Service, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Engineer Corps of the Army-engaged in the study of matters relating to waters were working in a detached way, without consultation with each other and without union either of plans or of work, each of them jealous of the jurisdiction of the other, each of them resisting any invasion of its own jurisdiction, and all of them more or less at war with each other, although they were all the servants of the Governinent.

We concluded that the first thing to do was to bring them into cooperation through a board consisting of the chiefs of these services. who, aided perhaps by a hydroelectric engineer, a hydraulic engineer. and a sanitary engineer, would study in a connected and related way all these questions relating to the use and the control of the water and present to the National Government a connected plan of works. That report of the Inland Waterway Commission was signed by all its members. There were some qualifying words on the part of the Chief of the Engineer Corps of the Army; there were some qualifying words by myself, or, rather, words of enlargement, for I wished to create a commission of large powers to create a fund of $50,000,000 annually for 10 years for the development of our rivers and to give this board of regulation a free hand within the limits of our appropriation, simply providing that they should enter upon no work unless the money for its completion was in the Treasury. The other members of the commission believed in a large fund: they believed in the cooperation of the services; they believed in the cooperation of the Nation with the States: but some of them believed that Congress ought not to give, and some that Congress would not give, such an organization a free hand in plans and works, but that it should present its plans to Congress in detail and that those plans should be approved by Congress.

My recommendation was, in my judgment, in the line of efficiency and of celerity in the work, for we have pursued practically that system in the reclamation works of the country, where we gave the Secretary of the Interior, with the aid of a board of engineers, comparatively a free hand, and also in the construction of the Panama Canal, and both those works, in the general satisfaction which they have given the country. in my judgment, attest the wisdom of the plan.

There was no question on the part of any member of that commission that there should be cooperation between the services that relate in any degree to water; that there should be cooperation between the Nation and the States; that there should be an ample fund provided for continuous work stretching over a period of 10 years.

After that report was made the Conservation Congress was called at Washingten at the White House. That congress was attended by almost all the governors of the States and by many men of distinction from every State in the Union. By a unanimous voice they declared in favor practically of this policy. Later on the political conventions met. The Republican convention in general terms, in 1908, indorsed this policy. The Democratic convention in express terms indorsed it, declaring specifically for the treatment of a river, with all its tributaries, as a unit; declaring specifically for the cooperation of the scientific services, for the cooperation of the Nation and the States, for a large fund, and for continuous work. Later on

that policy in the last campaign was generally indorsed by the Republican Party and specifically indorsed in all its details by the Democratic convention and later by the Progressive Party convention.

During all this time waterways conventions have been held all over the country in which this general policy has been advocated. Boards of trade and chambers of commerce throughout the country have indorsed it, and there has been hardly a dissenting note, so far as the course of legislation is concerned.

Six years ago, in 1907, before the Inland Waterways Commission made its report, I presented a tentative bill in the Senate providing for the cooperation of the services, the cooperation of the Nation and States, a large fund, a regulating board, and continuous work. That bill had a hard time in the Committee on Commerce, of which I was a member, but finally, after a struggle, I got out a modified bill, unanimously reported by the Committee on Commerce, providing for an inland waterway commission, which was to make plans for works upon the lines which I have suggested.

Just about that time an unfortunate controversy arose between Mr. Roosevelt and Congress, in which an effort was made by withholding appropriations and forbidding the service of Government officials on these investigating commissions, and in other ways to check him in the lines that he was pursuing of independent investigation regarding the conservation of the natural resources of the country. As a result of that controversy, during the closing days of the session, when I was endeavoring day after day to bring up that modified bill for consideration, with the absolute assurance that if it once got before the Senate it would pass, its pathway was obstructed by two eminent members of the Republican Party of the Senate and by two eminent members of the Democratic Party, who stood on watch to prevent its consideration.

