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Water Planning in the Progressive Era: The Inland Waterways Commission Reconsidered
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2017
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In 1909, moving freight by rail cost seven to ten times more than by water. Yet despite crowded terminals and a severe shortage of rolling stock, railroads carried eight times more freight by weight than ships and barges, and canal tonnage had fallen by two-thirds since 1880. The railroads, according to President Theodore Roosevelt, were “no longer able to move crops and manufactures rapidly enough to secure the prompt transaction of the business of the Nation.…There appears to be but one complete remedy–the development of a complementary system of transportation by water.” Perishable foods and high-value factory goods would always travel by rail, Roosevelt acknowledged, but bulky cargo such as wheat, coal, timber, and iron could and should move by water. Improving the nation's waterways would increase the profits of railroads and manufacturers, provide capital for expansion, and reduce the cost of living. It would serve as a tonic to the entire economy.
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1. Theodore Roos evelt to F. H. Newell, 14 March 1907, Records Group 115, Records of the Bureau of Reclamation, General File, 1902-1919, Box 182, “353-J: National Conservation Commission—Inland Waterways Commission—General, “Federal Records Center, Denver, Colorado. See also John A. Fox, “A Comprehensive Waterway Improvement Policy Needed,” Official Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Irrigation Congress (Sacramento, 1907): 79 Google Scholar , and Hise, Charles Van, Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States (New York, 1913), 167 Google Scholar.
2. Three recent surveys of the Progressive Era completely ignore the Inland Waterways Commission. See Eisenach, Eldon J., The Lost Promise of Progressivism (Lawrence, Kan., 1994)Google Scholar , Gould, Lewis L., America in the Progressive Era: Studies of Progressivism, 1890-1914 (Essex, England, 2001)Google Scholar , and McGerr, Michael, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fad of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (New York, 2003)Google Scholar . In the 1960s, historians of conservation wholeheartedly embraced the Hays thesis. For example, see Udall, Stewart L., The Quiet Crisis (New York, 1963)Google Scholar ; Clepper, Henry, Origins of American Conservation (New York, 1966)Google Scholar ; Smith, Frank E., The Politics of Conservation (New York, 1966)Google Scholar ; Penick, James L. Jr, Progressive Politics and Conservation (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar ; and Graham, Frank Jr, Man's Dominion: The Story of Conservation in America (New York, 1971)Google Scholar . Since the 1960s, environmental historians have questioned Progressive Era forest, range, and irrigation policies, but water planning as a whole has received surprisingly little attention.
3. For example, see Williams, Michael, “The End of Modern History?” Geographical Review 88 (April 1998): 287–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar . And a conservation time-line entry for 1907, posted on an Audubon Society Web site, reads: “The nation bungles a rare chance to curtail waste and destruction on its rivers and streams. Roosevelt creates the Inland Waterways Commission to come up with a comprehensive management plan, but Congress balks at surrendering the main source of pork; it rejects the commission's proposal.” See “The Dawn of Conservation, 1899-1909,” http://magazine.audubon.org/century/dawn-1899, accessed on 4 September 2005.
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7. Kansas v. Colorado, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 669 (1907); “Record of the Verbatim Report of the Proceedings of the Inland Waterways Commission in Regular Session, Autumn Trip, 1907,” RG 115, Records of the Bureau of Reclamation, General File, 1902-1919, Box 180, “353-C: Inland Waterways Commission: Minutes of Meetings,” p. 80. The Bureau of Reclamation files are housed at the Federal Records Center, Denver, Colorado.
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15. Hays admitted that McGee, as one of the planners of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, “came to know the city's commercial and business community which sponsored the event.” But he never discussed the implications of McGee's booster activities, or his ties to the business community. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, 103-4.
16. W J McGee to W. K. Kavanaugh, 3 April 1907, Box 29, McGee Collection.
17. W J McGee to Joseph E. Ransdell, 24 November 1906, Box 26, McGee Collection.
18. On the origins of the Reclamation Act of 1902, see Pisani, Donald J., To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902 (Albuquerque, 1992), 273–325 Google Scholar.
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21. Row ley, William D., Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands (Bloomington, 1996).Google Scholar
22. Francis G. Newlands to Gifford Pinchot, 16 November 1907, Box 759, Gifford Pinchot Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
23. Pisani, , To Reclaim a Divided West, 198–207.Google Scholar
24. The best history of the Truckee-Carson, or Newlands' Project, is Townley, John M., Turn This Water into Gold: The Story of the Newlands Project (Reno: Nev., 1977)Google Scholar.
