of the rivers, they have no commercial organizations in those places, and some of the merchants would give some information which was available, and that would be about the source of that information.

Mr. HULBERT. Then, you do not think that Maj. Slattery's figures are any way near correct?

Mr. WATKINS. I do not think they would anything like cover the entire traffic on that river.

Mr. HULBERT. Do they not send out a blank form to everybody to fill out (prepared by the Board of Army Engineers) and require these people to fill them out and send them in?

Mr. WATKINS. They send out some blanks and ask questions, and there is not one place in five, I would estimate, where those blanks are sent back at all.

Mr. HULBERT. Are not the captains of all of the vessels requested to turn in the information?

Mr. WATKINS. I would judge so. But I have no personal information or knowledge that they do do it.

Mr. HULBERT. Have you ever heard of any steps being taken in the Federal courts to enforce the collection of these statistics as provided by law?

Mr. WATKINS. No, sir. It is the most crude plan that could possibly be imagined, and the engineers are not to be blamed for it; but they are not in touch with the people who have the facts in their possession; that is, merchants and the others who do business along the river are not organized.

Mr. HULBERT. How many boats are there operating in there since 1914?

Mr. WATKINS. Right at this time the boats are doing local trade. There are no through boats from the Mississippi River, from New Orleans to Shreveport and Fulton, Ark.

Mr. HULBERT. Would it not be a comparatively easy thing for the district officer to require and obtain from the captain of the vessel a manifest of the cargo that he carries in both directions, setting forth the particulars of the items of freight?

Mr. WATKINS. It certainly would, and I think that if there was a larger line of boats they would no doubt inquire of the captains of the vessels and find out the traffic, but there is no such line of boats. Mr. HULBERT. Doesn't this boat issue waybills or receipts? Mr. WATKINS. Yes, sir.

Mr. HULBERT. And does not that show the amount of freight carried?

Mr. WATKINS. I suppose it would be possible for them, if they had the diligence and acumen to make the investigation more thoroughly than they do, but they do not appear to have done it. These very figures show it, and they admit themselves that they have made errors in it. I will give you an illustration. These West Point graduates, the engineers who come up there, are the most gentle, suave, polite, and agreeable gentlemen you ever met. When they go to a place they see some citizen there to whom, I suppose, they have been referred before they get there, and make their inquiry. The illustration here, which I was going to give you, was with reference to Capt. Smith. I do not like very much to use a man's name in a public discussion of this kind, but he was just in line with that class of gentlemen I have given you.

Mr. HULBERT. I was talking about Capt. Graves.

Mr. WATKINS. I was giving you an illustration. He went to the town of Coushatta on a delayed train, got there about 12 o'clock at night, and did not know where the hotel was. He saw the stores lined up and down the river bank, and it was warm weather and he remained on the gallery of one of the stores until 6 o'clock the next morning, and the train was due to pass going back at 7 o'clock, and he met a citizen about 6 o'clock the next morning and made some inquiries from the citizen. He told him about the bank just above the town of Coushatta, the caving bank which was threatening the inundation of the city, and he caught the 7 o'clock train and went on back. His view was-I had a bill in here for the purpose of protecting that caving bank-his opinion was that there was no danger whatever of the bank further caving or cutting off. Since that time several houses and one church have gone into the river, and the whole town is threatened with destruction, and a good part of it has already been destroyed; and it is just such information as that which has not given satisfaction to the people.

Mr. HULBERT. These men are the men who stand at the top of their classes at West Point?

Mr. WATKINS. Yes, sir.

Mr. HULBERT. And they are graduated as lieutenants, and it requires some little time to work up to be a captain?

Mr. WATKINS. Yes, sir; they are very fine engineers.

Mr. HULBERT. And they serve a considerable length of time through the United States and under different district officers? Mr. WATKINS. Yes, sir.

Mr. HULBERT. So that they have a varied experience before they are put in charge of districts themselves?

Mr. WATKINS. Yes, sir. And I stayed four or five years in school studying law, and a gentleman came into my office and says, "Buddy, where is the man that attends to the law business here? I have a law case which I want to put in his hands," and that illustrates very well how much people think of a college course.

