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parts of America, until the American Negro improves a bit. But at any rate, the missionary must needs protest against evils wherever he is, and if he does so in the Congo it is only his inalienable prerogative. But men of affairs Must always look at things from a very broad point of view, and take in matters in their relative sense. Thus our government would be quite indignant if Belgium addressed a remonstrance to the powers about our treatment of the Negro.

It is to be observed that many excellent gentlemen are associated in this agitation against the Congo, but they have been misinformed by the interested parties. One of the ways the missionaries are induced to spread abroad these reports is for them to be invited to make addresses in Exeter Hall, London, when they get home. Few can resist such a chance, and never once have any missionaries been invited to speak there except those who were hostile to the Congo administration.

I can testify on this matter from personal experience, it being eleven years since my first trip to the Congo, six of which were spent on the field, at points over a thousand miles in the interior. I have conducted three expeditions, and come into close personal contact with every class of white men, and with tens of thousands of natives of many different tribes. The later of these expeditions were for scientific investigations necessitating specific personal examination into the condition of the natives. On the whole, they are better treated than those in any other African colony I have visited, and my visits included French, Portuguese, British, German, and Spanish territories.

The "mutilations," of which photographs are often published, have nearly every one of them been perpetrated by the natives on one another as a punishment for crime. Livingstone found the Congo natives doing this before the Belgians ever set foot in Africa. I, myself, have saved a number of natives from being so mutilated by black chiefs or black masters. Only last spring, I kept Chisakanka, of the Bampende, from cutting off the ear of a boy who had stolen some cloth from my camp.

The white men do their best to prevent and stop these mutilations. Sometimes they occur in spite of all efforts, just as the Indians continued to scalp their foes-even to torture the living-long after the establishment of the United States Government in America. It is an unworthy piece of legerdemain to make

snap-shots of these mutilated victims of the savagery of the African, and use them as evidence of the white man's misrule.

In thirty years' time, more has been done in the Congo toward civilization and Christianity than in any similar territory for the same period in all history. I know a son of a cannibal who tried to kill and eat Stanley, who is now a Presbyterian elder, and a type-setter for a monthly publication in Central Africa.

It is also to be noted that the interests of all concerned, natives and others alike, demand the preservation of the neutrality of the Congo. If it should be divided up, would Germany do better with its share than it is doing in Demaraland? Would England profit if its great rivals get more of Africa? Would France have any more money to add to its tremendous African budget, when it admits that Belgium is making a greater success of Belgian Congo than it makes of the French Congo? Does any fairminded man imagine that nations with such immense powers would be likely to treat a native rebellion with less severity than each of them has shown in times past? But they can. all administer a word of caution to little Belgium, which may be made to go a long way, and at the same time have any share in commerce there which they can spare from their already immense holdings in their own parts of Africa.

But America has begun to take cognizance of the Congo in a way likely to do more good, and to improve conditions more thoroughly and more permanently than any number of parliamentary resolutions or petitions. The demand for rubber and copper is so great and is increasing so fast that new sources of supply must be looked for. The financial world has found out that both of these commodities exist in the Congo in great abundance but are not being developed, owing to insufficie. cy of capital, and to fears about future political complications. The result has been the organization of powerful companies, which have obtained immense grants in the Congo and intend to send many men there to develop the properties. If abuses exist, they will certainly now come to light. If not, the truth will be known fully and finally. These companies intend to help deserving missions and scientists, and to welcome every good work, and to cooperate with every effort for the introduction of civilization and the establishment of order and good government.

OUR GREAT RIVER

WHAT IT IS AND MAY BE MADE FOR COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE, AND SANITATION—THE LARGEST INLAND PROJECT OF OUR TIME

BY

W J MCGEE

DIRECTOR ST. LOUIS PUBLIC MUSEUM, GEOLOGIST U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, ETHNOLOGIST IN CHARGE BUREAU AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, FORMERLY PRESIDENT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, ETC., ETC.