25. F. G. Newlands to M. F. Hudson, 15 May 1907, Series I, Box 10, Folder 103, Francis G. Newlands Collection, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. See also Newlands to Wilson M. Hardy, 11 November 1907, Box 11, Folder 110.
26. F. G. Newlands to D. E. W. Williamson, Editor, Nevada State Journal, Reno, 21 and 23 November 1907, Box 17, Newlands Collection. See also Newlands, Francis G., “The Inland Waterways Commission,” Official Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Irrigation Congress (Sacramento, 1907): 53–58 Google Scholar . Newlands gave essentially the same speech at Memphis, Tennessee, on 5 October 1907. See Series I, Box 96, Newlands Collection.
27. Official Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Irrigation Congress, 1910 (Pueblo, Colo., 1910) andGoogle Scholar Proceedings of the Twenty-first International irrigation Congress [1914] (Ottawa, 1915)Google Scholar ; Chicago Record-Herald, 14 August 1909 ; Hess, Ralph H., “Evolution of Irrigation Water Rights on Interstate Streams,” American Law Review 51 (January-February 1917): 73 Google Scholar.
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30. Newlands, Francis G. to “My Dear Senator,” 21 October 1909 Google Scholar , Box 19, Folder 185, Newlands Collection ; Darling, Arthur B., ed., The Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands (Boston, 1932), 2:214–15Google Scholar . Newlands made additional changes in his waterways legislation in 1911 at the insistence of George H. Maxwell, who now served as Newlands's adviser in conservation matters. Previous bills had restricted commission membership to representatives from federal bureaucracies. But now, presumably to win support from private engineering societies that wanted to increase the use of civilian engineers in the construction of government public works, the commission would include three engineers appointed from outside the federal government. Furthermore, the bill provided for an institutional as well as geographical distribution of benefits. Not only would the $50 million annual appropriation be parceled out among the major river basins, but it would also be divided along institutional lines: $24 million to the Corps of Engineers, $10 million to the Reclamation Service, $10 million to the Forest Service, $3 million to the U.S. Geological Survey, $2 million to the Bureau of Plant Industry, and $1 million to the Smithsonian Institution. See S. 122, 62d Cong., 1st sess., introduced 6 April 1911. George Maxwell discussed the legislation in “One and Indivisible: Forestry, Irrigation, Drainage, Navigation: The Rivers Are the Greatest Asset of the Nation When Regulated for Beneficial Uses,” Official Proceedings of the Nineteenth National Irrigation Congress Held at Chicago, December 5-9, 1911 (Chicago, 1912), 87–90 Google Scholar.
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32. Henry L. Stimson to Francis G. Newlands, 22 January 1913, RG 77, Records of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2043, File 83879, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
33. Newlands had first attempted to tack his plan onto the rivers and harbors bill in 1910, but the Senate Commerce Committee refused to accept Newlands's amendment on grounds that irrigation, reclamation of swamp lands, and water power were not proper subjects of river and harbor appropriations. Darling, The Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands, 2:218; F. G. Newlands to William Howard Taft, 15 April 1910, Box 21, Folder 204, Newlands Collection.
34. The bill is reprinted in Creation of a Board of River Regulation and Provision of a Fund for the Regulation and Control of the Flow of Navigable Rivers in Aid of Interstate Commerce Etc., 1-8.
35. Darling, , Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands, 2:233, 234, 239–39Google Scholar . Maxwell's protests to tacking legislation onto the rivers and harbors bill can be seen in many letters, including the six letters he sent to Newlands on 19 April 1913. See Box 36, Folder 361, Newlands Collection.
36. ’Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Newlands Bill (S. 2739, 63d Cong., 1st sess.),” 10 January 1914, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2043, File 83879, and “Supplemental Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Newlands Bill, adopted March 30, 1914, extending report of January 10, 1914,” in Box 2895, File 125806.
37. William T. Russell to Chief of Engineers, 10 March 1913, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2043, File 83879.
38. “Report of the War Department Representatives in respect to the Newlands bill, Supplemental to the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee of January 10, 1914,” dated 13 April 1914, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2043, File 83879 and Box 2895, File 125806.
