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HIS IS the first day of July. Officially at least, the 1927 flood in the Mississippi Valley is over. Newspapers assure us of this fact. Everybody says so; it must be true.

Nevertheless, figures made available by the Red Cross on June 21, show that 590,530 persons have been cared for during the emergency; on that date there were still 63,378 persons in refugee camps, while 242,484 persons were being fed. In addition, relief forces were feeding 157,628 animals. In Louisiana 203,966 persons have received help, while 150,200 were still being cared for on that date. In Mississippi the total number cared for was 168,936, while 101,400 persons were still receiving help. Also, on that date, there were still two million acres of farm and pasture land under

water.

Heavy rains in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana have prolonged flood conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi by diminishing the rate of the river's fall. Cotton acreage in northern Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee has been reduced 529,000 acres by the floodwaters, as compared with the acreage in this section in 1926, according

to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Nevertheless, the flood is over, and the people of the Lower Valley are beginning again.

Secretary Mellon has announced that, at the close of the fiscal year, there will be a surplus in the treasury, from this year's taxation, of $600,000,000. This is an amazing amount of money, even for the richest country in the world-an overflowing treasury, but as yet there has been nothing said about using any of this surplus for rehabilitation of the flooded areas of the Mississippi Valley. And by the general term rehabilitation, the people of the Lower Valley mean protection from future floods.

America gave $20,000,000 to Russian and $100,000,000 to European sufferers, in wartime, but not one cent from the National Treasury has been suggested, at this writing, to safeguard the future of the vast and fertile valley which lies in the heart of the United States.

The people of this country, however, have not been so slow to show their sympathy. They have contributed $16,100,000 already to the Red Cross. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, gave this as the official figure while in New Orleans on June 28. With this sum,

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wonderful work has been done. This money has saved lives, fed refugees and maintained camps for many thousands of homeless persons; it has given medical attention to the sick, and is now helping the farmers toward a new start. But the sixteen million, one hundred thousand dollars will go no further than that. What assurance have the people of the Mississippi Valley that there will not be bigger and better floods next year? What will Congress do about it?

Maps by United States engineers show the actual drainage area of the Mississippi River. Waters from the Red, the Arkansas, the Missouri, the upper Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers must flow, finally, into the main channel of the lower Mississippi, thence to the Gulf of Mexico. This drainage area is like a gigantic funnel, narrowing as it approaches the Gulf. It includes a part of twenty-two states. Such states as Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky, lying wholly within the area.

More than half of these states receive all of the benefits of Mississippi River drainage and but few of the hardships which this drainage brings about in flood times. The high waters in the Mississippi, to which all the states mentioned contribute, must be taken care of by the states lying along the rivers-the Mississippi and its largest tributaries. In the past, each state looked to its own levees as best it could, using its taxes and such sums as it could beg from Congress. From Cairo to the Gulf, where levees are used to protect

the rich bottom lands, the same policy has been followed: "If our state levees hold, well, those folks down-stream must watch out for themselves."

More and more water drains into the Mississippi every year, owing to the growth of cities along the river, the cutting away of forests, the closing of natural outlets, the reclamation of natural reservoirs into farmland protected behind levees, and also to increased drainage facilities.

Added to all these reasons for high water in 1927, came simultaneous rainfalls over nearly all of the drainage area. The tributaries rose at the same time, and these swollen streams and rivers poured their torrents into the main stream. If all the levees along the Mississippi, from Cairo to the Gulf, had remained intact-which they did not-the water would have poured over the tops of most of them.

The states that suffer mostly from overflows, are those which are unfortunate enough to lie at the lower end of the narrowing funnel: Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The case of Louisiana is typical. This state has spent every cent that it could raise by taxation and bond issue upon levees that proved inadequate. It has not only spent all the money it has for levees, but it has gone into debt to boot, and to-day is confronted by a vast area still under water, ruined crops and, in some sections, a population that is penniless. By the time this article appears in print, many of the people will be hungry. For, despite the work of the Red Cross-and it is notable work-the restitution is not a one hundredth part of the loss.

The 1927 flood-"the greatest peace-time disaster that the United States has ever known,"-to quote Herbert Hoover-was a good newsstory; interesting, dramatic, terrible. For a time every newspaper in the United States was full of it. Hun

dreds of journalists wrote about it. Some of the articles were excellent, some were not so convincing, but it will be observed that the men who knew least about the history of the Mississippi, were those who, with a gesture, solved the problem of the river's future. The men who have lived their lives beside the Mississippi are not so sure; sure that a solution can be worked out,-but not so sure that it will be worked out.

It appears, at this time, that the solution will include higher and stronger levees, built to government specification; outlets or spillways call them what you like-in several places below the mouth of the Yazoo River, and some method of sourcestream control or reservoirs above that point. Part of these thingsprobably all of them-must be done before there will be any safety from overflows. And yet, there are arguments against each of these solutions. Since 1879 there have been men who advocated controlled outlets or spillways, and there was another and stronger group in Congress which opposed such spillways and has stood for "levees only" or confinement of the river between dikes. Some members of the latter group have changed their minds this year.

