Mr. TREADWAY. Now, Mr. Hardwick, as a matter of testimony here in behalf of your cause, would it not perhaps aid your cause to submit this along the line that the chairman suggests, that these appropriations come as aids of navigation?

The CHAIRMAN. That has been done.

Mr. HARDWICK. We have already done that.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Treadway, as I explained awhile ago, Mr. Hardwick was before the committee last year, and he was as frank then as he is frank now.

Mr. TREADWAY. I find that is a characteristic of his.

The CHAIRMAN. And he wanted the surveys in the interests not only of navigation but also in the interest of flood protection. We would not give him such a survey on the ground that it would have been a departure from our rule, something we have never done to my knowledge. I have here before me now the appropriation for the Mississippi River.

Mr. HARDWICK. Yes, sir. man?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. It reads:

Will you read the language, Mr. Chair

That was what I was about to do.

Continuing improvement with a view to securing a permanent channel depth of 9 feet, $6,000,000, which sum shall be expended under the direction of the Secretary of War in accordance with the plans, specifications, and recommendations of the Mississippi River Commission, as approved by the Chief of Engineers, for the general improvement of the river, for the building of levees, which shall be considered extraordinary emergency work—

That language, "extraordinary emergency work," has gone in the last two bills partly at my suggestion.

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, will you permit me to interrupt you for a moment? I am perfectly willing for you to use the same language in my project.

The CHAIRMAN. This continues [reading]:

and which may be done, in the discretion of the Secretary of War, by hired labor or otherwise, and without regard to limitation of hours, between the Head of Passes and Cape Girardeau, Mo., and for surveys, including the survey from the Head of Passes to the headwaters of the river, in such manner as in their opinion shall best improve navigation and promote the interests of commerce at all stages of the river.

Mr. HARDWICK. What commerce; commerce on the river? I say this, Mr. Chairman, in answer to that, that this Augusta proposition is on absolutely all fours with that. If you help us build this levee, on which we have spent a million dollars, if this Congress helps, it will make the channel below absolutely perfect and avoid the danger of disturbing things down there, and give us protection and a method of water transportation from Augusta to Savannah the year around.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, if the engineers say this is in the interest of navigation it will give you a status before our committee.

Mr. HARDWICK. Apparently they have done so already, because you have spent $370,000 on that theory.

The CHAIRMAN. I know that.

Mr. HARDWICK. You spent $185,000 on this revetment work.

The CHAIRMAN. It may be that the engineers have gone too far in some instances, but I hope not. Indeed, I think not.

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, when we come to these things we all know, no matter what the language employed was, that those Mississippi levees were built, every school child knows it, to keep the Mississippi River from flooding the adjacent country, and we know that the Government appropriated the money. I do not care anything about the language. If you have employed certain language in making appropriations along the Mississippi River, I am willing that you should employ the same language here. The fact is, to state it the other way, if you have done it there I want it done here to help maintain this levee; that is all I want.

It may be that my constituency has given me a prejudiced partiality towards the proposition, but when it is boiled down I can not see any other way but that you have built the levees and maintained the levees on the Mississippi River, and my project is just as strong and just as pressing and just as humanitarian as any project that is presented to you; and I can not see, to save my life, why my Government and your Government has treated any Representative in the American Congress, from whatever section of the country he comes, or from whatever party he comes, differently from what the Representatives who live along that river and have their constituency there have been treated. I appeal to the conscience of every member of the committee, from the chairman down, to feed us out of the same spoon that those gentlemen are fed out of. Do not fool yourselves about this thing. You helped to build the levees there and you help to maintain the levees there. We have already out of our own pockets contributed a million dollars, and we have not asked you for a dollar except for this revetment work, which you all insisted on doing in the aid of navigation. Now we say, and you can explain it to the House in any way you want to or argue to yourselves any way you please, that if you have helped to build the levees there and helped to maintain the levees there, why don't you, when you have already put up at least a million dollars, give us at least half a million to maintain this project?

Mr. POWERS. How much are you asking?