I wish to say that during that time a fuller and more complete bill which I had offered was referred to the then Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, for his report, and while at that time the Corps of Engineers was hardly friendly to this idea, for it involved in some degree, as they regarded it, though I think mistakenly, a trespass upon their jurisdiction, Mr. Taft made a report, extracts from which I shall insert in the Record, in which he unqualifiedly indorsed this policy, and said that the time had come for comprenhive plans involving the intelligence and the energies of all the services involved and all the Sovereigns involved. That bill was never reported. Since then at every Congress I have introduced a bill of a similar nature, and have sought by amendment to the river and harbor bill to secure action upon this subject. It is only recently that we have seen the dawn of a new light in that committee.

I am sorry the Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Nelson], the chairman of the Commerce Committee, is not in his seat, but I do not think that I do him an injustice when I say that for some time he looked upon this enlarged policy with great caution; and yet the other day, as the result of his experience with reference to these bills, he declared that in the future he would favor enlarged action upon this subject that he was against the consideration of these questions in the detached way in which they have been considered, and would

favor the organization of a board or commission and the creation of a large fund. He went so far as to declare that he would leave the expenditure of that fund to the members of that commission as a means of securing more comprehensive and more effective results than those attained under the present system. The Senator from Minnesota is in his seat now, and I ask him whether I have correctly stated his position upon this question?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, in answer to the kindly question of the Senator from Nevada, I beg leave to say that, in a general way, the Senator has expressed my sentiments. I have come to the conclusion that we could do much better work and should squander less money if we appropriated a gross sum and placed it in charge of a board of five or seven competent Army engineers with power to determine what improvements should be made, and where, in our rivers and harbors.

While a great many of the improvements we are making are fully justified in the interests of navigation, yet my observation has led me to believe that in a great many instances we really squander money; it is wasted on improvements that never ought to have been made; but what can we do? Representatives and Senators are clamorous; they introduce their bills and it is utterly impossible to resist them. I think it would require almost supreme power to infuse a new spirit into Representatives and Senators, as well as into the American people, to bring about a reform. I think the work should first be started through our great newspapers and the magazines, from the pulpit, and along educational lines, to infuse people with a new spirit, with less of the spirit of Mammon, so that we would all come to look upon this question just as we would if it were our own business. I am sure that if we were to look upon river and harbor improvements as though it were a matter of our own, and the money came out of our own pockets, we would in many instances refrain from scattering the money as it has been scattered in the case of many improvements.

I owe an opology to the Senator from Nevada for taking up so much time. I should be glad if the Senate would allow me to have a vote on my amendment.

Mr. BRANDEGEE. Mr. President

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from Nevada yield to the Senator from Connecticut?

Mr. NEWLANDS. Certainly, I yield.

Mr. BRANDEGEE. Mr. President, I desire to send a proposed amendment to the amendment to the desk, which I shall offer at the proper time. I do not care to puncture the address of the Senator from Nevada, but at the conclusion of his remarks I shall ask that the amendment be read to the Senate.

Mr. NEWLANDS. I did not catch the last remark of the Senator. Mr. BRANDEGEE. I will ask that the amendment be read to the Senate after the Senator from Nevada has finished.

Mr. NEWLANDS. Mr. President, I will state to the Senator from Minnesota that I will not delay him long in the consideration of his amendment. I call attention to the remarks of the Senator from Minnesota, who has long served upon the Commerce Committee of the Senate, who has had a large experience in the development of our

rivers, who has served on committees that have made investigations of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and other rivers, and whose experience has probably been as large as that of any Member of this body. He testifies to the ineffectiveness of the present system, and the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Burton] has also testified to it. I caught a few of the latter's phrases. He said there has been lack of care in the selection of projects and lack of care in methods.

He speaks of the ineffectiveness of expenditures already made, but he also speaks of the experimental side of this question as if we had to go through a further period of experiment before we could agree upon an effective system.

Mr. President, I claim that the period of experiment has expired. We have been experimenting with this question for over 100 years. We know that other nations have dealt with it successfully. We know that in France river transportation and canal transportation and railway transportation all are coordinated and each has a proper place in their system of transportation. We know that in Germany they have pursued their waterway development side by side with their railway development and their ocean transportation development, and they have conducted them all in such a way as to make them dovetail into each other, the waterway transportation cooperating with the railway transportation, and both of them cooperating with ocean transportation in such a way as to diminish the inconvenience and the cost, and in such a way as to make Germany's course absolutely triumphant in the advancement of its commerce.