STATEMENT OF MR. HENRY MOORE, JR., OF TEXARKANA,

ARK.

Mr. MOORE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would like to refer to some of the questions which were asked Congressman Watkins in reference to the way tonnage, or the statistics. with reference to tonnage, are collected along the river, and I will say that when I first knew the river intimately some 25 years ago, there were a number of through steamboats running on the river from New Orleans to Shreveport and several from Shreveport to Fulton, and some, at times, making the trip from Fulton to New Orleans and from New Orleans to Fulton. When such boats were in operation, it was an easy matter from the manifest-from the cargoes to obtain a list of the tonnage that was carried by those boats. As far as I know, for the last two years at any rate, there have been no through boats of that kind by which a person, by taking the records could find the tonnage. The tonnage that is being carried to-day is either largely local or it is being taken by persons that do not keep

records of what they carry, regardless of the law requiring them to keep records of the freight they carry.

For instance, during this past year, there has been a very considerable tonnage of hay that has been taken up and down the river on barges, pushed by gasoline launches. Some of them go 10 miles, and some of them go 25 miles. There is no report kept of that. One man with his gasoline launch pushes the hay to the camp to be unloaded, or to the farmer that is buying it, and he never makes any report.

There is a barge at Garland, Ark., that has been carrying logs to a mill at that point for several years. I do not think any report of any kind has ever been made of the logs carried by that barge. There is, of course, the great tonnage of logs that come down the river and are floated to the various mills. No report is kept of that. During this year, the past year, the Arkansas Natural Gas Co., which purchased the lands from Čaddo up to Little Rock, Hot Springs, and Pine Bluff, suffered very severely from the rains, and it became necessary to put in two new lines. All of the pipe that was put in was carried on their barges and there was no record kept of that.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not see any mention made here of pipe. I do see hay and logs carried on barges and rafts.

Mr. MOORE. I made mention that no report has been made of that. Mr. HUMPHREYS. But I find that statement in the report here for 1914. May I ask the gentleman what is understood in this section of the country by the word "timber"?

Mr. MOORE. Timber-that is covered by logs, largely. It is also used to cover crossties, stave bolts, and even staves, although usually the manufactured product is not called "timber."

Mr. HUMPHREYS. According to the engineers' report which was referred to by Mr. Watkins, of that transportation on this river, 2,000 tons of timber, 2,700 tons of timber raft, and 9,800 tons of timber barged, of which a record seems to have been made and reported to the engineers.

Mr. MOORE. If that record was made, it was not made by keeping the manifest such as you have referred to, but it must have been by the engineer himself asking from the parties who did that or partics who knew it was being done and obtaining the information of it being done.

Mr. HULBERT. Up in our country we send these blank forms not only to the captains, but to the manufacturers and shippers, and in that way check up the goods shipped.

Mr. MOORE. But I am referring to those who do not have boats as public carriers for hire, but they are really men you might call private carriers. They will agree to carry so many tons of hay at a certain price, and they agree with some one else to carry so many logs, and probably they will have nothing to do for a while and no report is made regularly by each person who has a boat of this kind. If Capt. Fisk goes to Garland and hunts up a merchant and asks him how much he has shipped by the river, that merchant can not tell exactly. He has kept no record except from his recollection, and he can tell only approximately what he has shipped in six or eight months, and I think these reports must have been made by way of recollection or statements coming to Capt. Smith or Mr.

Marshall, the civilian representative who goes around. Now, I believe that I can explain one of the differences in the tonnage between the last report shown and the prior report, because of a conversation had not long since with Mr. Marshall, who has been the civilian representative of the Vicksburg office for a number of years on the Red River.

He says that heretofore there had not been included in the Red River tonnage the tonnage coming out of Black River, and then going down the Black River into Red River and along the Red River, which is a very large tonnage, the business that came up through Mr. Wilson's district, by Harrisonburg, and on up to Monroe. Whether that has been added to that and therefore has given the increase, I can not say, but I have heard Mr. Marshall state that that should belong to Red River, because it was carried from the mouth of the Black River on down, and if that had been added that might account for a part, at any rate, of the increase shown by this report. The CHAIRMAN. Have you any information that would enable you to state to the committee how much freight tonnage has been shipped over that river?

