavier grains of sand going to the 
 bottom first. And thus are built up the bars between the 
 bends. Not, of course, that the current takes up a full load in 
 each bend and drops it on the next crossing. It carries a large 
 load all the time, adding something to it in every bend, and 
 discharging some of it on every bar. A recession of a bank 
 line 1,000 feet long with an average depth of 75 feet from the 
 edge of the bank to the bottom of the pool for an average dis- 
 tance of 50 feet in a season would be nothing extraordinary. 
 That would mean the picking up and carrying away of 3,750,- 
 000 cubic feet of earth from one bend in one season. 
 
 Similarly impressive facts may be deduced from an entirely 
 different basis of calculation. Observations have shown that 
 the earthy matter carried by the river is equal in bulk to one 
 part in 2,900 of water, and in weight to about one part in 
 1,500 of the total average volume flowing. At an active rising 
 stage the sediment carried past a given point is equal to 1,000 
 tons a minute. If, at such a point, a screen could be placed 
 across the river, that would filter the water perfectly without 
 checking its flow, there would be enough earth accumulated 
 to make a wall across the channel a foot thick in eight minutes. 
 
 It is a common impression that the sediment which loads the 
 water of the lower Mississippi comes chiefly from theJVlissouri 
 river. But it is certain that only a small fraction of it is from 
 that source. Altogether the greater part of it — nearly all of 
 it, is way freight, taken on and unloaded at short intervals. 
 It follows that activity of bar building in the Mississippi de- 
 pends mainly on activity of bank caving, and that the most 
 effective, way to improve the channel is to protect the banks 
 against caving. This, as has been stated, was part of the plan 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 5 
 
 of improvement recommended by the Mississippi River Com- 
 mission in its first report. In the execution of that plan two 
 portions, or “reaches” of the river of typically bad naviga- 
 tion were selected for treatment. One was Plum Point reach, 
 147 to 186 miles below Cairo, and about 38 miles in length; and 
 the other Lake Providence, reach, 517 to 552 miles below Cairo. 
 In these reaches caving banks were protected by revetments 
 composed of brush mattresses applied to the subsequeous slope 
 of the bank and a stone riprap to the upper, slope. At the same 
 time, in places where the low water channel was very wide, 
 works were constructed on the shallow bars to stimulate de- 
 posit of sediment, and so build up the bank on that side while 
 holding it by revetment against recession on the other. The 
 results at once demonstrated the engineering soundness of the 
 plan. A marked improvement in channel depths took place* 
 through those parts of the reaches in which the projected 
 works were completed. But these engineering works were 
 subject to many vicissitudes. The mattresses first used were 
 about 300 feet long and 125 feet wide. Experience soon showed 
 that they were too small and otherwise imperfect. The prob- 
 lem of improving them was difficult, costly and tedious. Little 
 by little, as engineers learned how to make and handle them, 
 they grew in size, until, for ten years past, mattresses have 
 been made and sunk 1,200 feet long and 300 feet wide — the 
 largest textile fabrics ever made in the world. With increase 
 of size, the construction was also improved until what seems to 
 be perfection has been reached in the “fascine mat,” built 
 from young, flexible willows made up into fascines or rolls as 
 long as the width of the mattress, which are bound together by 
 a warp of wire supplemented by long poles running like ribs 
 lengthwise of the mattress. This process of enlargement and 
 improvement which, after many years of effort, made it pos- 
 sible to hold the worst caving bank, so increased the cost of 
 bank protection that the. original estimate of $13 per lineal 
 foot had to be increased to $30. It had also become apparent 
 that a greater length of bank protection would be required 
 than was at first assumed, and that, all things considered, the 
 complete improvement of the channel by the plan originally 
 proposed and so far pursued, if practicable at all, would cost at 
 least twice the amount of the original estimate. For a time the 
 outlook was very gloomy. 
 
