Word: flooding
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Thus opened the Flood Control Conference, called by Mayors Thompson of Chicago, O'Keefe of New Orleans and Miller of St. Louis, but with Mayor Thompson the dominant spirit. Seven U. S. Senators and two Cabinet members (Dwight Filley Davis, Secretary of War and James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor) were present; so were Mayors from many a Mississippi Valley city; so was onetime U. S. Senator William Lorimer, once barred from the Senate after an investigation of his campaign expenditures; so was many another notable...
Speeches numerous and lengthy fell into two classes, depending on whether the speaker did or did not represent the Federal Government. Of the latter sort was Mayor Thompson's address which termed the flood "an indictment of and challenge to the Federal Government," something which "might have been expected in China but not in the rich America with its boasted good government...
Then spoke Secretary Dwight F. Davis, who said he came at the request of the President and to indicate the Administration's sympathy with flood sufferers. "The Mississippi can and must be controlled," said Secretary Davis. "The nation whose engineers built the Panama Canal despite seemingly insuperable obstacles can solve the . . . problem of flood control." He added that the solution was a matter for the next session of Congress to determine...
Major General Edgar Jadwin, Chief of the U. S. Army engineers, rose to his feet. General Jadwin reiterated the army-engineer insistence upon levees as the backbone of flood prevention. He said that though the flood has submerged 20,000 square miles, it would have submerged 30,000 had levees not restricted its spread. General Jadwin also attacked the popular theory that reforestation would prevent future floods; he pointed out that in 1844, when the valley was thickly forested, it experienced one of the greatest floods of its history...
After a three-day session, the Conference disbanded, after the adoption of resolutions calling on the Federal Government to supply immediate flood relief and requesting congressional and presidential action on the prevention of further floods. It was expected that the resolutions would offer some suggestions as to flood prevention, but the committee on resolutions was apparently so divided between adherents of levees, reservoirs, reforesting, spillways and various combinations of these methods that no specific resolutions were adopted...