freight on the Sacramento, northbound, consists of merchandise of every type-seed. grain, cereals of all kinds, bags to put the crops in, and, of course, supplies of all kinds for those towns along the river. The southbound tonnage is grain, beans, dried fruits, rice, canned fruit, etc. The barges have a capacity of 800 tons.

Maj. HARNEY. Our total tonnage was 184,000 tons. Of the volume of tonnage that we carry from Sacramento to all points in the Sacramento River, more than half of that total volume is destined for and shipped from points above Sacramento. The last trip to Red Bluff we ma le June 23, 1911. It took us 30 days to make the run. We had a very big freight on that trip. We got up to Tehama, 13 miles from Red Bluff, and we could not make that 13 miles. We had to haul all the freight by team to the cars and ship it by rail. In the early days the river came up usually about the 1st of November. Since 1906 or 1907 we do not have high river until about the middle of January. That is the reason we have not been operating to Red Bluff.

(NOTE.-At 10 o'clock we passe 1 the steamer Sacramento loa ling grain at Nelsons Landing. She carries 500 tons. The boat we are on, the Colusa, can carry 600 tons when fully loaded.)

Maj. HARNEY. We carry grain on light-draft barges. We go up to the upper reaches of the river with those barges and loa 100 or 150 tons and keep on loa ling that barge as we come down the river, loa ling it to its full capacity, which is 800 to 850 tons. We built those barges so that we are able to take out 400 tons on a draft of 20 inches. In some places on the river we only have 26 inches. This boat draws about 29 inches light (Colusa).

Colusa has the largest tonnage of grain above Sacramento. So far as merchan lise is concerned, that is determined by the population. The steamship transportation trucks the freight 8 or 10 miles from each bank of the river to their docks, ani carries it to San Francisco 20 per cent below the railroal rates.

We passe I canneries yester lay that are full of cannel fruit. Last year they were empty.

Capt. ANDERSON. Tonnage was less an passenger traffic was less in 1914 than in 1913. The answer is, merchants in the interior of the State were not doing the business in 1914 they were in 1913, and travel was not as great.

The Interstate Commerce Commission took from certain interior points in California their terminal rates. In the readjustment of the rates the railroads were to apply to an interior point, like Sacramento, the terminal rate plus the local. The rate on canned goods from the terminal to New York was 85 cents. A canal boat line put in a rate of 35 cents on canned goods and similar freight, and the Southern Pacific, fearing that the canned goods would get away from them, applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to issue a 40-cent rate. The local rail rate on canned goods from Sacramento to San Francisco is $2.20; from Fresno, $5. Now, then, a cannery in Sacramento gave me 200 tons of canned goods to bring to San Francisco and deliver to the Southern Pacific Co. for shipment to New York. My rate was $1.50 per ton from Sacramento to San Francisco. Inside of a week the Southern Pacific applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to put in a proportional rate of $1.50 on canned goods from Sacramento to San Francisco.

Maj. HARNEY. Eight or ten years ago the commerce was mostly grain on this upper Sacramento River. One farmer owned 54,000 acres. The result is that practically all of that land has been sold. With crops of grain it would produce 30,000 to 40,000 tons of freight. With diversified farming and irrigation that land will raise 150,000 tons of freight.

Between Sacramento and Colusa the river is in good shape. We can operate night and day on this river.

(NOTE.-Maj. Harney built this boat, the Colusa, two years ago, in anticipation of increased traffic on the river.)

Sacramento is the distributing center for the fruit industry in California. There are about 15 warehouses on the river. The farmers hold their grain until winter sometimes for good prices.

The boats carry 22 carloads of freight and take it promptly alongside of the ships in San Francisco Bay and other places. The railroads can not give the dispatch as there are delays in furnishing cars and delays in transferring and switching alongside of ships. Our boats run in to any bank and take freight from any farm.