 Just in the nick of need that aquatic Titan, the hydraulic 
 dredge, made, its appearance and offered the hope that the ob- 
 structing bars might be kept down by annual dredging during 
 the two or three months of the year of their interference with 
 commerce. Never did a happier idea dawn at a more pro- 
 pitious moment. After having built and tried one small boat — 
 the Alpha (well named), the Commission proceeded at once 
 
6 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 to try a decisive experiment. It was considered that the 
 crucial question was whether or no a machine could be built, 
 manageable in the river, and capable of cutting through a bar 
 so quickly that the excavated channel would not fill up before 
 it could be finished. It was believed that the current, once in 
 possession of the newly made channel, would keep it open by 
 scour. With this view the Commission built the Beta, which, 
 upon her trial tests, was able to take up and transport through 
 pontoon pipes to a distance of 1,000 feet the astonishing quan- 
 tity of 4,000 cubic yards of sand per hour. Nothing like it 
 had been done before. That experiment settled the question 
 of possibility. 
 
 The Beta, however, was an experimental, rather than a 
 working dredge. While she is still in use, and has done valu- 
 able service, she has never approached the record of her trial 
 tests in practical operation. She is a twin boat, having two 
 complete dredging outfits mounted on one hull, which is not 
 the most desirable form for use. Eight other dredges have 
 been built since, two of them having nominal capacities of 
 800 cubic yards per hour, and five of them 1,000 cubic yards. 
 These have shown results at work of from 500 to 1,200 yards, 
 as nearly as can be guessed. This is the word to use, because 
 in actual work the amount of material moved is an unascer- 
 tainable quantity. Sometimes the sand that runs into the cut 
 laterally and out of it rearwardly while it is being made ex- 
 ceeds in amount that which passes through the dredge pump; 
 in other cases there is comparatively little of this action. 
 
 The last dredge built of the eight referred to — the B. M. 
 Harrod, will do her first work on the bars during the low water 
 of 1907. She embodies every improvement which skill and ex- 
 perience have been able to suggest, and is expected to handle 
 from 2.000 to 4,000 cubic yards per hour, according to the 
 nature of the material. 
 
 At the outset the steamboatmen asked for a low water chan- 
 nel of eight feet. When the dredges got to work that depth 
 was so easily obtained that they called for nine, and that is 
 now the requirement of the law, and has been maintained for 
 several years. During last season — that of 1906, there was an 
 unusual supply of water, and depths nowhere less than ten feet 
 were maintained throughout the season. Doubtless something 
 more than nine feet can be obtained in the driest seasons by 
 further improvements in machinery and methods, and toward 
 that end the efforts of the Commission have been and are now 
 being directed. The expense of it is less than one would sup- 
 pose. The cost of operating the dredges to secure nine feet 
 (not including their first cost) will not exceed $250,000 per 
 annum, taking a series of years together. 
 
 But when it comes to fourteen feet, as is called for by the 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 7 
 
 Lakes-to-the-Gulf project, the problem assumes a new com- 
 plexion. As has been stated, the bars which obstruct naviga- 
 tion are the crests of the sand hills which the river piles up at 
 the crossings. These sand hills act at low water as dams be- 
 tween the pools above them and those below them. To make a 
 cut two or three hundred feet wide and four or five feet deep 
 across the top of one of these dams is not a very difficult un- 
 dertaking, and is sufficient to make a low water channel nine 
 feet deep. A channel fourteen feet deep over the same bar 
 would require a cut nine or ten feet deep. It would also have 
 to be longer, to include the slopes of the bar, above and below. 
 The average length of cut required in the past has been about 
 800 feet. One of the incidents of the present work is the 
 lateral inflow of sand into the cut as it is being made, which 
 is sometimes very large. This tendency would increase with 
 increased depth of cut. 
 
 It would be necessary, also, in order to make a channel four- 
 teen feet deep to dredge a good many bars that do not need it 
 in order to secure nine feet. Moreover, it must be anticipated 
 that the making of such large channels through the bars will 
 reduce, the low water level of the river and bring more bars 
 up to the height that will require dredging. Such a change in 
 the regimen of the river might produce other consequences 
 not easy to foresee. Upon the whole, it cannot be assumed that 
 a fourteen feet channel could be made by the methods now em- 
 ployed in the conditions now existing with less than many 
 times the annual dredging now applied. No doubt it could 
 be done. But there is a better way. 
 
