THE PRESIDENCY: Signed & Consigned

By a simple motion of his right hand, President Coolidge called forth a flood of headlines in the press of the Mississippi Basin. Hundreds of citizens of New

Orleans rushed into their City Hall to make merry with expansive Mayor Arthur J. O'Keefe. The school children of New Orleans were instructed to contribute a penny each to buy a silver scroll of thanks for President Coolidge. Mayor O'Keefe called for thanksgiving services in all the churches. The Flood Control bill was law at last.

In the Louisiana legislature, rejoicing was not so wholehearted. Members from districts where Federal spillways and floodways will force dwellers to move out, defeated a resolution of thanks to the U. S. Congress. .. After the excitement had passed, citizens considered what actual Flood Control work would go ahead forthwith, and what the U. S. had done already.

After the flood (April-May, 1927), the U. S. Army engineers, who were caught in the middle of a four-year levee-improvement program, directed their energies and the $10,000,000 currently available for their work, together with two borrowed millions, to plugging crevasses, replacing revetments,* dredging out silt-choked channels. Today the Mississippi's levee system is as sound as before the flood, the Army reports.

Before the new flood-prevention works can be begun, two more legal moves are necessary: 1) To $10,000,000 which the War Department has on hand, Congress must add $15,000,000, to make up a first instalment of $25,000,000 on the $325,000,000 authorized for the whole program. The $15,000,000 will doubtless be inserted in the Second Deficiency Bill when that measure reaches the Senate this week or next. 2) The new three-man U. S. Flood Control Commission (see below) must study conflicting plans for the work and report to the President, who will pass on the final plan. The conflicts centre chiefly on the size and cost of floodways on the Boeuf River in Arkansas and Louisiana and the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana; and on raising present levees a third foot higher.

Parts of the work upon which the plans do not conflict and upon which work may go forward at once, and the amounts of money that may be spent this year, are as follows:

1) On an $8,200,000 spillway at Bonnet Carre, La.—$2,200,000. To buy one-third of the flowage rights for same—$1,000,000.

2) Raising main-stream levees two feet and widening them from eight feet thick to twelve—$7,700,000 (total authorization is $139,000,000).

3) Bank revetment—$8,000,000 (total authorization is $80,000,000).

4) Dredging, regulating, surveying, emergency fund—$3,000,000 authorized for this year.

¶ The conflicting plans of Flood Control, were drawn by the Mississippi River Commission (an interstate body) and the U. S. Army engineers, respectively. The chiefs of these two bodies were put on the new U. S. Flood Control Commission. For the third member, President Coolidge sought a civilian of unquestioned neutrality. He found and named him in Carleton W. Sturtevant, aged 64, a native of Ohio, trained in Missouri, now living in the Bronx, N. Y. A lifelong dredger of rivers, Engineer Sturtevant has worked on the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Hudson, Red