Original subtitles

From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

From as far west as Idaho, down from the glacier peaks of the Rockies.

From as far east as Pennsylvania, down from the turkey ridges of the

Alleghenies.

Down from Minnesota, 2,500 miles, the Mississippi River runs to the Gulf,

carrying every drop of water that flows down two-thirds the continent,

and rill, rivulet and creek, carrying all the rivers that run down two-thirds

the continent, the Mississippi runs to the Gulf of Mexico.

Down the Yellowstone, the Milk, the White, and Cheyenne, the Cannonball, the

Musselshell, the James, and the Sioux.

Down the Judith, the Grand, the Osage, and the Platte. The Skunk, the Salt, the

Black, and Minnesota.

Down the Rock, the Illinois, and the Kankakee.

The Allegheny, the Monongahela, Kanawha, and Muskingum.

Down the Miami, the Wabash, the Licking, and the Green.

The Cumberland, the Kentucky, and the Tennessee.

Down the Ouachita, the Wichita, the Red, and Yazoo.

Down the Missouri.

3,000 miles from the Rockies.

Down the Ohio, 1,000 miles from the Alleghenies.

Down the Arkansas, 1,500 miles from the Great Divide.

Down the Red,

1,000 miles from Texas.

Down the Great Valley, 2,500 miles from Minnesota.

Carrying every rivulet and brook, creek and rill.

Carrying all the rivers that run down two-thirds the continent, the

Mississippi runs to the goal.

New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge to Natchez.

Natchez to Vicksburg.

Vicksburg to Memphis.

Memphis to Cairo.

We built a dike a thousand miles long.

Men and mules, mules and mud.

Mules and mud a thousand miles up the Mississippi.

A century before we bought the Great Western River, the Spanish and the

French built dikes to keep the Mississippi out of New Orleans at flood

stage.

In 40 years, we continued the levee the entire length of the Great Alluvial

Delta.

That mud plain that extends from the Gulf of Mexico clear to the mouth of the

Ohio.

The ancient valley built up for centuries by the old river spilling her

floods across the bottom of the continent.

A mud delta of 40,000 square miles.

Men and mules, mules and mud.

New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Natchez to Vicksburg.

Memphis to Cairo, a thousand miles up the river.

And the planters brought their blacks and their plows and their cotton over to

the river.

Down through the boom trade.

Down through Cumberland Gap.

Over from Georgia and South Carolina.

Over from the tide wall.

Over from the old cotton land west to the big river.

West to the steamboat highway.

Down the highway to the sea.

Corn and oats down the Missouri.

Tobacco and whiskey down the Ohio.

Down from Pittsburgh, down from St. Louis.

Hemp and potatoes, pork and flour.

We sent our commerce to the sea.

We made cotton king.

We rolled a million bales down the river for Liverpool and Lee.

1860. We rolled four million bales down the river, rolled them off Alabama,

rolled them off Mississippi, rolled them off Louisiana, rolled them down the

river.

We fought a war.

We fought a war and kept the west bank of the river free of slavery forever.

But we left the old south impoverished and stricken.

Doubly stricken.

Because besides the tragedy of war, already the frenzied cotton cultivation

of a quarter of a century had taken toll of the land.

We mined the soil for cotton until it would yield no more, and then moved

west.

We fought a war.

But there was a double tragedy.

The tragedy of land twice impoverished.

Black spruce and Norway pine.

Douglas fir and red cedar.

Scarlet oak and shagbark hickory.

Hemlock and aspen.

There was lumber in the north.

The war impoverished the old south.

The railroads killed the steamboats.

But there was lumber in the north.

Heads up.

Lumber on the upper river.

Heads up.

Lumber enough to cover all Europe.

Down for Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Down to St. Paul.

Down to St. Louis and St. Joe.

Lumber for the new continent of the West.

Lumber for the new mill.

Thank you.

There was lumber in the north, coal in the hills, iron and coal down the

Monongahela. Iron and coal down the Ohio.

Down to Pittsburgh.

Down to Wheeling.