 If all the banks below Cairo were protected against cav- 
 ing, the sand bars would be starved out. Not extinguished, 
 but made so lean and thin that little or no dredging would be 
 required to maintain a waterway over them as deep as the 
 volume flowing could supply at the velocity compelled by its 
 slope. It would cost $100,000,000 to do it — may be more, and 
 five to ten millions per annum to maintain the work. But 
 the river would flow, in a fixed channel and carry little supply 
 of bar building material. Conditions similar to those which 
 now exist in the lower reaches of the river would be extended 
 to those above. Large ocean going* vessels come to New Or- 
 leans. In that part of the river the banks cave little and 
 slowly. The energy of the current is expended along the same 
 lines year after year with the result that the channel grows 
 deep and narrow. 
 
 It would not be possible to secure artificially in the upper 
 reaches as favorable conditions as exist naturally in the lower 
 ones. The banks are composed of coarser, more friable ma- 
 terial ; the velocity of the current is greater, and the variation 
 of stage very much greater. Nevertheless, if all caving were 
 
8 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 prevented, and all chutes closed, the river would develop for 
 itself a channel of probably more than fourteen feet. 
 
 This, however, is not the better way referred to. That is to 
 combine bank protection and dredging; to lower the bars 
 somewhat by the former, and trim off the offending residue 
 by the latter. 
 
 It is a fortunate circumstance that the bank protection nec- 
 essary for this purpose is also in large part necessary for other 
 purposes. One of the objects stated in the law by which the 
 Mississippi River Commission was created was to “prevent de- 
 structive floods.” This can be accomplished only by means of 
 levees. The concentration of flood discharge which they se- 
 cure is useful also in the improvement of the channel. Since 
 1882 the United States, in co-operation with the riparian 
 States and communities, has reconstructed and extended the 
 previously existing wholly inadequate levee system. That 
 great work is now well toward completion. A few words will 
 suffice to illustrate the vastness of the interests resting upon 
 the maintenance of the system. 
 
 The alluvial valley below Cairo contains 29,790 square miles 
 of lands liable to overflow. Omitting the fringe of marsh along 
 the Gulf and the area subject to inundation by backwater at 
 the lower ends of the great basins, which must be left open 
 for the escape of surface water, about 26,000 square miles re- 
 main which can be protected by levees. For this purpose about 
 1,400 miles of embankment are now in place upon which $21,- 
 234,653.82 has been expended by the United States, and a still 
 larger sum by the riparian States and organizations. The 
 great floods — those which, if unrestrained, would overflow the 
 entire valley, occur at irregular intervals averaging about five 
 years. There have been three such within ten years — in 1897, 
 1903 and 1907. The flood of 1897 made 38 crevasses in the 
 levees aggregating about 8 miles in width; that of 1903 made 
 9, aggregating about 3 miles ; and the flood of 1907 one little 
 one below New Orleans, which was successfully closed. A 
 crevasse in the upper or central part of the valley, where the 
 alluvial area is wide and the overflow water spreads far out 
 and down across the country before the surface channels can 
 take it in, is a vast disaster. The 9 crevasses of 1903 over- 
 flowed about 3,000 square miles of land. On the other hand, 
 the levees that did not break saved 23,000 square miles from 
 overflow during the same flood. It is not at all extravagant 
 to say that the levees have been worth more to the country 
 within ten years past than the whole cost of their construc- 
 tion. For their entire completion they require a few miles 
 more in length and some increase in height and strength. With 
 these additions, which may be said to be now in sight, the 
 system will be complete in construction. But an indispensable 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 9 
 
 and difficult part of tHe work of protecting the valley from 
 overflow will remain — the protection of the levees themselves 
 against the encroachments of the river. 
 