Mr. DRESCHER. The lands in the valley produce from four to five crops of alfalfa a year, each crop giving from 14 to 2 tons per acre, making a total production of from 7 to 10 tons a year. Two years ago this hay brought $12 and $13 a ton on the banks. Barley, they can produce 20 bags to the acre, each weighing from 100 to 110 pounds. That would be a moderate estimate. Potatoes, from SC to 150 bags to the acre, weighing about 110 pounds to the bag, or about 2 bushels to the bag. Onions from 125 to 300 bags to the acre, 100 to 110 pounds to the sack. Vegetables of all kinds are raised

and they run from 6 to 10 tons to the acre. With barley and wheat it is about 1 ton to the acre. With intensified farming it is sevenfold. One man at Meridian said his crop of sugar beets would be 15 to 20 tons per acre. The average production of Colorado is 10 tons to the acre, of California, a little over 10 tons to the acre. and eighty pounds of sugar are produced from 1 ton of beets.

NOTE. We departed from Sacramento this morning at 8.30.

Two hundred

JULY 24, 1915.

Mr. CURRY. Ninety per cent of all the asparagus canned in the United States is grown in this district from Courtland down. Two hundred carloads of fresh asparagus has already been shipped this year. Out of Courtland last year there was $10,000,000 worth of all kinds of deciduous fruits shipped, mostly pears, peaches, and fruits of that kind. The asparagus carloads consisted of 10 tons each. It costs about 7 cents a pound to land it in New York. The farmer gets 4 cents a pound for the asparagus in crates on his ranch. The crates weigh 7 pounds. Three cents is for handling, freight, and refrigeration. It is shipped by buyers and middlemen. They assume all the responsibility, paying the farmer 4 cents a pound, and they pay 10 cents a crate to sell it after it gets to New York. Three cents includes handling, hauling, refrigeration, and haulage at both ends of the route. We grow more potatoes, more beans, and more onions in through here than in any other section of similar size in California. The people on the east side have taken better care of their land, and all this produce is raised there. It is cultivated a little more intensively than other lands. This is all shipped by water, most of it going to San Francisco and Stockton, and is shipped by railroad from those points.

There is a mosquito fleet on the San Joaquin, as well as on the Sacramento, the tonnage of which can not be gotten. Every farmer has a landing place, and if they have got freight for this line they will put up a flag which will invite boats of this line to drop in and pick up the freight. Each line has its own flags. The boats will stop for one bag of potatoes. Every town or city water front on the river is owned by the municipalities. All the levees that have been put up have been put up by the owners of the land themselves. Around Sacramento and Marysville a levee is made. Sacramento contributed $75,000 toward purchasing a point 65 miles below for improving the navigation of the river. The land back of the levees slopes down as it goes back to about 22 feet below the high-water level. That land has a sedimentary deposit of about 12 to 14 feet. Below that is a muddy deposit. They do not have to irrigate that land out there at all, but if you do irrigate it a little it will do better. The land here does not need fertilization, but there are some very peculiar streaks in the soil along here. On the east side of the river is a famous cherry belt. In the cherry belt, which is a narrow strip about 12 to 14 miles long, these trees grow very well and bear very well, but when you get out of that strip you can not grow them at all. They have experimented with the land, so that they have got it planted in what it will grow the best and most of. They raise fruits and berries of all kinds. The citrus fruits are not raised here, but they do better farther north. Almonds and English walnuts are raised here. It takes a nut tree five or six years before they bear good. They find here that it is best to take the pear trees out when they are 20 years old. They will bear when they are 30 or 40 years old. The pear tree will be growing at its best when it is from 8 to 20 years old. Here they take them out when they are 20 and put in a new tree. The best the farmers can get this year for their peaches is $10 a ton for about one-third of their crop. They will get $25 a ton for their pears. Last year they got $40 for pears and $25 for peaches.

Capt. ANDERSON. In 1909 the River Improvement Association paid $120,000 and the State appropriated $80,000 for rights of way down here, which have been turned over to the United States. These rights of way are in territory now being worked by the United States dredges.

Maj. RAND. The dredges take out 300,000 yards a month each. The dredges cost about $50,000 more than the estimate.

About $4,500,000 is to be expended on dredging down here, and the other $1,300,000 is to be expended on weirs.

O

84TH CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. J REPT. 616, 1st Session.

CONTROL OF FLOODS.