Waterway transportation is no new thing. Our only difficulty is that we have not improved and developed our waterways in any consecutive method. We have allowed the railways to sandbag the waterways. We have allowed one public servant to destroy another public servant. The result is that these two servants do not cooperate in the service of the country, but the efficiency of the one has been practically destroyed by the monopolistic and destructive efforts of the other.

There is no reason why we should not make the same study in this country that Germany has made of the complete development of waterway, railway, and ocean transportation, and the first step in that direction is the proper development of our inland waterways. We have to-day the Panama Canal, a connecting link between the waterway systems of the Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, and the Gulf coast, including the entire valley of the Mississippi River. There is no reason why in the future vessels of standard draft should not start from St. Louis, go down the Mississippi River, through the canal, up to the Pacific coast, up into San Francisco Bay, and up both the Sacramento and the San Joaquin Rivers. There is no reason why they should not pursue the same course regarding the Columbia and the Snake Rivers, connecting as they do four States and reaching far into the interior. There is no reason why this entire system should not be planned in such a way as to secure a contemporaneous development of the reclamation of our swamp lands, the reclamation of our arid lands, the development of our forests, and the development of hydroelectric power, which is daily becoming more and more a factor in our domestic life and entering into domestic activities more than any other force.

When I interjected something of this kind this morning, while the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Burton] was speaking, and urged the importance of dealing with the subject in a large way through a commission of experts, the distinguished Senator said something about "abdicating legislative functions." Is it a legislative function to do executive work?

All this is work of planning and of construction. It is simply a proper exercise of our legislative functions to create an effective or ganization for doing effective executive work and to give that organization large and comprehensive powers so that there will be not only plans made but work done. If we allow such an organization to be hamstrung all the way along by the agencies of obstructive legislation, we shall never secure substantial results.

Mr. President. I know the Senator from Minnesota is anxious to have a vote, and I shall not at this time conclude what I have to say. I shall only say, with reference to this particular provision in which the Senator from Minnesota is interested, regarding a cooperative arrangement between the National Government and the State of Minnesota regarding a dam promotive both of navigation and water power, that it illustrates and accentuates everything I have been saying. His admendment proposes practically a cooperation between the Nation and a State in the utilization of a structure to be placed in a river in such a way as to meet the demands of the national jurisdiction in the promotion of navigation and to meet the demands of the State jurisdiction in a matter of proper domestic development.

Why should the Senator from Minnesota be compelled to come here to Congress with this specific project and ask our assent? Why should any Senator or Representative be compelled to come here with reference to every project of this nature when by general legislation we can provide for cooperation between the Nation and the States and provide a fund under which that cooperation may be accomplished? Why should the time of the Congress of the United States be taken up in the constant discussion of individual projects here and there all over the United States, which may be multiplied indefinitely if we once enter upon the question, when by turning the matter over to a competent board, with ample funds, as we did the Panama Canal and the reclamation work, we will secure not only more effective results but more speedy results?

This very bill shows, by the analysis presented to me by the Corps of Engineers, that nearly $37,000,000 is to be expended, of which over $14,000,000 goes for harbors and about $23,000,000 for rivers. That has been somewhat increased by the amendments of the Senate committee, aggregating some three or four million dollars additional. Twenty-two million dollars is appropriated in this bill for the regulation of rivers, and you will find that, of all that $22,000,000, $15.000.000 is to be spent upon the Mississippi River and its tributaries. With the consent of the Senate, I will put in the Record this analysis of the bill as it passed the House, made at my request by the Corps of Engineers. My idea was to group the appropriations for rivers made in the river and harbor bill, not under the head of States but under the head of the respective drainage areas or river systems. considering every river with its tributaries as a unit.

We are already entering upon this work in a large way, but we are entering upon it in a detached way, in an unscientific way, in