 The uneasy stream is incessantly shifting its position. The 
 caving banks gnaw their way through the fields and woods 
 to the base of the levees and undermine them. At the approach 
 of this danger the usual course has been to abandon the threat- 
 ened line and build a loop around it. But sometimes this is a 
 desperately difficult undertaking. Sometimes the threatened 
 levee stands on a narrow strip of land between the river and 
 a lake extending miles back into the country. In such a case 
 it is impossible to make a loop without going behind the lake 
 with it at great expense, and the abandonment of a large area ’ 
 of improved land, which may be thickly inhabited, to the in- 
 clusion, sometimes, of towns or cities. In some such cases the 
 most economical and effective way to protect the levee is to 
 protect the caving bank. It is expensive. As a rule it is un- 
 wise to undertake the revetment of a big caving bend unless 
 you can rely on $500,000 to spend on it within five years, if 
 necessary. But even at that cost there are places where it is 
 true economy to build them for levee protection. 
 
 There is another important purpose to be subserved by bank 
 protection in such cases. It is to prevent the deformation of 
 the high water channel by the introduction of wide irregular- 
 ities of width between levees. In time of overflowing flood 
 the levees constitute the river banks. The abandonment of a 
 line in front of a lake or impassable swamp and the building of 
 a long loop around it will spread the high water channel to a 
 width, ordinarily, of a good many miles — ten, twenty, or it 
 may be more. In such a case, also, there is usually a point be- 
 low the bend across which the river will find a path when the 
 levee succumbs. If such a cross flow be large, as it is likely 
 to be, it will deplete the current in the main channel around 
 the point and so cause increased deposit and bar building in it. 
 
 If the bed of the Mississippi river below Cairo is to be used 
 as the path of a Lakes-to-the-Gulf highway, it is of the ut- 
 most importance that such deformations of its high water 
 channel shall be prevented. There are several places at which 
 it is threatened now, where once permitted, it could never be 
 undone. 
 
 Another kind of situation is not infrequently presented in 
 which the protection of caving bends is of great importance. 
 It is to prevent cut-offs. It sometimes happens that, as a bend 
 slowly eats its way into the bank it is followed by a point 
 extending from the other side of the river which grows by 
 accretion as the opposite, concave bank recedes by erosion. 
 In such a case the bend sometimes tends to develop a circle re- 
 turning upon itself at the lower side of the point, which re- 
 
10 
 
 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 suits in a large bend with a narrow neck, which, growing nar- 
 rower and narrower by continued erosion, finally gives way. 
 Such an act of suicide on the part of the river is called a “cut- 
 off. ” 
 
 At first blush one would naturally suppose that such a short- 
 ening of the river by cutting out a bend would be a fortunate 
 incident. In fact the President of the United States said to the 
 first President of the. Mississippi River Commission, whom he 
 had just appointed, and who came in to express his sense of 
 the honor conferred, that he thought the first work of the Com- 
 mission ought to be to “take some of the kinks out of the 
 . river. ” 
 
 But a little reflection will show the fallacy of that idea. 
 The stability of the channel of the Mississippi depends on an 
 adjustment between the scouring power of its current and the 
 resisting power of its? banks. If the current were more- rapid 
 than it is and the banks as they are, there would be more cav- 
 ing, and the river would lengthen. Or if the banks were 
 firmer than they are and the current the same, there would be 
 less caving. The river is a wise engineer. It has made itself 
 a zigzag path down the valley for the same reason that men 
 make zigzag roads down hill — to ease the descent. A cut-off 
 across a neck a thousand feet wide introduces a fall in the 
 river at that point equal to the whole fall around the bend, 
 w^iich may be as much as four or five feet. Such a change 
 increases the velocity of the current both above and below the 
 location of the cut-off. Within the distance thus affected, 
 which may be fifty miles, or more, the river digs into its banks 
 with augmented ferocity, and rests not until it has regained 
 its lost length and restored the former relation between the 
 resisting power of its banks and the scouring power of its cur- 
 rent. If the shortening effect of all the cut-offs that have 
 occurred within a century had not been compensated by cav- 
 ing, the length of the river between St. Louis and New Orleans 
 would have been lessened by more than a hundred miles. But 
 careful comparison of present surveys and old maps and rec- 
 ords indicates that there has been no substantial change in the 
 length of the river since the occupation of the valley by white 
 men. Since the creation of the Mississippi River Commission 
 it has been part of its business to watch the river’s behavior 
 in this respect and prevent cut-offs by protecting caving banks 
 which threaten to produce them. Two great revetments have 
 been built for that purpose — one at Ashbrook Neck, Miss., 417 
 miles below Cairo, and the other at Giles Bend, Miss., 688 
 miles below Cairo, and a short distance above Natchez. At the 
 former of these places the conditions were highly critical. 
 There is in that vicinity a group of great bends immediately 
 succeeding one another. If one of them should let go, the 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 11 
 
