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.