Excerpt from Proceedings of the River Improvement Convention: Held in St. Louis February 12& 13, 1867 Our law-makers cannot be ignorant of the fact that every additional facility created for the safe and rapid transportation of the armies of the Republic brings with it a corresponding increase in the effective power of its forces, and a decrease in losses and freightage, thus doubly compensating the government for its care and foresight. The benefit of this wise policy does not, however, end here; for it enables the government to shed the blessing of safety over those who are upon such highways, and to create a reduction in the cost of transportation to the people that is felt throughout the length and breadth of the whole country. Thus the purposes of war and of peace are both accomplished at the same time, and with the same expenditure. For the very laudable purpose of constructing railways from the Mississippi to the Pacific slope, large subsidies have been granted. For the one from Lake Superior to Puget's Sound we have given of acres of the public domain. This land, at per acre, amounts to nearly enough to improve the navigation of thirty thousand miles of these rivers twice over. It is within the bounds of reason to assert that these thirty thousand miles of rivers thus improved could accommodate one thousand fold more of the products of the country in transit than this 1800 miles of railway. When completed, and at much cheaper rates. When the railroad is built, it must be renewed from time to time. The track must all be relaid within a few years, at great cost, and the road-bed and bridges will need constant repairs. The improvement of the rivers once accomplished, remains forever a grand and imperishable monument of the genius, the intelligence and the patriotism of the present generation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

DIVA sociological history of flood control politics that examines how local and regional pro-growth interests organized to press the federal government to protect land from flooding, and how this action altered the relationship between regions and the federa/div