 chances are that it would be impossible to hold the others, and 
 to repair the devastation that would follow such a wholesale 
 change would take, more years than anyone can foresee. A 
 revetment was begun there in 1890. It has been extended from 
 time to time, and carefully maintained, and is regarded as a 
 highly important work. 
 
 Another use of bank protection is to defend city fronts 
 against caving into the river. The voracious Mississippi is 
 quite as ready to swallow up a town as a levee. Revetments 
 for this purpose have been built at Hickman and Columbus in 
 Kentucky, New Madrid and Carruthersville. in Missouri; 
 Greenville, Miss., and New Orleans, La. 
 
 There are • revetments now in existence at twenty different 
 places between Cairo and Natchez aggregating approximately 
 153,000 feet, or 29 miles, in length, built for the various pur- 
 poses stated, but all doing their work by prevention of caving. 
 That they are effective now to lessen the load of sediment car- 
 ried by the current many millions of cubic feet each year is 
 not to be doubted. To say hundreds of millions would hardly 
 be extravagant. That they may be a useful, although unno- 
 ticed factor in the maintenance of the present improved low 
 water channel is altogether likely. Upon that point there is 
 this to be said, and no more, resting on observation. In two 
 places on the river there has been a deepening of the low water 
 channel which seems to be due to that cause. One of these is 
 below Plum Point reach, where, for a distance of forty or fifty 
 miles, there has been observed a slight deepening of the chan- 
 nel over the bars for which no other cause- is known. The 
 other is below Lake Providence reach, where a similar im- 
 provement has been noticed. Extensive revetments have been 
 built in both of these reaches, and have- been in effect for a 
 number of years. 
 
 The Commission has always been chary of revetments for 
 the protection of levees. It has seemed wiser to use available 
 funds on the levees themselves, placing them, as a rule, far 
 enough from the river to be reasonably safe as against caving 
 for twenty years ; although all such prognostications are more 
 or less uncertain. But it has built a few such revetments in 
 cases of extreme emergency. The first was at Bolivar, Miss., 
 in 1888, where the revetment still holds the bank while the 
 great levee stands a few hundred feet away with Lake Bolivar 
 just behind. Another was begun at Lake. Providence in 1894; 
 a third at Bondurant in 1899, and a fourth at Kempe’s Bend 
 in the same year. These revetments were all postponed to the 
 last pinch of necessity. But they saved the levees and give 
 promise of permanence. As time has passed this problem has 
 grown in importance. The increased height of the levees, 
 made necessary by increased concentration of the flood dis- 
 
12 
 
 PKESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 charge, has greatly increased their cost and magnified the 
 destructiveness of crevasses when they occur. The expense of 
 long loops around caving banks has increased enormously. 
 The higher flood levels have made the cross flow over aban- 
 doned points more and more injurious. If it was justifiable 
 ten or fifteen years ago to build revetments for the protection 
 of levees, it is much more so now. Acting upon these views a 
 fifth levee protecting revetment was built at Longwood, Miss., 
 in 1904, and two others have been undertaken — one at Fitter's 
 Bend, Miss., and one at Reid-Bedford Bend, La. There are 
 other places where the same sort of crisis is approaching. It 
 will take a million dollars a year for five years to come to build 
 the revetments necessary for the secure protection of the 
 levees. 
 