MAY 15, 1916.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Mr. CROSSER, from the Committee on Flood Control, submitted the

following

MINORITY REPORT.

[To accompany H. R. 14777.]

While conceding the desirability of controlling the floods of the Mississippi and in fact of all other streams of the Nation, I nevertheless can not concur in the report made by the majority of the committee.

The theory upon which the Federal Government originally undertook the treatment of the Mississippi River was the improvement of the navigability of the stream. Primarily this should still be the basis of action of the Federal Government. The Mississippi River Commission was organized under the act of Congress of 1879 for the purpose of supervising the work in general and making recommendations to the War Department and the Government for the purpose of aiding navigation.

The bill under consideration proposes to appropriate money to be used chiefly for the building of levees, and this, in my opinion, would be detrimental rather than an improvement to the navigability of the river The Mississippi River levees are artificial barriers constructed at distances ranging from 100 yards to one-half mile back from the shore of the river. If these levees are extended so as to form a complete chain from Cairo to the Head of Passes, the result will be that when floods occur the river will overflow its natural banks, as it has in the past, and if the levees should prove successful, the water would be held inside of the levees, and for a considerable length of time would submerge the land between the inner side of the levee and the ordinary shore line of the river. The water finally recedes and leaves the earth in the bank of the river disintegrated and ready to fall. A large amount of it does each year fall into the river bed. Not only is this true, but the river during the flood itself tears away, by reason of the increase of its dynamic energy, a very

H R-64-1-vol 2- 45

large quantity of soil. It was argued by the Mississippi River Commission shortly after it had taken charge of the work that the levees would confine the river and so increase its force as to scour out the channel of the river itself. Mr. Lyman E. Cooley, a prominent engineer who appeared before the committee, said in reference to this contention of the Mississippi River Commission that

The wish seems to have been father to the thought which has not been justified by experience. Unhappily the river does not seem to have exercised any wise selective power; in fact, it seems to have discriminated in favor of the banks. This appears rational when you consider that the increased dynamic energy must have increased resistance which can only be produced by widening the stream bed, or even dissipating it entirely, as is the case on the high declivities of the Platte River.

It would seem, then, that levees do not improve the navigability of the river, but, on the contrary, deteriorate it, and therefore the greater part of the money authorized by this bill would be used for a purpose detrimental to the navigability of the stream.

If the navigability of the Mississippi River is to be consideerd at all, then the principal portion of the proposed appropriation, if the Government's efforts are to be confined to the section between Cairo and the Head of the Passes, should be devoted to revetment work. Revetment serves the same purpose as to a river bank as the skin serves to the body. Revetments usually consist of willows woven into a kind of mat and then fastened along the river bank at the water's edge and held against the bank by weights or by some other satisfactory means. This prevents the current from striking the soil of the bank directly and consequently keeps the soil of the bank from crumbling away. Mr. Cooley states that thorough reventment, as shown by experience, would unquestionably cause the river to wear its channel deeper. He said:

In fact, the only way you can maintain a channel is to stop that continual erosion and dumping on the crossings and filling up all the low-water channels you make year by year. The effect would be revolutionary, but, beyond that, I think the further improvement consists in increasing the low-water supply of the stream.

Mr. Cooley stated before the committee that the total amount of detritus passing Cairo each year is about 400,000,000 cubic yards, or a square mile about 400 feet deep.

In addition, however, to the detriment caused to navigation by the building of levees, the construction of levees as the only measure for flood prevention is of doubtful value, to say the least. The natural result, of course, of building levees is to contract the width of the flood and consequently to increase its height. According to the testimony of Col. Townsend before the Rivers and Harbors Committee of the House in December, 1912, the floods of 1882 and of 1912 were, approximately, the same in volume. In 1882 the stage at Memphis was 35 feet, and every part of the city was above the water's reach. In 1912 the stage at Memphis was 45.2 feet, and the water flooded the northern part of the city, causing great property damage. The Mississippi River Commission itself, in its report for 1910 (p. 2938), said:

The increased elevation of the flood height is the result of the general confinement of the flood discharge by the levee system as a whole.

As the stream is more and more confined by levees and the floods increase in height, the pressure against the levees themselves is greatly