Iron and coal for the steel mill.

For the railroads driving west and south.

For the new cities of the Great Valley.

We built new machinery and cleared new land in the West.

10 million bales down to the Gulf, cotton for the spools of England and

France. 15 million bales down to the Gulf, cotton for the spools of Italy and

Germany.

We built 100 cities and 1,000 towns.

St. Paul and Minneapolis, Davenport and Keokuk, Moline and Quincy, Cincinnati

and St. Louis,

Omaha and Kansas City.

Across to the Rockies and down from Minnesota, 2,500 miles to New Orleans.

We built a new continent.

Black spruce and Norway pine.

Douglas fir and red cedar.

Scarlet oak and shagbark hickory.

We built a hundred cities and a thousand towns.

But at what a cost.

We cut the top off the Alleghenies and sent it down the river.

We cut the top off Minnesota and sent it down the river.

We cut the top off Wisconsin and sent it down the river.

We left the mountains and the hills slashed and burned and moved on.

For the water comes downhill, spring and fall, down from the cut-over mountains,

down from the plowed-off slopes.

From as far west as Idaho and as far east as Pennsylvania,

down every brook and rill, rivulet and creek,

carrying every drop of water flows down two-thirds the continent.

1903.

1907.

1913.

1916.

1922.

1927.

1936. 1937.

Down from Pennsylvania and Ohio... Kentucky and West Virginia, Missouri and

Illinois.

Down from North Carolina and Tennessee.

Down the Judith, the Grand, the Osage and the Platte.

The Rock, the Salt, the Black and Minnesota.

Down the Monongahela, the Allegheny, Kinawa and Muskingum.

The Miami, the Wabash, the Licking and the Green.

The White, the Wolf, the Cash and the Black.

Down the Corn, Kaskaskia, the Red and Yazoo.

Down the Cumberland, Kentucky, and the Tennessee.

Down the Ohio a thousand miles from Pittsburgh.

Down the Arkansas a thousand miles from Texas.

Down to the Mississippi.

New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge to Natchez.

Natchez to Vicksburg.

Vicksburg to Memphis.

Memphis to Cairo.

A thousand miles down the levee, the long vigil starts.

38 feet at Baton Rouge.

River rising.

Hello. River rising.

Memphis. River rising.

Cairo. River rising. A thousand miles to go.

A thousand miles of levee to hold.

Coast Guard patrol needed at Paducah. Coast Guard patrol needed at Paducah.

200 boats wanted at Hickman.

200 boats wanted at Hickman.

Levee patrol, men to Blytheville.

Levee patrol, men to Blytheville.

2,000 men wanted at Cairo.

2,000 men wanted at Cairo.

100,000 men to fight the old river.

We sent every branch of the service down the river to help the sleepless

engineers fight a battle on a 2,000-mile front.

The Army and the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Marine Corps, the CCC and the

WPA, the Red Cross and the Health Service.

fought night and day to hold the old river off the valley.

Food and water needed at Louisville, 500 dead, 5,000 ill.

Food and water needed at Cincinnati.

Food and medicine needed at Lawrenceburg, 35,000 homeless in

Evansville. Food and medicine needed in Aurora.

Food and medicine and shelter and clothing, 750,000 down in the valley.

Last time, we held the levees.

But the Mississippi claimed her valley.

She backed into Tennessee and Arkansas and Illinois and Missouri.

She spread her arms over thousands of acres of land.

And she left farms ruined, stocked ground, houses torn loose.

1903.

1907.

1913.

1916.

1922.

1937.

We built a hundred cities and a thousand towns.

But at what a cost.

In 1937, the entire nation sent help to the stricken people of the valley.

Congress appropriated millions to aid the flooded cities and villages and to

rehabilitate the flood victims.

But spring and fall, the water comes down.

And for years, the old river has taken a toll from the valley, more serious than

ever she does in flood times.

Year in, year out, the water comes down.

Down from a thousand hillsides, washing the top off the valley.

For 50 years, we dug for cotton and moved west when the land gave out.

