APPENDIX F.

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY SENATOR FRANCIS G. NEWLANDS, A SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA.

Senator NEWLANDS. Mr. Chairman, it must be conceded that after the European war closes an era of competition for the world's trade will follow in which the efficiency of every nation that participates will be taxed to the utmost. If the United States holds its ground against Germany in that competition, it can only be accomplished by meeting German efficiency at every point.

Transportation is one of the most important factors in such a competitive struggle. We can not avoid or disregard its necessity. We must plan and construct in this country a system of coordinated rail and water transportation the equal of that now in existence in Germany, or enter the forthcoming fiercely fought commercial battle for our share of the world's trade with a serious handicap. No matter from what point of view we examine the subject, the fact is inexorable that our national needs for transportation are increasing with enormous rapidity. If those needs must be met by enlarged railroad facilities and construction, the burden on the people will be something stupendous.

COORDINATED RAIL AND WATER TRANSPORTATION.

The only way to avoid or reduce that burden is by a system of coordinated rail and water transportation, for which our rivers should be regulated and developed. Such a transportation foundation for our commercial structure can never be developed until there is a radical revolution in the methods of Congress with reference to it. Congress has proved itself incompetent under the present system to accomplish the necessary results. So long as we adhere to the old system of piecemeal single-project appropriations which has prevailed in the past just that long will we be without any welldesigned and completely constructed system of coordinated rail and water transportation.

There are four principles that are fundamentally essential to the bringing into existence of such a system.

First. The grant of all necessary administrative and executive authority to a National Waterways Commission with power sufficient to enable it to first make broad and comprehensive plans and then to go ahead and carry them out.

Second. The coordination under such a Commission of all the departments of the National government dealing with any branch of this complex and interrelated subject of waters, forests, and waterways.

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Third. The creation of a construction fund of not less than $60,000,000 a year for ten years, the expenditure of which must be intrusted to this administrative and executive commission just as the expenditure of the fund created by the Reclamation Act was intrusted to the Interior Department.

Fourth. The equitable apportionment of this fund between the different large waterway systems, or hydrographic or drainage basins, specifically in advance, whenever the fund shall be created.

It may not be possible to secure the inauguration of this entire plan all at one time. Congress may insist upon doing it piecemeal. But no matter by what stages it may be approached, the desired result will never be accomplished until the entire policy and plan for legislative action above outlined has been adopted by Congress.

So long as it is postponed, the commercial interests of the country will suffer, and our dreams of world-wide trade will fail of realization. The moment Congress adopts this plan, we will enter upon an era of constructive waterway development that will place the merchants and manufacturers of the United States on a par with those of Germany so far as transportation is concerned.

PLAN EMBODIED IN NEWLANDS-BROUSSARD RIVER REGULATION BILL.

This entire plan to which I have above referred is embodied in the bill known as the Newlands-Broussard river regulation bill, and though it may prove to be impossible to get that legislation enacted except by sections, or one piece at a time, the whole plan must eventually be adopted if we are ever to become a real competitor for the world's trade.

We find it universally admitted that although the United States Government has been employed for over a hundred years in working upon our rivers, river commerce has steadily declined; that on the whole the rivers are not so well adapted to navigation as they once

were.

Now, where does the fault lie? Does it lie with the Board of Engineers, who are charged with the work of developing these rivers! Does it lie with Congress, or does it lie with and is it inherent in the general system, or rather no system, that exists for comprehensive river development?

Has Congress been at fault? What general legislation has it ever adopted with a view to the complete regulation of our rivers as instrumentalities of commerce? Have we ever proposed or adopted with reference to river development and regulation such a full and comprehensive measure as we adopted for the commencement and the completion of the Panama Canal? Have we ever proposed or adopted such a full and complete system of legislation as we adopted with reference to irrigation and reclamation of arid lands in 17 States?

Have the engineers been incompetent or has Congress been incompetent? The engineers demonstrated their competency in the completion of the Panama Canal, costing over $400,000,000. The engi neers have demonstrated their capacity in 23 irrigation projects in 17 States, costing nearly $80,000,000 and embracing problems in engineering and in hydraulics far surpassing in difficulty those attendant upon the building of the Panama Canal. Almost all of those projects have been completed within a period of 12 years.

You may say commerce has declined upon these rivers because the railroads have taken the place of the rivers as instrumentalities of commerce. Yes; they have taken the place; but how has that place been taken? By the cruel and brutal competition of the rail carriers with the water carriers, which resulted in the destruction of the latter; and Congress has been impotent to stay the ruthless hand of the rail carriers.

RIVER TRANSPORTATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

Is river regulation and river navigation a failure elsewhere in the civilized world? Is not river transportation employed side by side with rail transportation in every civilized country in the world that has rivers? Can you point me to one that has not fully developed its rivers or is not now engaged in the work of developing its rivers? Their work is not to reclaim swamp lands but to promote commerce. We have Germany, we have France, we have Austria, we have Russia, all of which countries either have developed or are in the work of developing their rivers to their full capacity for transportation, even going to the extreme of connecting those rivers at their headwaters and at other places with each other in such a way that they have a perfect network of waterways, consisting of natural and artificial waterways, just as complete a network as the railways themselves. There it is well understood that the rivers are to be used for cheap and bulky products, far exceeding in tonnage the valuable products, and whose cheap transportation is absolutely essential to cheap living among the people and to cheap production and manufacture everywhere.

