Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/260

256 square miles of land overflowed in this basin, one half of which was farm land; 60,000 people lived in the overflowed district and were, therefore, inconvenienced; this number of people represents about one third of the inhabitants of the basin. For some time previous to the coming of the flood, the dwellers in the basin were preparing for the flood season. Mounds were built for temporary refuge. Stationary platforms were constructed to the same end. Rafts were also made. The mules, horses and the feed were in many instances transferred to places of safety, often to the lofts of the barns. Farm implements and machinery were put beyond the reach of the water. That the warning of the Weather Bureau was so extensively heeded explains why there was no loss of life and little loss of stock.

These three reports of the same thing are not so contradictory as they sound. Each observer is looking for the things that sustain him and his point of view, and is not directly interested in the things that are foreign. One writer tries to establish the security of the basin of the Yazoo against danger to life and property, because that is what the board was created to do; a second writer tries to show how weak the levee is, in order to press home the need of funds—and he makes imminent danger to the basin area a means; the third shows that without the services of the branch he represents, the loss of property and life would be multiplied. The first man is right to some extent, and he is sustained by the second, who sees how near to each other danger and safety sometimes approach—and they are aided by the third. I doubt not but that the Weather Bureau may make as just a claim for the credit of the progress in the Yazoo Basin as the River Commission.

If the increasingly better reports influence a larger population and larger expenditures in holdings within the alluvial basin of the Mississippi, and the hopes of the engineers become realized to the extent of normal safety, then, perhaps, the levee system can be called efficient. Twenty years may be too short a time to consider the effect of the system upon population, and at the same time we must remember that but two thirds of the levee lines are completed, yet in this time the commissioners report an increase of population over the Yazoo Basin of over 100 per cent. It seems as if the people were becoming confident that there is 'security and permanence of protection' in the work that is in progress. Yet just so far as this confidence is expressed in settlement within the area liable to overflow, so much further must the levees protect beyond peradventure of disaster. In an increase of 100 per cent, in population and a decrease of 50 per cent, in mileage of overflow, if the terms are commensurate, there is no gain; if the terms are incommensurate, there is as good a chance for a loss as a gain. Just meeting the limit of strain, or preventing a break only by excessive vigilance and energy, or saving from disaster by some mitigating circumstance is not the end to be aimed at; but to be as reasonably sure as it is given man to be that an overflow can not occur must be the plan.