 Even that large sum for that purpose alone will be a wise 
 expenditure. The interests involved are vast beyond estima- 
 tion. The alluvial valley of the Mississippi is the cream jug of 
 the continent. No other twenty-six thousand square miles of 
 the earth’s surface is capable of supporting a denser popula- 
 tion. Already the forces of progress are responding to the 
 opportunity offered by protection from overflow. The rail- 
 roads necessary to carry away the wealth of timber which 
 loads every uncleared acre are covering the country with a 
 network of steel. Values have doubled, trebled, quadrupled. 
 Mills, factories, stores and banks have multiplied. The surface 
 drainage systems which will constitute the last step in the 
 complete reclamation of all the alluvial valley are in course of 
 active development. All this has come from the birth of confi- 
 dence in security from overflow, and it is but the prelude to a 
 more wonderful prosperity to come, if that confidence is not 
 disappointed. A little more help from the United States will 
 put the levees in such condition that the people will be able to 
 maintain them themselves, if the government will only defend 
 them against undermining by the river. 
 
 The work of bank protection as a means toward a channel 
 fourteen feet deep would need to be on a larger scale than 
 for mere security of levee lines. How much more, it is impos- 
 sible to foresee. We may get better results from dredging 
 alone than seem now to be probable, and so need less bank 
 protection; or we may find the reverse to be true. 
 
 This, then, is, in brief, the present aspect of the Mississippi 
 River problem, as it appears to the writer. That problem, as 
 it was undertaken by the Mississippi River Commission 
 twenty-eight years ago, has been worked out with substantial 
 completeness. The levee system has proved its practicability 
 and effectiveness. The low water channel then hoped for, and 
 all that was expected, of eight feet, has been secured, and a 
 foot more. The original estimate of $33,000,000 has not been 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 13 
 
 greatly exceeded, excluding from the appropriations expendi- 
 tures for work not embraced in it. The work has passed through 
 many vicissitudes. For years it was the subject of criticism 
 and attack by all sorts of men, from learned scientists, to 
 ignoramuses of low degree. At one time the use of bank revet- 
 ments was forbidden by law — River and Harbor Act of 1886. 
 But at last the theories, plans and methods of the Commission 
 have justified themselves. 
 
 Now, as respects the improvement of the channel for naviga- 
 tion, the larger problem of fourteen feet looms into view. The 
 way to its solution is not easy, but plain. It is to go on with 
 a continuation and extension of the same methods which have 
 been successful in the development of nine feet. If the Lakes^ 
 to-the-Gulf waterway is regarded by Congress as a probability 
 of the future, it would be wise to appropriate $2,000,000 a year 
 for bank protection for a few years to come. Half of that sum 
 should be expended at points where urgently necessary for the 
 protection of the levee lines, and the other half where 
 the effect of the protection in diminishing the growth of bars 
 could be usefully studied. Such a place would be found in 
 and above Plum Point reach where there is now in place 
 46,300 feet of revetment within a length of 17 miles. It would 
 be feasible to complete in that part of the river within four or 
 five years revetments enough to cover, including Plum Point 
 reach, seventy-five miles of its course, which, with the fifty 
 miles from the foot of that reach to Memphis, would afford 
 opportunity for study of the effect of bank protection in the 
 formation of bars for a hundred and twenty-five miles. 
 
 It would be wise in the meantime to carry forward the work 
 of dredging to greater depths than have been hitherto at- 
 tempted; to build some more dredges, one after another, each 
 better than its last predecessor, exactly as has been done in 
 the past ; to begin to use them earlier in the season — as soon, 
 say, as the depths over the bars fall to twenty feet; to make 
 the cuts wider as well as deeper, and to deposit the material 
 taken from them at greater distances away ; and by such 
 means to see how nearly fourteen feet can be reached under 
 conditions attainable with small expenditure in bank pro- 
 tection. 
 