Mr. HARDWICK. The people have contributed $1,000,000 and we are asking for $2,000,000; but I only want $500.000 now and the other pretty soon.

Mr. SWITZER. Mr. Hardwick. suppose we do not give you that money to take care of this proposition, what are you going to do then?

Mr. HARDWICK. I will tell you what I am going to do and must do, and that is to fight every appropriation that comes before Congress for the Mississippi River, because I challenge any Member to say there is a single proposition on the Mississippi River or anywhere else that is more important than the one I present here this morning. Mr. HUMPHREY. It does differ to this extent, Mr. Hardwick, that the Mississippi River is a larger proposition.

Mr. HARDWICK. But as compared to the amount of the appropriation we ask, I say there is not a proposition anywhere in this country-north, south, east, or west-that is more important.

Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Hardwick, will you permit a question there? Mr. HARDWICK. Certainly.

Mr. HUGHES. Coming back to the Mississippi River: The Mississippi River has been overflowing the banks for a number of years,

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and those conditions down there, for the people living along the Mississippi River, have been very bad.

Mr. HARDWICK. Yes.

Mr. HUGHES. I fully agree with you, and I fully agree with the proposition that Congress has made appropriations for the protection of the Mississippi River.

Mr. HARDWICK. I do, too.

Mr. HUGHES. Now, then, these other rivers are practically new propositions. It may not be so with you, but with us it is on the Ohio River, and I think the Government should take care of these conditions as it comes to them.

Mr. HARDWICK. I agree with you.

Mr. HUGHES. Of course, that is one reason I think those appropriations have been made for the Mississippi, because the conditions have lasted for a much longer time and the people have suffered much longer. As to those conditions in your part of the country, this is the first time I have heard of it.

Mr. HARDWICK. It is not my fault, because I have been here for 12 years fighting for this proposition.

Mr. HUGHES. This is my first year on the Rivers and Harbors Committee. I think I fully agree with you, that if appropriation is made for the Mississippi River it ought to be made for other rivers.

Mr. HARDWICK. We ought not to have the American people or the American Congress submit to anything but an impartial rule, and I say that with the utmost deference to every member of this committee.

Mr. HUMPHREY. I think the chairman stated to the committee a while ago that the committee has never yet said they were in favor of your proposition, but I agree with you that to a large extent we have done it.

Mr. HARDWICK. You have spent a good many hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you did not.

The CHAIRMAN. I fear the gentlemen have not followed the matter as closely as some of us have. We have only spent, in all of the years of governmental activity in levee building on the Mississippi River, about $27,000,000 or $28,000,000 for that purpose, which is a small sum compared with what the localities there themselves have expended. Now, every dollar of that has been presumably expended, as I stated a while ago, under a provision just like the one I have read. Now, I happened to know the engineers construed that language as it was intended, and only spent money where they thought it would benefit navigation.

Mr. HARDWICK. But they spend considerable sums every year, Mr. Chairman, maintaining levees.

The CHAIRMAN. To maintain the banks. But they did not ask us to go, as you are asking us to do here, up above the banks and revet the levees you have constructed yourselves, though I do not say that is wrong. They do ask us, however, to revet the banks so that the levees can not be undermined.

Mr. HARDWICK. The details I will ask the engineer to go into a little more fully.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to finish this statement, because it is important. I think the question as to where we draw the line quite

important, and I want to say to you, if we once go beyond the matter of navigation, then I should have little hope for the future of river and harbor work in the interest of navigation. I think levee building, when we get into that, should be taken out of the rivers and harbors bill and cared for in separate measures.

Mr. HARDWICK. Aren't you helping them to revet the banks?

The CHAIRMAN. At the time of the 1912 flood the waters came and broke through the levees, threatening not only the property along there but the integrity of the stream as well, and the United States then helped, and is to-day helping, the work of rebuilding, but in aid of navigation. Now, whether the engineers under this provision we have put in this bill have gone beyond our instructions, I do not know, but I believe not.