In this country the railroads, eager to absorb the entire tonnage, have upon these products received rates that are hardly compensatory, because the products will not stand high rates of transportation, and we are constantly increasing the capitalization of the railways of the country to meet the demand of bulky transportation, which could be much more economically met by the cheaper development of our rivers for transportation. But in all those foreign and highly civilized countries we find the water carrier coordinating with the rail carrier and not sandbagged by the rail carrier, and both of them coordinating with the ocean carriers in the development of a scientific system of transportation. If the development of our rivers has failed, why has it failed? Because our engineers are incompetent? No; because Congress has been incompetent.

REDUCTION OF WATER-BORNE COMMERCE.

This reduction of water-borne commerce has been the result of the system which has been pursued by Congress. What has that system been? The system of individual initiative by Members of Congress, under which an individual Senator or an individual Representative presents a measure that relates to his particular locality, and which has the virtue perhaps of aiding commerce in some degree, but in a very large degree of expending money in the locality from which the Representative hails.

The question of flood control is a problem that can never be solved by itself alone. The formation of the Flood Control Committee in the House of Representatives was a start along a road that

will merely multiply complications the further it is traveled. The cost of a complete system of flood control, independent of other considerations, will prove too great. There is just as much necessity for flood control on all rivers as on any one river. The great flood on on the Miami in 1913 may not be repeated for a generation-perhaps not for centuries. But every year destructive floods will occur on some rivers, and the only way to have genuine safety against floods is to have it on all rivers-on every tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio; on every river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California; on every river flowing into the Pacific; on every river flowing into the Atlantic. The rivers flowing from the Cascade or Sierra Nevada Ranges, and the rivers flowing from the Appalachian Range, all of them, must be safeguarded against floods. That can only be accomplished by treating flood prevention and protection as an incident to the regulation and standardization of the river's flow for all the beneficial purposes for which the water can be used which now runs to waste in floods.

That can not be worked out through such a committee as the Flood Committee of the House of Representatives. So far as congressional contact with the problem is essential, it must come through the Commerce Committee of the Senate, the River and Harbor Committee of the House, and the Interstate Commerce Committees of the Senate and House, as being the committees most largely dealing with the problems arising out of the beneficial use of the flood waters. The thing which is the principal thing must not be subordinated to that which is the incident.

UTILIZATION OF WATER ESSENTIAL TO FLOOD CONTROL.

The moment a flood is regarded as a destructive force only, that moment the right theory of safeguarding against it is lost sight of. No plan for flood control alone would ever have solved the flood problem that has been completely solved by the Elephant Butte'e Dam on the Rio Grande River, by providing for the beneficial use of the flood waters for irrigation, which was so clearly described by Mr. Arthur P. Davis, Director of the Reclamation Service, in his statement before this committee. Every step along the line indicated by the appointment of the Flood Control Committee in the House of Representatives carries us just that much farther away from a practicable legislative plan for the prevention of floods and protection against them. The river and harbor system has proved a hopeless failure so far as rivers are concerned, and yet the House flood-control bill proposes to force the work of flood control under the old and discredited system of river improvements.

I do not know how many hundred millions have been spent on river improvement, and yet commerce has declined; and what remedy is now proposed by the action of the House of Representatives? The organization of a Committee on Flood Control; not the organization of a committee to create navigable rivers, not the organization of a committee to promote commerce, not a committee to beneficially utilize flood waters and thereby prevent floods, but a committee to control floods; and those floods, according to its action, are to be controlled only upon the lower reaches of the Mississippi River.

They invite the waters in this vast watershed, embracing one-half of the United States, to flow down to them without embarrassment or obstruction. They say to us, "Hurry them on; drain your lands; reclaim your swamp lands; let all the waters hurry down to the lower Mississippi River, and then we will take care of them." And how do they propose to take care of them?

By building levees mountain high on either side of the Mississippi River in order to prevent the overflow. And when we suggest that a policy may be pursued in the upper reaches of these rivers, in the great intermountain region which is the source of many rivers, in the great watershed drained by the Ohio and the Tennessee and the Cumberland and the upper Mississippi, that developments may be made there by which the flow of the water may be so obstructed as to prolong the length of the high-water season below, so that its flood height will be so reduced that it will be only one-half of the accustomed height, we are told that we are visionary; that nothing should be done in the way of obstructing or slowing up the progress of these waters; that nothing should be done in the shape of turning these waters into a national asset, into creators of wealth; but we should permit them to mass together for destruction below; and then a cry of distress comes up from our southern friends: "The waters coming from your region are destroying us. Give us $6,000,000 a year with which to put up mountains on each side of this great river to prevent these waters from overflowing our lands and from destroying our cities.'

EQUAL RECOGNITION OF FOUR DEPARTMENTS.

And when we tell them that there are four departments of the Government that are engaged in the work of water conservation and water study the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Argiculture, in addition to the Department of War-and that each one of these departments has two or three scientific services that are engaged not only in studies, in scientific research with reference to this matter, but in actual engineering work, and that these departments ought to be brought into coordination with the War Department in plans and in works, the reply is made to us: "No; we prefer that this entire work shall remain as it has been, in the hands of but one of these departmentsthe War Department-and that the Engineers of the Army shall alone attend to this work," without the aid of the accumulated experience and knowledge of these scientific services, many of which for over 50 years have been serving their country faithfully and well, not only in the matter of reserch but in the matter of actual engineering work. I have no words of criticism for the Engineer Corps of the Army. There is nothing that can be said in commendation of the integrity of that corps which I would not indorse; but I have the same words of commendation with reference to the integrity and the efficiency of the engineering corps of the Reclamation Service, composed of civil engineers. I assert without fear of contradiction that that engineer corps has solved more difficult problems with reference to hydraulics than have ever been considered by the Engineer Corps of the Army; and yet our Southern friends say that these men shall