Aftermath

In the Desha Bank & Trust Co. building at Arkansas City, Ark., stands a clock, the hands of which point to twelve minutes past two. They have been recording that moment for some eight weeks, ever since the Mississippi flood hit the town and stopped the clock. They may continue to register 2:12 for weeks, perhaps months, to come. For most of Arkansas City is still under water and in Arkansas City, as in thousands of other towns, villages and plantations in the flood district, the aftermath of the catastrophe threatens to cause more loss, more suffering than the catastrophe itself.

So, last week, reported L. C. Speers, staff correspondent for the New York Times. Mr. Speers has been traveling through the flooded region, reporting to his newspaper conditions as he has observed them. His has been a story of destitute thousands forming shamefaced breadlines; of stagnant waters, breeding places of countless mosquitoes; of a lost cotton crop and a lost corn crop; of the collapse of the credit system hastily thrown together to relieve the stricken area. Mr. Speers writes as no sensation monger and the Times, though Democratic in policy, has never been an extremist organ, has even opposed the calling of a special flood session of Congress. Yet Mr. Speers has pictured widespread desolation made even more gloomy by the thought of what may happen when the summer is over, and autumn and winter come down upon a country where so many houses have no roofs and so few have any doors or windows left to keep out the wind & rain.

Even Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover, whose position as a representative of the Administration does not encourage anything in the nature of exaggerated damage estimates, reported last week that more than 1,300,000 acres cannot produce a crop this summer; that in 20 counties of "drowned land" the Red Cross would have to feed and clothe the refugees for many months to come. Mr. Hoover is expected to visit President Coolidge at Custer Park in the latter part of July and at that time will presumably bring conditions to the President's attention.

Crops. Cotton and corn are the principal crops in the flood district. In normal times the cotton would now be waist-high--this year, even in regions where planting has been possible, it is only a few inches out of the ground. Corn should be from five to six feet high--even where it has been planted it is only a foot or less out of the ground. Only an abnormally long summer can save even a fraction of these two main crops. Farmers have been experimenting with soy beans, sweet potatoes, cabbages, crops as strange to them "as Broadway to an Eskimo." It is a land where cotton is king, and the king is dead.

Loans. Meanwhile the credit-system by which the farmers were to be loaned money enough for rehabilitation purposes has apparently existed chiefly on paper. Reported Mr. Speers: "One hears on all sides the complaint that the recently created farm credit organizations will not work. The periods of the loans, it is asserted, are too short and the interest rates too high. As a matter of fact, it can be said on the very highest authority that less than a dozen of the thousands made destitute in Louisiana have applied to this agency for relief. In Arkansas the number is said to total less than 100 and the same story comes out of Mississippi."

For loans presuppose security and the only security the farmers can offer is a "phantom crop." "The land owners are as hard hit almost as the tenants and their credit has received a stunning blow. Furthermore, every merchant, every bank holds the paper of hundreds of farmers whose assets have been lost. ... To get money the farmer must give security and in the case of those who need it most the security is either in or on the way to the Gulf of Mexico."

The Future. Few or none of the broken levees have been repaired, leaving a constant threat of new floods from even slight rises in the Mississippi. Some Arkansas farmers have already planted three crops, seen them all washed away, are now planting a fourth. Stagnant waters have formed tremendous swamps, mosquito-infested. There is fear of a large scale outbreak of malaria. Mr. Hoover has estimated that Red Cross funds will last till Nov. 1, with $3,000,000 left over. There seemed little prospect that the flood area, as a whole, would be in any way self-supporting by November or for some time after.

Discussing the Louisiana situation, onetime State Senator T. J. Labbe said: "I believe that every man who was in the path of the flood . . . has lost practically everything he had .... The people are destitute and what they are going to do in the months to come is a question neither I nor any other man can answer .... God only knows what is going to happen."

Public Opinion. The flood district looks to the Federal Government for a flood-prevention program 'that will definitely prevent a recurrence of this spring's disaster. Proud, the people have almost without exception accepted food and money from the Red Cross with hesitation and apparently with shame, though certainly their destitution has been none of their making. Neither have they set up any loud clamor for Congressional grants of money or supplies, although the feeling that they have been more or less forgotten by the rest of the country has undoubtedly been a growing sentiment. Said State Senator Scott McGehee of Arkansas last week: "This is not our river. It belongs to the Government and it is the solemn duty of the Government to make it safe. ... I see that Mr. Tilson, the Republican floor leader in the House of Representatives . . . put flood legislation as second in importance, tax reduction in his opinion, being first. If Mr. Tilson, who was born in this valley, would come down here and look at this desolation, these wrecked homes, and talk with these ruined farmers, I think he would change his mind. He made this statement at Rapid City. I hope he did not speak for the President."