The Rock Island Argus

IMPROVING THE MISSISSIPPI

The following, very remarkable and simple paragraph in regard to the necessity for making the Mississippi river question a national question, appears in Mr. Shaler’s article "The Floods of the Mississippi Valley," in the May Atlantic:

"The problem of the Mississippi water system is a national problem. It will soon become so urgent that it must be treated in a national way. If the federal government, led by a sectional feeling that is in striking contrast with the state of the public mind a decade ago, refuses to undertake the matter, then it will necessarily be undertaken by some form of association among the states that are most immediately concerned therein. It needs no Daniel come to judgment to show that such an associated action of states in a matter of continuous governmental work would be full of the gravest political dangers. It would be a federation within the nation for mutual protection against a danger that the general government had failed to repel. It could not fail to weaken the bond of common interest, the source of common obligation which we gave a generation of labor and of life to affirm. Once let it be established in the public mind that the vital interests of each section must be cared for by associations of the states that are immediately concerned therein, and the idea that a great all-sustaining common wealth will be fatally weakened. Such a sundering of the moral union of the people would pave the way to, if it did not itself warrant, a political disintegration of the nation. It seems to me certain that no such policy of blind neglect can ever meet with continued approval in this country. If the governments of Europe, despite their burden of war, and of constant preparation for war, can care for the condition of their water ways, if Great Britain can secure to the people of India the advantages of storage reservoirs to meet the needs of drought times, our government, free from all burden of armaments and soon to be free from the load of national debt, will surely prove that it is willing to do all that is possible to meet such exigencies. Against this tide of necessity, political prejudices and sectional jealousies can make no permanent headway."