The New Student's Reference Work/Work Done by our River Giant

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1859112The New Student's Reference Work — Work Done by our River Giant

WORK DONE BY OUR RIVER GIANT

Copyright, by Munn & Co., Inc.
Our giant river system, the Mississippi, is a good farmer in some respects and a very thriftless one in others. The deposits it makes over the land in flood time furnish rich soil for crops, but it is constantly carrying away vast quantities of good farm land and pouring it into the Gulf. Sometimes, as in the spring of 1913, when several hundred people were drowned and thousands of homes swept away in the floods in Ohio and Indiana, it is still more troublesome. How to control this giant of ours, so that all its work will be useful, is one of the great problems which state and federal governments and the engineers are trying to solve. The building of the Panama Canal shows what gigantic tasks can be accomplished by working together along right lines.