A

GREAT public movement has arisen in the Mississippi Valley. The unrest began a decade or two ago with the decline of steam-packet traffic under what rivermen deemed unfair interference of railroad interests, and matured with advances in shipping costs and decrease in shipping facilities as river traffic was forced farther and farther into the background and as the productions of field and factory and mine grew larger and larger.

Now that the ablest railroad magnates publicly confess the inadequacy of the railroads to meet requirements, the discontent has grown into a movement akin to revolt on the part of the millions of farmers, small manufacturers, and retail dealers of the interior. The movement has the sympathy of statesmen and state executives in a score of states. National lawmakers feel that the nation's strength may more surely be maintained by making better men inland than by building bigger warships and fortifications alongshore, and hence advocate the transfer of some millions from military appropriations to civilian measures. In some degree, the movement has assumed the form of a demand for recognition of the rights of the interior as against those of the seaboard. Five years ago the plains people between the Alleghanies and the Cordilleras mildly appealed; to-day they demand.

With the completion of the Chicago Drainage Canal at a cost of over $50,000,000, the suitability of this waterway for navigation became evident. Congressman Lorimer, of Illinois, after a picturesque boat trip through the canal and thence down the Des Plaines and Illinois. Rivers to the Mississippi, obtained estimates for canalizing the rivers in such manner as to open a navigable waterway from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi-the final estimate being

$31,500,000. About the same time Congressman Ransdell, of Louisiana, and some of his associates organized a Rivers and Harbors Congress to voice the policy of voting larger and more regular appropriations for the improvement of the rivers and harbors of the United States.

Naturally, Lorimer and Ransdell came into coöperation; and they were soon joined by many delegations and by the statesmen of neighboring commonwealths. About the middle of November last a conference convened in St. Louis as a Deep Waterways Convention; some 1,300 delegates from twenty-two states participated. For the first time in history, Chicago and St. Louis and New Orleans joined forces with the rest of the interior cities in a common plan, while the several bodies devoted to river improvement also united for the first time. After two days' discussion, the conferees adopted a plan for permanent organization as the Lakes-to-Gulf Deep Waterway Association.

The Trans-Mississippi Congress, which is well known for originating irrigation and reclamation projects, the construction of the Galveston harbor, etc., had announced as the chief object of its recent session at Kansas City the advocacy of a ship subsidy measure. Two Cabinet officers, several United States Senators and Representatives, a number of Governors, and numerous state legislators were among the 600 delegates sent from a dozen states. The one great issue on which there was virtually unanimous agreement was that of inland river improvement sufficient to relieve the present traffic congestion.

In December, the Rivers and Harbors Congress convened in Washington with delegations representing nearly every state of the Union. The primary aim of the organization is to give expression to the desire of the people for regular

annual appropriations of at least $50,000,000 for the improvement of rivers and harbors. Coupled with agreement on this point, there was a practically unanimous sentiment in favor of enlarging the customary appropriations for the improvement of inland navigation. It is safe to say that during the past quartercentury no other body of delegates produced so deep an impression on the legislative and executive branches of the Government.

And little wonder. The delegates from the interior alone felt themselves representatives of twenty-odd states and 40,000,000 people demanding fuller recognition of natural rights. The delegations from Chicago and St. Louis declared their readiness either to undertake the construction of the Lakes-to-Gulf Waterway at their own cost, if given governmental sanction, or to underwrite bonds for the purpose to the extent of $200,000,000 or even $500,000,000. And not a few of the delegates privately intimated to their representatives and senators their judgment that in the ensuing elections the practical plank of improved transportation facilities by river improvement will out-count the tariff or any other issue.

