PRESIDENT COOLIDGE SHIRKS RESPONSIBILITY
President Coolidge Shirks Responsibility THE Mississippi flood disaster grows worse from day to day. Nothing comparable to it has occurred in the history of this country. Thirty to forty thousand...
...for, any man on the boat can use the set as simply as he would operate a telephone...
...The aggregate physical damage may reach one hundred million dollars or more and it is altogether beyond power of the imagination to conceive the cumulative distress and dis-heartenment of the afflicted population...
...The American Bankers' Association, which cannot be accused of being a radical organization, has expressed the conviction that rehabilitation of the flood area is the solemn duty of the federal government...
...That branch of our government must appropriate the money and in order to discharge properly its responsibility, Congress must study all plans for the solution of the problem...
...It is self-evident, however, that except for temporary relief, all private resources are hopeles-sly inadequate...
...Orders are transmitted to the boats at sea as easily as a housewife orders her day's supply from her grocer...
...In Vancouver a number of tug boats have recently been fitted with radio-phones, rented by the Canadian Marconi Company...
...Mrs...
...The Coolidge-Kellogg foreign policy, especially the astounding course in Nicaragua, may become the subject of debate and censure...
...The range of the seta in use in...
...Francis ____ 460 TOTAL ____19,616 These rivers, the Mississippi and the largest of its fifty-four branches, have a total mileage almost equal to four-fifths the distance around the earth...
...To insist that this flood situation with its enormous problem must rely on private charity and bank loans in the most serious months of recovery, evidences not merely lack of statesmanship in the administration of our goverment, it proclaims to the world an unsympathetic, niggardly policy towards hundreds of thousands of helpless, suffering fellow-citizens—most unworthy of the richest nation on the face of the globe...
...What matters a great national disaster and emergency affecting the welfare of the whole nation, commanding the attention and sympathy of the whole world, if it disturbs the smooth political fishing in the Black Hills...
...Surely the notably generous people of this country will not sanction such flint-hearted treatment of their own fellow-citizens, suffering from a great calamity through no fault of their own...
...The logic of the situation demands an immediate session of Congress...
...The Senate Slush Fund Committee may try to get possession of the Pennsylvania ballots—an issue that deeply concerns the Coolidge-Mellon administration...
...Unless it is called and soon, the work of rehabilitation and reconstruction must be delayed for months, with increasing economic loss to the vast territory involved, and mounting discouragement and despair to the multitude of our fellow-citizens caught in the terrible disaster...
...It postpones for months the necessary investigation of the various plans for flood control...
...When she had to go to bed with a serious illness, Tabby brought to her bedside daily the two kittens which she had petted, a Bore case of thinking on the old cat's part...
...Ooolidge's friends of the Press explain that when Congress gets together they may take up other questions than flood rehabilitation...
...PHONES AND SHIPS RADIO-TELEPHONES are nov...
...There is «very reason why constructive relief measures should be set in motion at once...
...Moreover, any system of loans cannot be made to meet the situation or prove workable...
...In handling the immediate situation, in providing temporary shelter, food and comfort to a stricken people, the Red Cross and other private relief agencies have done wonderfully efficient and heroic work...
...A large majority of the people in the afflicted area are tenant farmers who do not own the land they til), and who have lost their all in the flood...
...being installed on ships of divers sorts and a few years more will likely see the ordinary wireless, which has done able duty these many years, as useless as the "one hoss shay...
...In defending the President's refusal to convene Congress in extra session in this extraordinary crisis, Mr...
...President Coolidge counts on 1928 election campaigns to bring about an early adjournment of the next session of Congress...
...Bartlett admired two of them very much and petted them...
...We have not yet reached the Mussolini stage of dictatorship in the United States...
...The Old Guard intends to speed up business, limit debate, and suppress consideration of all troublesome issues other than appropriations...
...Thirty to forty thousand square miles of cultivated land have been overflowed and suddenly transformed into a wilderness...
...Isabell Bartlett, of Bethany, Mo., has a tabby whose basket in the barn contained fotu-beautiful kittens...
...To restore the flooded area and to work out plans to prevent recurrence, the government of the United States is bound to dedicate its resources and power...
...The answer made by President Coolidge that he will have a plan ready in December is no answer at all...
...No operator is needed...
...Under our LENGTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND ITS MOST IMPORTANT TRIBUTARIES Miles _ Miles Mississippi ____2,4C6 Missouri Red...
...This duty cannot be discharged by expressions of sympathy and the offer to mortgage the victims' future...
...Vancouver i« limited to about 150 miles but radio-phones with which ships on the other side of the earth can be reached ftre not far distant Transmission of shipping orders -will be expedited, progress of every voyage can be checked in a central office and time and money will be saved when such practice becomes established...
...He refuses to do so...
...They drain an area of 3,250,000 square miles, and JKrar their total content through one outlet to the Gulf, —Literary Digest form of government the responsibility for the final decision and solution of this flood problem in all its magnitude rests upon Congress...
...Secretary Hoover has described the flood as a national calamity...
...He coldly intimates that private aid is quite enough to sustain the victims until they can dig their homes and fields out of the devastating mud, and from these desolate ruins pick up their lives...
...Beside the Red Cross aid, the plans of private assistance for the flood sufferers thus far suggested are corporations for making loans, financed by the Federal Farm Loan Board, and the raising of a sum by the Chamber of Commerce to match dollar for dollar voluntary contributions to the Louisiana rehabilitation fund...
...Shall they be compelled in addition to their hard fate to take on a serfdom of debt...
...Practical as well as humanitarian reasons call for prompt aid and cooperation on the part of the national government...
...The call for personal contributions has met with a generous response that demonstrates the overwhelming sympathy and feeling of responsibility of the American public...
...Committees must hold extensive hearings, sufficient time must be taken for adequate debate in the House and the Senate...
...It requires no argument to prove that the permanent restoration and rehabilitation of this vast agricultural area, involving as it does the welfare of such numbers of human beings, presents a national problem and a national responsibility that the national government alone can deal with adequately and successfully...
...President Coolidge answers all appeals with a stubborn "No...
...There is no sound public reason why the President should not act promptly in convening Congress...
...To delay the consideration of the problem of flood control until the regular session of Congress in December not only displays a cruel indifference on the part of the government, it invites further disasters...
...six hundred thousand people are left homeless, their property destroyed,— only their bare hands left with which to start life anew...
...Farm relief, the tariff even, may get the floor when plans for the restoration of the flood area do not occupy it...
...The Do-Nothing program so highly favorable to the Coolidge third-term ambitions might be upset by an extra session of Congress...
...The President of the United States alone can call an extra session of Congress...
...2,945 Arkansas . 2,000 -----1,200 Platte Tennessee ____1,200 -1,260 Ohio 950 Yellowstone .-1,100 White 800 Canadian 900 Cimarron ----660 Cumberland ____ 650 Wabash 560 Washita 550 Cheyenne _____ 500 Big Horn__ ___500 Osage ___ ----- 460 Minnesota 475 St...
Vol. 19 • June 1927 • No. 6
