Some kinds of protection require effort beyond the powers of individual citizens, or even of combined citizen action.  This is the case with flood protection.  Millions of dollars in property have been destroyed, thousands of lives lost, and untold suffering caused by the periodic recurrence of floods in certain sections of the country, as in the lower Mississippi Valley, or as in Ohio, a few years ago.  The individual farmer has some responsibility for such floods, because by looking after his own drainage and preserving his own timberland he may help decrease the amount of water that flows into the streams and ultimately causes such havoc farther down the valley.  But such efforts are helpful only in connection, with the larger efforts of the government.  Even state governments cannot alone control the floods, because the waters that cause damage in Louisiana and Mississippi come from the states along the entire course of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.  Moreover, the destruction caused in Louisiana or any other state is a loss to the entire nation.  The control of floods requires the combined efforts of national and state governments, as well as of local communities and individuals.

Levees have been built along some of our rivers that are subject to flood, notably the lower Mississippi, where the work has been done by the joint action of the states affected, through their local levee boards and their state boards of engineers, and the United States Mississippi River Commission.  The United States government has spent large sums for river improvements, but there is a general feeling that the money has not always been wisely spent.  At all events the work has been restricted to navigable streams under the power of the national government to regulate interstate commerce.  Recently, however, the President has approved a law passed by Congress appropriating $45,000,000 for the control of the floods of the Mississippi by improvements from the headwaters of the river to the mouth of the Ohio.  The law also includes the appropriation of $5,000,000 for the protection of the Sacramento Valley in California.  This law was passed under the power given to Congress by the Constitution “to lay and collect taxes...for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” (Art.  I, sec. 8, clause i).

WORK OF THE UNITED STATES WEATHER BUREAU

Great saving of property has been effected by the United States Weather Bureau.  The work of this Bureau is wonderful, but it is not mysterious.  Just as the movements of a ship or of a railroad train may be reported day by day, and hour by hour, by telegraph, so the appearance and movement of a storm center or of a cold wave or of a flood are reported from a multitude of observing stations.  There are central weather-forecasting stations at Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C.  Weather