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether the engineers have rebuilt those levees, but has not the Government helped to pay for them?

The CHAIRMAN. But I insist that is in the interest of navigation. Mr. HARDWICK. It don't make any difference what you call it. The CHAIRMAN. But it does make a difference as to what we do. Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, will you let me ask you a question?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly; I do not want to take up time unnecessarily in argumentation.

Mr. HARDWICK. I would be delighted to argue this at any time with

you.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope and believe there is not much of a controversy between us. What I wanted to do was to place this matter right before the committee here, as there are some new members who perhaps do not know the theory upon which we have been improving the banks of the Mississippi River.

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, if you will pardon me, of course I recognize, and the members of the district know, the very warm friendship you have had for our people, but this is a thing on which I take issue with you.

The CHAIRMAN. I differ with you.

Mr. HARDWICK. I say, with the utmost personal friendship to you, that every schoolboy knows that those levees were built for the purpose of keeping that river from running over its banks and destroying the country around, and they were not built in the aid of navigation.

Mr. EDWARDS. It is a fact, as far as the Mississippi River is concerned in that connection, that because of the silt which is washed into the river its bed rises.

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Edwards, if you will pardon me

Mr. EDWARDS. I was about to say that the same argument, perhaps, applies to Savannah.

Mr. HARDWICK. It is true about the Colorado River; it is true about the Mississippi River; it is true about the Missouri River; it is true about the Ohio River; and it is true about every river that ever ran since God made creation.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, no; it is not.

Mr. HARDWICK. I am very sorry the chairman has that view.

The CHAIRMAN. There are rivers and rivers, but there are very few rivers like the Mississippi River. A great many rivers have banks the overflow of which does not destroy the integrity of the river itself, because they are stable; but that is not true of the lower Mississippi River.

Mr. HARDWICK. Let me ask you a question. I think I was right about that statement. If I am wrong, I am willing to stand corrected. Is not that equally true about the Savannah River, running between South Carolina and Georgia?

The CHAIRMAN. I want to ask you if you think the same thing is not equally true of the Savannah River at Augusta; that is, if the banks are not stable?

Mr. HARDWICK. It undoubtedly is, we think, Mr. Chairman. Here is the city engineer of Augusta, who says it is true; and I believe it is, myself.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any threatened danger to the navigability of the stream?

Mr. HARDWICK. Mr. Chairman, I refer you not only to the city engineer of August, who is sitting in this room now, and who says it is equally true about the Savannah River, but I will also refer you to the Government report, because I happen to recall just at this moment that that report explains that in the part of the Savannah River between Augusta and Savannah, where the real navigation of the river is, the banks have been constantly washing away. is a sandy country, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars we have spent have been for the purpose of restoring those banks, particularly for the 20 miles below Augusta, and that precise condition exists as to the Savannah River.

It

The CHAIRMAN. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not referring alone to the washing away of the banks of the Mississippi, but of the danger of the river changing its bed.

Mr. HARDWICK. I do not know that it goes that far with the Savannah River; but the banks are constantly being washed away and the channel is changing.

The CHAIRMAN. But it is a fact that the Mississippi River is not unlike the Yellow River in China. The Yellow River some 40 or 50 years ago broke through its banks and established a mouth some 100 miles away from its former mouth; and it is said that the Mississippi River might do this and establish a mouth somewhere else in the Gulf from where it is now. Certainly, the Mississippi River is constantly changing its boundaries. Your river is about in the same position as to the change of its banks.

Mr. HARDWICK. The country around the Savannah River is practically the same as that around the Mississippi.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it may be that portions of the banks are being washed away here and there; the river is not likely to change its

course.

Mr. HARDWICK. But all we are doing is splitting straws about that, Mr. Chairman. We are thrashing over old wheat. The proposition is that Congress has helped to build those levees on the Mississippi River and to maintain them, and we are doing it to-day. What I want to know is, if it is right to do that for the Mississippi River, does this committee think that it is not right to do that same thing for the Savannah River?