THE PRESENT CONGESTION OF TRAFFIC

While these conferences give direction to the popular movement, they did not create it. The cry has gone out from the Dakotas that wheat is rotting in the bins because there are not enough cars to carry it to market; from Nebraska and Iowa that corn is moldering in the cribs because of exorbitant railroad tariffs; from Texas and Arkansas that cotton is being held up by reason of the delays or the prohibitive costs of shipment. Illinois and Missouri and other coal-producing states complain that fuel resources are wasting, and in all the rest of the interior fuel famines are threatening because coal cannot be transported in sufficient quantities to meet growing industrial and domestic needs. The river towns say that the old-time packets are gone and that capital shrinks from new packet-lines pending some assurance of protection of the navigable waterways against obstructing railroad bridges and cut-throat railroad competition. Over all sounds the confession of the railroads that they cannot meet the demands for transportation without more cars, more locomotives, and more tracks, cannot build these without new mines, and can neither open new mines nor operate enlarged railroads without more labor than the

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country affords. In a word, pressure is felt by every industry in every portion of the interior from the Appalachians to the Rockies and from the forty-ninth parallel to the Gulf, and the feeling is rife that the lusty states but a half-century old have outgrown their swaddlings and must be permitted to work out their own salvation through internal improvements. The press of the interior has become a unit in the advocacy of a paramount issue and campaign jingles lodge in the minds of millions. "River regulation is rate regulation" or "We represent the tonnage" actually impart a thrill akin to that awakened by the inspiring slogan "Remember the Alamo" or the lost challenge of "Fifty-four forty or fight." "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," meant less in an earlier day than "Fourteen feet through the valley" at this beginning of 1907. It is a sign of the times that Speaker Cannon has kept time to the measure and our Chief Magistrate has joined in the chorus of the swinging pronouncement (roughly adapted to the air of our Battle Hymn):

"We represent the people who want the WaterwayFourteen feet through the valley.

We represent the shippers who have the biggest say— Fourteen feet through the valley.

We want the ships a-running and lowering the rate—
Fourteen feet through the valley.

And if we get the water we'll guarantee the freight—
Fourteen feet through the valley.

"We're going to have the Water-
We're bound to have the Way;
We've got the tonnage waiting
To make the vessels pay;

And we'll get the fifty million
With Uncle Sam's O. K.—
Fourteen feet through the valley."

THE PEOPLE WILLING TO PAY

The chairman of the Appropriations Committee has pointed out that the national income for the present and ensuing years is already virtually allotted in such manner as to debar considerable appropriations for river improvement unless sweeping redistribution be made or other sources of income be found. Several influential advocates of the deep waterway urge a diversion-if needful-of a part of the estimated naval appropriation to the ap propriation for rivers and harbors. This is not with the view of weakening but rather with that of strengthening the national defence by opening a way for placing a fleet in the Great

Lakes on short notice something not now possible under existing treaties.

Other suggestions include an income tax, an inheritance (or better, a bequest) tax, a special revenue impost, the issue of bonds, etc.; and there are suggestions that the United States profit by the example of France in arranging a popular loan both to secure funds and to inspire patriotism, especially on the part of those citizens whose interests are directly at stake. Most advocates of the deep waterway, however, express themselves as content to leave all fiscal matters to the Government, merely expressing readiness to meet any tax or subscribe any bond issue requisite to bring relief from an increasingly intolerable condition.

THE RIVERS MUST BE OPENED

Along the Mississippi and its principal tributaries there is a strong feeling that the nation has worked an injustice by retaining domain over navigable waters, yet in such manner as to discourage if not absolutely prevent navigation. It is even alleged-with an appearance of strong probability that railroad bridges erected under Federal charters have sometimes been so designed and located as to obstruct navigation. The most conservative agree that river affairs suffer from lack of Cabinet supervision. While river administration is vested largely in the Corps of Engineers of the War Department, the holder of the War portfolio is primarily concerned with military problems and duties rather than interior affairs, so that there is no official whose province is first to acquaint himself with the interior waterways and then to present their needs to the Executive and the Congress.

This condition, like the fiscal one, has led to various suggestions: to renewal of the oftrepeated project of creating a Department of Works charged with the duty of administering public enterprises now parceled out in various Departments; to the suggestion that the inland waterways be placed in charge of the Department of the Interior, which now controls extensive irrigation and reclamation surveys and works, or of the Department of Agriculture, which already deals with matters directly affecting rivers (rainfall, drainage, stream-gauging, forestry, etc.); to the idea of building up a new bureau in the Department of the Interior, or Agriculture, or Commerce and Labor; and to the plan of creating a Commission comprising representatives from the several Departments

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