“The Dayton Citizens’ Relief Committee and the American Red Cross beg you to accept this expression of sympathy for your losses and hardships and their best wishes for the speedy restoration of your prosperity and accustomed manner of living.”
FLOOD PROBLEMS TACKLED BY DRAINAGE CONVENTION
The date of the Third National Drainage Congress which convened in St. Louis April 10 to 12, seems almost to have been planned providentially. Just as significance attached to a similar meeting in New Orleans at the time of the Mississippi flood last year, the attention of this year’s gathering was concentrated on the problems which the floods of the central states have so insistently raised.
Important resolutions were passed in response to a suggestion from President Wilson that Congress should formulate some plan for the prevention of floods and their disastrous consequences. The resolutions were addressed to the President and Congress. They urged that the government, under the welfare clause of the constitution, should take adequate measures to control the water resources of the country, and continued:
“We respectfully petition the immediate consideration of adequate provisions for flood control, for the regulation and control of stream flow, and for the reclamation of swamp and overflow lands and arid lands, and in furtherance thereof we pray that in your wisdom you create a body which will put in effect at the earliest moment possible such plans, in co-operation with the several states and the other agencies, as will meet the needs of the several localities of the United States, and we believe the most effectual and direct means will be the establishment of a Department of Public Works with a secretary in charge thereof who shall be a member of the President’s cabinet.
“Be it further resolved that the wide scope of the problem of flood water control, affecting practically all the states of the Union, can best be conducted under the immediate supervision of the President of the United States in the exercise of such authority as is conferred upon him by the Congress of the United States.”
Control and prevention of malarial diseases were the subject of another important resolution. The prevalence of these diseases throughout the country, especially in regions frequently flooded, was declared to be a cause of “great disability, loss of earning capacity and a considerable number of preventable deaths.” Since there are well established methods of prevention, the Congress established a section on malaria with Dr. Oscar Dowling of the Louisiana State Board of Health as president and Dr. W. H. Deaderick of Little Rock, Ark., as secretary. It was resolved further:
“That the several states be requested to appoint malarial commissions and that the commission of the Southern Medical Association and other duly authorized malarial commissions be invited to join in this movement and that the co-operation of the federal government be requested through the United States Public Health Service and the Medical Departments of the army and navy.”
These efforts to combat malaria followed an important discussion of National Drainage and National Health by Dr. William A. Evans, formerly health commissioner of Chicago and now health editor of the Chicago Tribune. He pointed out that the aftermath from floods was frequently more serious than the disaster itself, and referred to the fact that in the flood of a year ago on the Wabash River there occurred 400 cases of typhoid fever at Peru, Ind., and 100 cases at Logansport, Ind. The main burden of his talk related to the fact that with the drainage of low lands malaria could be almost, if not entirely, extinguished. Malaria was declared to be the cause of more disturbance and economic loss than all the floods. It was estimated by Dr. Evans that the cost of malarial fever in the United States was $160,000,000 per year. The notable reduction in cases of malaria and deaths resulting therefrom in the Panama Canal Zone since the American occupation was vividly pictured as indicative of what scientific effort can accomplish.