For 50 years, we plowed for corn and moved on when the land gave out.

We planted and plowed with no regard for the future.

And 400 million tons of topsoil, 400 million tons of our most valuable

natural resource, have been washed into the Gulf of Mexico every year.

And poor land makes poor people.

Poor people make poor land.

For a quarter of a century, we have been forcing more and more farmers into

tenancy.

Today, 40% of all the farmers in the Great Valley are tenants.

10% are sharecroppers, down on their knees in the valley.

A share of the crop, their only security, no home, no land of their own.

aimless, footloose, and impoverished.

Unable to eat, even from the land, because their cash crop is their only

livelihood.

Credit at the store, their only reserve.

And a generation growing up with no new land in the West.

No new continent to build.

A generation whose people knew Kings Mountain and Shiloh.

A generation whose people knew Fremont and Custer.

But a generation facing a life of dirt and poverty, disease and drudgery.

Growing up without proper food, medical care or schooling.

ill-clad ill-housed and ill-fed and in the greatest river valley in

the world

There is no such thing as an ideal river in nature, but the Mississippi River is

out of joint.

Dust blowing in the west, floods raging in the east.

We have seen these problems growing to alarming extremes.

When we first found the Great Valley, it was 40% forested.

Today, for every 100 acres of forest we found, we have 10 left.

Today, 5% of the entire valley is ruined forever for agricultural use.

25% of the topsoil has been shoved by the old river into the Gulf of Mexico.

Today, two out of five farmers in the valley are tenant farmers, 10% of them

sharecroppers, living in a state of squalor unknown to the poorest peasant

in Europe.

And we are forcing 30,000 more into tenancy and cropping every year.

Flood control of the Mississippi means control in the Great Delta that must

carry all the water brought down from two-thirds the continent.

And control of the delta means control of the little rivers and the great arms

running down from the uplands.

And the old river can be controlled.

We had the power to take the valley apart.

We have the power to put it together again.

In 1933, we started.

Down on the Tennessee River, when Congress created the Tennessee Valley

Authority, an authority commissioned to develop navigation, flood control,

agriculture, and industry in the valley.

A valley that carries more rainfall than any other in the country.

The valley through which the Tennessee used to roar down to Paducah in flood

times. With more water than any other tributary of the Ohio.

First came the dam.

Up on the clinch at the head of the river, we built Norris Dam, a great

barrier to hold water in flood times and to release water down the river for

navigation in low water season.

Next came Wheeler, then Guntersville and Pickwick and Chickamauga.

A series of great barriers that eventually will transform the old

Tennessee into a link of freshwater pools.

Locked and dammed, regulated and controlled, down 650 miles to Paducah.

But you cannot plan for water unless you plan for land.

For the cut-over mountains, the eroded hills, the gullied fields.

that pour their waters unchecked down to the river.

The CCC, working with the Forest Service and agricultural experts, have started

to put the worn fields and hillsides back together.

Black walnut and pine for the worn out fields and the gullied hillsides.

Roots for the cut over and burned over hillsides.

Roots to hold the water in the ground.

Black walnut and pine for the new forest preserves.

Soil conservation men have worked out crop systems with the farmers of the

valley, crops to conserve and enrich the topsoil.

So for today, a million acres of land in the Tennessee Valley are being tilled

scientifically, staying instead of speeding the water off the ground.

But you cannot plan for water and land unless you plan for people.

Down in the valley, the Farm Security Administration has built the model

agricultural community.

Living in homes they themselves built, paying for them on long-term rates, the

homesteaders will have a chance to share in the wealth of the valley.

More important, the Farm Security Administration has loaned thousands of

dollars to farmers in the valley.

Farmers who were caught by years of depression and in need of only a stake

to be self-sufficient.

And where there's water, there's power.

Where there's water for flood control and water for navigation, there's water

for power.

farmers of the valley cut off for years from the advantages of urban life.

Power for the villages and cities and factories of the valley.

West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.

Power to make a new Tennessee valley for a new generation.

Power enough to make the river work.

This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.

Visit us at loc.gov.