What Marx meant we he wrote in the Grundrisse, “The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital.”

‘Gigantic Graft in Mississippi Flood Control’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 108. May 19, 1927.

Politicians at Washington Gamble With Human Life in Levee Frauds Millions of Dollars Spent While Inhabitants Perish in Raging Torrents Coolidge, Fearing Exposure, Refuses to Call Special Session of Congress

WASHINGTON, May 18. Two hundred million dollars have been squandered in earthen breastworks built for flood control in the Mississippi River Valley, and although these levees have been built and rebuilt time and again for 47 years, yet never once have they withstood the onslaughts of the mighty stream, when it raged in flood.

It may seem unbelievable when the assertion is made, that the records show that despite the fact that the “levees only” system has failed to prevent widespread inundation every time the Mississippi flooded, that; nevertheless, the federal government and local organizations have continued to dump tens of millions of dollars annually in such earthen walls.

Yet that is the absolute truth, written in black and white on the statute books of the land. Even now, the Mississippi River Commission, a federal agency that has been promoting this “contractors’ paradise” system, has a federal grant of $10,000,000 with which to carry on its operations beginning the new fiscal year, July 1, 1927.

Millions For Graft.

Politics, crooked, nefarious, honey-combed with patronage and graft, is responsible. The millions that have been shoveled into these clay walls that never hold, mean millions in fat contracts. Fat, luscious contracts, mean graft, mean political manipulations and deals. For every dollar the federal government puts into the kitty, local levee politicians raise one or two more by local taxation, so that a vast system has been evolved which up until the present has prevented every effort made not only to put an end to the stupendous waste of the projects, but even to have an independent investigation made of the problem.

Death Aided Gang.

When in 1917 the “levees only” gang was under severe pressure in its effort to obtain the annual $10,000,000 federal handout, it gave ground to the extent of accepting a an amendment to its appropriation bill a measure sponsored by Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, providing $250,000 for an investigation of the issue of flood control methods by an independent commission. A year later he died and the gang promptly put an end to the investigation by repealing the provision in their new handout bill.

Since that time there have been two great floods, one greater than the previous, and still the stolid army engineers under the careful management and guidance of crooked politicians, big and little, have gone on building higher and higher levees, only to see them overtopped, undermined at each succeeding flood; or where they did hold to have been compelled to blow them up so as to provide outlets for the raging waters.

Hoover Backs Gang.

When the subject is gone into, the investigator doubts his own observations. The facts seem so palpably impossible. And yet, not only are they actually realities, but the Holy Bull of Business, Herbert Hoover. Secretary of Commerce, alleged engineering authority, has issued a ukase lauding the “levees only” idea unto the skies and deriding and denouncing as “visionary” all other plans, including the independent commission investigation proposal.

The reason, politics. And this time, national politics. Mr. Hoover knows better, but the political fate of his good friend and chief. Mr. Coolidge may be involved and the Republican politicians are taking no chances on further scandals—they have had enough.

The first federal appropriation for levees in the Mississippi River Valley came in 1789 following the then record-breaking flood. Since that time the United States government has laid cut $86,000,000, local communities $15,000,000 in cash and right of ways, and states and counties along the river over $100,000,000. All this money has gone into building a long line of levees from Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico.

And every few years or so, the mighty Mississippi, gorged by spring rains and snows from its hundreds of tributaries, has risen and crumbled these walls. In places where they held, the implacable river has gone over them. For. as a matter of fact, the higher the levees go the higher the bed of the stream rises.

The Mississippi is an alluvial river. Its water carries billions of tons of sediment. It is a sluggish stream. It takes weeks for the rest of a flood to reach a given point. So that if the stream is confined within two walls, then these walls have to be raised continually. The stream does not bore a channel, it drops its load of mud and rises on it.

Don’t Want to Learn.

And yet this simple, obvious fact seems to have been totally disregarded by the all-wise engineers and the mighty Mr. Hoover who have advocated the “levees only” system and are now so excitedly defending it.

The “levees only” or as it is designated by engineers, the “confinement” system as a matter of fact seems to fly in the face of all reason. It calls for a damning up all auxiliary mouths of the river, confining it to a long line of levees, all on the theory that the stream will enlargen and deepen its channel sufficiently to carry the burden of a flood. The fact that as long as man knows it has not done so, and that despite the most scientific levee building in the past 47 years and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars the river has not been persuaded to do so, has had no effect on Mr. Hoover or his hirelings, the army engineers.

More Graft in Sight.

They propose, if they can get away with it, to resume levee building, only this time on a vaster and more ambitious scale. Of course it’s going to cost tens of millions, but then as Mr. Hoover says this is a national calamity and the great generous American public stands ready to be milked for more “pork.” He has already announced, and President Coolidge has echoed with enthusiasm, that a flood control program will be prepared for the next Congress calling for greater and nobler levees.

To call a session of Congress now, to deal with the problem while it is before the nation, when the need is vast, is a program Mr. Coolidge will not lend himself to.

Refuses Special Session.

“It’s politics,” he declares. Not that he objects to politics, but it is not the kind he approves of and so he proposes waiting until he can have things somewhat under his control.

He dare not, at this time, face the damning facts of wholesale graft in the levee building program while thousands are made destitute and hundreds perish before the onrush of the raging torrents of the Mississippi.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n108-NY-may-19-1927-DW-LOC.pdf