39. Armstrong, Ellis L., ed., History of Public Works in the United States, 1776-1976 (Chicago, 1976), 46.Google Scholar
40. Franklin K. Lane to Newton D. Baker, 10 March 1916, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2895, File 125806; Franklin K. Lane, D. F. Houston, and W. C. Redfield to Woodrow Wilson, 26 February 1916, Box 54, Folder 567, Newlands Collection.
41. Darling, , The Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands, 2:263–75Google Scholar ; Newton D. Baker (secretary of war) to F. G. Newlands, 1 August 1916, Box 54, Folder 572; Joseph E. Ransdell to F. G. Newlands, 14 November 1916, Box 55, Folder 577; Newlands to “My Dear Senator,” 16 December 1916–all in the Newlands Collection. See also Baker to Newlands, 21 December 1916, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2044, File 83879, National Archives.
42. Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, “Discussion of the Proposed Newlands' Bill on Waterways,” December 1916, and “Discussion of the Proposed Newlands' Bill on Waterways,” 20 June 1917, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2044, File 83879.
43. The Newlands Amendment—U.S. Statutes at Large, 40 (1917), 269 Google Scholar —is reprinted in Darling, The Public Papers of Francis G. Newlands, 2:325-27. See also Charles D. Walcott to the Secretary of War, 20 June 1918, in Box 2, Charles Walcott Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.
44. George Maxwell to Franklin K. Lane, 15 September 1917, and Maxwell to Woodrow Wilson, 22 August and 23 September 1917, RG 115, Records of the National Reclamation Association, Box 25, “Special Correspondence with Presidents, Senators, etc.”; F. G. Newlands to Woodrow Wilson, 14 October 1917, and George Maxwell to Newlands, 14 October 1917, Box 55, Folder 587, Newlands Collection; George H. Maxwell, “Memorandum of Reasons why the Waterways Commission created by the River Regulation Amendment to the River and Harbor Bill of August, 1917, Should be Appointed without Delay,” 18 June 1918, Box 2, George Maxwell file, Charles Walcott Collection.
45. Maxwell, George H. to “My Dear Senator,” 12 January 1920 Google Scholar , RG 115, Records of the National Reclamation Association, Box 6, “Corres. 1918-1919.”
46. Hays, , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, 93.Google Scholar
47. See, for example, Theodore Burton's speech entitled “Conservation,” delivered on 10 March 1913, Series I, Container 23, Folder 2, Theodore Burton Papers, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. For an excellent counter to the Hays thesis, see Stay, “Theodore E. Burton on Navigation and Conservation.
48. Burton, “Conservation,” speech at Case School of Applied Science, 10 March 1913, Series I, Container 23, Folder 2, Burton Papers.
49. Burton, Theodore, “Some Prevalent Misapprehensions Relating to Out Political Life,” speech at Columbia University, 6 June 1911 Google Scholar , Series I, Container 23, Folder 1, Burton Papers.
50. Stay, , “Theodore Burton on Navigation and Conservation,” 25 Google Scholar ; Holt, , “The Office of the Chief of Engineers,” 23–24 Google Scholar ; Congressional Record, House, 12 March 1902, 2908-14.
51. Theodore Burton to Emory R. Johnson, 1 February 1910, Series I, Box 14, Folder 1, Burton Papers; Stay, , “Theodore E. Burton on Navigation and Conservation,” 109-10, 113–14.Google Scholar
52. Stay, , “Theodore E. Burton on Navigation and Conservation,” iii-iv, 139, 141 Google Scholar ; Pross, Edward R., “History of River and Harbor Appropriation Bills, 1866-1933” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1938), 110 Google Scholar.
53. Burton, Theodore, “The Scandal of the Federal Appropriations Bills,” World's Work 25 (February 1913): 438–43.Google Scholar
54. Theodore Burton to Theodore Roosevelt, 26 August 1907, Series II, Box 43, Letterbook 20 August 1906-4 October, 1908, Burton Papers. On dock and warehouse facilities, see the New Orleans Times-Democrat, 22 May 1907.Google Scholar
55. St. Louis Republican, 14 May 1907 Google Scholar ; Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 22 May 1907 Google Scholar.