 So large a program of bank protection as these suggestions 
 contemplate will require a further course of study and experi- 
 ment in mattress construction, the length and cost of which 
 can not be closely predicted. As has been stated, the fascine 
 mattress is the only form of subaqueous revetment which has 
 been found successful, and it seems impossible that anything 
 else could be equal to it. The slender, flexible willows of which 
 it is made are no longer plentiful. For a large increase of 
 bank protection works some substitute for them must be found. 
 
PRESENT ASPECT OF THE 
 
 14 
 
 The most promising suggestion is to split the larger willows 
 into strips small enough to be flexible, and use them in making 
 the fascines; perhaps in combination with the brushy limbs 
 from the tops of the trees. There is a great supply of willows 
 suitable for that use. It is not known that the splitting up of 
 trees on such a scale has even been practiced, but there is no 
 doubt that machinery can be made to do it ; and there is good 
 reason to believe that such strips would make an acceptable 
 substitute for the natural willow growth now used. It may 
 require invention, and it will certainly take time, study and 
 experiment to make the substitution. There is good reason, 
 therefore, why these preliminary steps should be begun at 
 once. 
 
 Finally, the work and expenditure here suggested will be 
 worth its cost even though the Lakes-to-the-Gulf project 
 should never materialize. The main stem of the Mississippi 
 is itself a mighty highway of commerce, but in a state of com- 
 parative disuse. The failure of commerce to respond to the 
 opportunities offered to it during the past ten years is to be 
 accounted for by the. constitutional slow growth of the plant, 
 confidence. The old steamboats and barges have worn out or. 
 become unserviceable, and men hesitate to build new ones 
 while in doubt as to the permanence of the work and the 
 future disposition of Congress. Nothing else can dispel these 
 doubts so completely and quickly as to see the government 
 go on and on to complete and completer mastery of the river — 
 from nine feet to ten, and then to eleven, and the progressive 
 fixation of the channel, bend after bend. This is the way to 
 rehabilitate the commerce of the river, and the time to begin 
 it is now. 
 
 The. Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway will be constructed. And 
 when done it will exhibit the most fortunate combination of 
 economies ever brought together on so great a scale. At one 
 end the Chicago Drainage Canal, worth all its cost for the 
 sanitation of the city; below that the. Illinois river section, 
 worth a large part of its cost for the water power developed ; 
 and at the lower section the protected banks of the Mississippi, 
 worth all the cost of the work in the perpetual security of the 
 alluvial valley against overflow. 
 
 One further thought, not for its utility, but its inspiration. 
 The big dredge has a little brother lately come into the world, 
 but destined to work a mighty revolution in waterway trans- 
 portation. It is the. gasoline motor freight propeller, scarcely 
 larger than an automobile, with its little, flat, shallow scow — 
 the cheapest craft ever floated, a mere box, satisfied with a 
 foot and a half of water, pushed ahead, or towed behind, and 
 carrying a few tons of merchandise. It is a true aquatic truck, 
 
MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 
 
 15 
 
 scarcely more costly than a good team and land truck, and 
 requiring only one man to own and run it. He is in truth 
 
 * * * a cook and a captain bold, 
 
 And the mate of the Nancy brig, 
 
 And a bo’ sen tight, and a midshipmite, 
 
 And the crew of the captain’s gig. 
 
 This little craft has been coming into use lately on the 
 bayous and small streams of the alluvial valley in increasing 
 numbers. That we shall have in the future abundant supplies 
 of fluid fuels and simple engines for using them is not to be 
 doubted. We have been hearing for twenty-five years of the 
 15,000 miles of navigable channels of the Mississippi and its 
 tributaries. We have taken it as an innocent exaggeration. 
 But these little motor boats, between the Alleghenies and 
 Rockies, and Canada and the Gulf, will find all that, and more. 
 With their cousins on land next to come — the trolley freight 
 lines, they will gather the productions of that great watershed 
 into the hulls of its big boats as the Lord gathers its rainfall 
 into the channels of its big rivers. 
 
■ 
 
 Press of 
 
 Edward Keogh Printing Co. 
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 Chicago