But opponents of spillways tell us that these outlets are useful only to the Lower Valley and would be ineffective at points higher up in the stream; they say that such outlets

mean the building of sand-bars by the river's current, as it sweeps through the new opening; they point out that each spillway calls for hundreds of miles of additional levee-building, as these artificial streams or outlets must be protected on both sides, all the way from the river to the body of water into which they empty. Despite the arguments against such. spillways, a levee at Poydras, some twenty miles below New Orleans, was dynamited to make a similar outlet, when the flood waters were threatening New Orleans. Such desperate measures had never been taken before, officially, at least.

But already the propagandists are announcing, in fourteen-point type, that "New Orleans has always been safe from the Mississippi; New Orleans will always be safe." If this be true, then some one blundered rather badly in dynamiting a levee which sent thousands of acres of rich farm-land under water, made nearly four thousand people homeless, destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of property, and an enormous number of the fur-bearing animals which have made this section the richest fur-producing region in the United States.

Such obvious propaganda defeats itself. itself. The question is not, "Was New Orleans safe this year?" but rather, "Will New Orleans be safe in the future?" The answer to the first question is immaterial now, but the answer to the second is of paramount importance. I do not doubt that New Orleans will be safe in the future, for it has learned its lesson, has paid dearly for it, is still paying and will continue to pay for some time to come. At this moment New

Orleans is caring for three thousand or more refugees from the flooded district where the artificial crevasse was made, and the city has promised restitution to those whose properties were destroyed.

Engineers seem to agree that there must be levees always, no matter what other steps are taken to prevent future floods-and they back up their statement with facts and figures taken from the conquest of the valley of the Nile, and from the past history of the Mississippi. If levees are abandoned, they point out, millions of acres of the most fertile soil in the world will be taken by the river's overflow. These fertile acres, now protected, are needed by the people of the United States.

The question of reservoirs is one even more difficult to solve, for where in the Mississippi Valley, can such storage spaces for water be built? Storage spaces which must be as large as the state of New Jersey, and may not be large enough even then! This seems to be a question of bottling the flood, rather than draining it. Yet, the run-off must be slowed up in some way, for, from the Rockies to the Appalachians, erosion is taking place, and every year much of the richest top-soil is carried off down the Mississippi. It was this rich top-soil that built up the Mississippi Delta; a considerable amount of it now goes out to sea in the river's muddy stream. This loss continues day after day, year after year. Unnoticed, unchecked, a great part of the country's richest farming land is being destroyed; in time, it will be unfit for cultivation. If you consider this, you can readily see that

flood control is not the problem of the dwellers in the Lower Valley only, but a matter of real concern for the entire nation.

It is hardly possible that erosion can be checked, and improbable that floods can be done away with for all time. But the Mississippi can be slowed down and curbed. This must be done if the permanency of our agriculture is to be assured.

Theodore H. Price, writing in "Commerce and Finance" for June 15, points out that prosperity will follow the flood, as it has, he says, nearly all of the wars and other disasters of modern times. The Civil War made business hum in the United States, he writes; increased business followed the San Francisco earthquake and fire; the World War made America the richest of nations. All this may be true, may be sound reasoning, but what Mr. Price fails to point out is that one man's disaster is another man's gold. The 1927 floods may produce good business in the country at large, but those who suffered most will gain nothing from it. Many farmers who have been ruined will never recover.

The Mississippi River belongs to the United States. It is too large and too powerful for the individual states to control. Many of the states lying beside it have spent all the money available, and given all their strength to a losing fight. They are incapable of fighting it further. The river drains a vast area unaffected by flood but which should be held equally responsible for its ravages.

The United States undertook the building of the Panama Canal, the protection of Cuba and the Philip

land of the Acadians, two hundred miles west of the Mississippi, a land that had never known flood before within the memory of living man. Had either of these disastrous breaks occurred a month earlier, every paper in the country would have been full of the horrors. But the flood was officially "over."

The day that Lindbergh landed in Paris, this was happening on Bayou Teche in southwest Louisiana.

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Afternoon. A sleepy little town, swooning in the simmering heat. A negro funeral procession moving slowly down the street; a hearse bearing a coffin; many negro men and women walking slowly after it. The women wear white, the men black, for this is a member of a "burying-society" who lies dead today. Black shadows on the yellow dust of the road. A mangy cur follows the hearse, its tongue lolling out, keeping close in the shadow.

Hot. Hot. Palmetto fans sway back and forth as the feet of the marchers stir the dust of the long, dry street; a fine grey film settles upon black, sweat-streaked faces. Slowly the procession passes out of the town to the negro cemetery at the edge of Bayou Teche. Here moss-draped oaks stand beside the water, long streamers of grey moss dipping into the stream. The stream is level full-higher than any one remembers it in other years. The cemetery is cool and seems dim after the simmering heat of the road.

The hearse stops at the open grave. The fresh earth is piled beside it. Men and women stand in a semicircle, holding red lilies in black hands. The coffin is placed upon