Mr. MOORE. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Or was shipped over it during the years 1914 and 1915?

Mr. MOORE. I would not be able to give anything except estimates on that. Nothing that would be definite at all. I am sorry.

The CHAIRMAN. We usually have trouble in obtaining that kind of information. One of the main things is the tonnage. Criticism is often made that the engineers are not showing the correct tonnage, yet it is very difficult to get this information from parties appearing before the committee.

Mr. MOORE. I would not blame the engineer at all, because under present conditions it is almost impossible to tell what the tonnage is. It is like asking what tonnage goes over a certain public road, and a man might tell how many wagons had passed that way, but there is no scientific method to arrive at the tonnage, although he might guess at the tonnage by the number of wagons he recollected passing there.

The CHAIRMAN. These oscillations which you say occur from time to time do not, in my judgment, amount to much, because they result frequently from a failure to report the exact tonnage, to gather statistics as they should be collected, and as I said before, the engineers are not to blame for that.

Mr. MOORE. No; it is the system that is being used at the present time.

The CHAIRMAN. The statistics are not furnished them.

Mr. MOORE. There is a report required once a month from various parties. They used to ask for them it once a year and no one could tell anything about it. I would like to speak more particularly with reference to that portion of the river in Arkansas with which I am acquainted, with regard to the levees which have been built and are under process of construction throughout that section. We have had the engineer who has been in charge of the district in Arkansas make up a map showing the location of the various levee districts in Arkansas, and also one that extends out into Texas, and on that

show the amount of money that has been spent since those districts have been organized.

Mr. GOODWIN. When were these districts organized?

Mr. MOORE. The first in 1905 and the last in 1911, and the moneys by which these levees have been built have been procured by taxing the lands within the district for the purpose of protecting them. The CHAIRMAN. That is on what river?

Mr. MOORE. That is on Red River in Arkansas and a small portion of it in Texas. They have, since they commenced in 1905, sent very nearly one and one-half million dollars, something over $1,400,000. The levees have been put up to a sufficient height, but they have not been able to get them of sufficient base to absolutely protect against overflow. The parties in doing that had counted on considerable assistance from the Government in building the riprap of the banks or building the levees to protect them after they had been erected.

During the time with which I have been acquainted with the river, since probably 1895, although the districts themselves have spent something over approximately a million and a half, there has been spent by the United States Government up to date $10,000 in that same district on levees. I am not including the amount that has been used in snagging, but that amount has been spent on levees. The chairman referred to the amount to the credit of the district as being $45,000, I believe.

The CHAIRMAN. Somewhere close to that.

Mr. MOORE. I have wondered whether he had not included in that the amount of money the levees districts have paid into the United States Treasury in order to get certain assistance that was promised them.

The CHAIRMAN. I think not.

Mr. MOORE. Then that amount must have been the money that been appropriated with the last two months.

Mr. GOODWIN. I think $22,000 of that has come to the Treasury. The CHAIRMAN. Maybe so.

Mr. MOORE. I wonder if that is not so, because there has been a very severe break on the Red River on the Jackson place, and it became necessary to close it or else have a second break. The United States engineer, Maj. Slattery, then in charge, was to furnish $13,000 for use in closing that break and the levee boards the remainder. It developed last summer that he only had something over $14,000 to the total credit of Red River. In one of the lower districts there was another break equally severe, so that, instead of $13,000, $6,000 was allotted only to closing this break; and in order to obtain this, the levee districts had to pay out $22,500, which was sent into the United States Treasury to be added to the $6,000 that the Government finally gave, and it was for that reason that I wondered whether this $22,500 furnished by the levee districts themselves had not been included in the amount that is now to the credit of Red River, because they only had a very little over $14,000 to the credit of Red River last summer.

I had occasion last summer to make a trip from Fulton as far south as some distance below Garland, probably 65 or 70 miles by river. At that time the river was so full of snags, as a result of the caving banks and the overflow, that it was all that we could do, with a gasoline