National Affairs: River Junket

One day last week Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley lunched with President Hoover at the White House, hurried out to Boiling Field, climbed into a big Army plane, flew off on an important mission. On one of the longest river junkets ever undertaken by a Secretary of War, he was going to inspect the Mississippi from (navigable) source to delta, from Minneapolis to the Gulf. President Hoover wanted him to find out how the $325,000,000 flood control program was progressing, how navigational improvements along the stream were getting on, what could be done to speed up the work as an aid to unemployment. To date 20,000 men have put 70 million cubic yards of dirt into new levees at a cost of $90,000,000—and the project is not one-sixth completed. With Secretary Hurley went Mayor Generals Lytle Brown, Chief of Engineers, and Thomas Q. Ashburn, chairman of Inland Waterways Corp. The War Secretary would begin his 3,000-mi. excursion at Minneapolis aboard a small river boat and cruise rapidly down through the six engineering districts of the Mississippi. Problem No. 1: Should a gft. channel be dug north from St. Louis to Minneapolis? Later on Secretary Hurley was prepared to inspect by airplane the floodways at New Madrid and Bonnet Carre, and the Le Boeuf Spillway.