THE GREAT FLOODS IN THE MIDDLE WEST
WITH THE RENEWED SUGGESTION OF A WIDE-REACHING PROJECT OF FLOOD-MITIGATION
ONE cannot read of the recent disastrous overflow of the rivers of the Ohio Valley watershed without a sinking of the heart, to think how near is happiness to grief. That thousands, apparently through no fault of their own, should be overwhelmed by the relentless powers of nature, takes us back to a pagan conception of the universe, until we begin to sum up the unpagan-like solidarity in the sympathy of mankind, the touch of human nature that makes the whole world kin. Senator Root recently said that “the progress of civilization is marked by the destruction of isolation,” meaning, of course, by the drawing together of men through common ideas, interests, and even sorrows. It is no perfunctory thought that out of such calamities come many of the heroisms, the sacrifices, the lightning-like-flashes of spiritual revelation that ennoble humanity.
With becoming awe at what seems to have been unpreventable, it is sadly appropriate to inquire what might have been done in past years to lessen the recurrent tragedy of the western floods. To be sure, one cannot by a gesture bid the tempest stand, but nothing is more demonstrable than that the greed and neglect of man have greatly contributed to the destructiveness of floods. The devastation of the ax leads direct to the devastation of the waters. The excessive deforesting of Ohio and Indiana for a hundred years is no illusory or negligible factor in the crisis of death and desolation that has fallen upon those States.
In this magazine for August, 1912, in an article entitled “A Duty of the South to Itself,” written apropos of the Mississippi floods of last year, we renewed a suggestion which we first made in 1904 and have since several times repeated, looking toward the mitigation of the annual peril to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. It presented the urgent necessity of setting on foot a policy of coöperation among the Eastern States to save from destruction the flood-restraining upper reaches of the entire Appalachian range. As a matter of public interest, this article was sent to all senators and members of Congress, to the Southern and other newspapers, and to the governors and Chambers of Commerce in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Although the suggestion was in the plainest conformity with scientific opinion, it apparently fell upon deaf ears. The imagination of no governor or legislator has been roused to the point of action. After we have reckoned up the cost of the recent floods in lives and money, shall we lie down again to pleasant dreams, oblivious of the fact that to sow neglect is to reap calamity?