56. Commercial Advertiser (Memphis), 5 October 1907.Google Scholar
57. H.R. 15837 (Currier), 60th Cong., 1st sess., introduced on 30 January 1908.
58. Stay, , “Theodore E. Burton on Navigation and Conservation,” 125.Google Scholar
59. For Burton's statements on the rivers and harbors bill in 1914, see Congressional Record, Senate, 29 June 1914, 11441 and 11443; 9 July 1914, 11857; 22 July 1914, 12476; 4 September 1914, 14709; 18 September 1914, 15345 and 15402. See also “River and Harbor Bill, 1914,” Series I, Container 27, Folder 3, Burton Papers.
60. For a full discussion of the Corps of Engineers in the first decades of the twentieth century, see Pisani, Water and American Government, and Pisani , “A Conservation Myth: The Troubled Childhood of the Multiple-Use Idea,” Agricultural History 76 (Spring 2002): 154–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61. For Marshall O. Leighton's major ideas on river management, see his “The Relation of Water Conservation to Flood Prevention and Navigation in the Ohio River,” Engineering News 59 (7 May 1908): 498–504 Google Scholar.
62. Hays, , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, 109.Google Scholar
63. For the reaction of Corps engineers to Leighton's plan, see Connor, William D., “The Application of the Reservoir System to the Improvement of the Ohio River,” Engineering News 59 (11 June 1908): 621–25Google Scholar ; Newcomer, H. C., “Proposed Reservoir System in Ohio River Basin,” Engineering News 60 (8 October 1908): 376–80Google Scholar ; and Hiram Martin Chittenden, “Forests and Reservoirs in Their Relation to Stream Flow, with Particular Reference to Navigable Rivers,” 245-318. See also the letters from district engineers in RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, File 62743, Box 1522, National Archives.
64. Jackson, Donald C., Great American Bridges and Dams (Washington, D.C., 1988)Google Scholar ; Jackson, Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West (Norman, Okla., 2005)Google Scholar ; Jackson and David P. Billington, Big Federal Dams of trie New Deal Era, forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in 2006.
65. These views were not, of course, restricted to the Corps. At the time, they were shared by many civilian engineers, including Arthur Morgan, who, as noted in the text, built the Miami Conservancy District's flood-control reservoirs and later became a severe critic of the Army engineers. See E. W. Markham to Col. Edward Burr, 13 January 1914, RG 77, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Box 2044, File 83879.
66. Hays, Conservation and the Gosfiel of Efficiency, 100. Here, too, the Hays thesis endures in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. A recent history of the environmental movement echoes Hays's claim that the Reclamation Bureau exemplified scientific management in action. “Under the leadership of Arthur Powell Davis [the second director of the federal reclamation program],” the urban planner Robert Gottlieb has written, “the Reclamation Service became a leading advocate of applying the principles of science and engineering to the orderly management of resources.” See Gottlieb, Robert, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the Americon Environmental Movement (Washington, D.C., 1993), 22 Google Scholar . Most recent historians of the Reclamation Bureau suggest that it was driven as much by Congress and by pressure groups as any federal agency, including the Corps of Engineers. Its leaders had little time for “rational management,” and they made little effort to coordinate their policies with those of other bureaus. On the tension between the Reclamation Bureau and other conservation agencies, see Pisani, Donald J., “Forests and Reclamation, 1891-1911,” in Forest & Conservation History 37 (April 1993): 68–79 Google Scholar.
67. On 6 May 1907, Frederick H. Newell, directot of the Reclamation Service, informed the Secretary of the Interior that he had been appointed a member of the Inland Watetways Commission. “It is probable that in the near future the Reclamation Service will be brought in apparent antagonism to some of the plans for the development of inland waterways,” Newell noted, “and I believe that my services on the Commission will do much towards harmonizing the conflicting interests which may arise.” See RG 115, General File, 1902-1919, Box 182, “353-J: National Conservation Commission–Inland Waterways Commission–General.” For the controversy over the Reclamation Bureau and the generation of hydroelectric power, see Pisani, , Water and American Government, 213–20Google Scholar.
68. There is, of course, a vast literature on the origin and nature of the modern American state, most of which focuses on social welfare programs. On natural resource policies and the issue of bureaucratic autonomy, see Carpenter, Daniel P., The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar , and Klyza, Christopher McGrory, “A Window of Autonomy: State Autonomy and the Forest Service in the Early 1900s,” Polity 25 (Winter 1992): 173–96Google Scholar . See also O'Neill, Karen M., Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control (Durham, N.C., 2006)Google Scholar
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