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10 Gobernor 'Brolvard on the TLb er glades Drainage Work By FRANK L. MAYES. The day which I spent with Govern or Broward and President Bittinger of the State Press Association look ing over the Everglades drainage work which the dredges are now do ing back of Fort Lauderdale on the New River was one which I wish every member of the Press Associa tion could have experienced. Fort Lauderdale is on the East Coast rail road about 25 miles north of Miami and has been for years the chief trading post of the Seminole Indians who come down the New River in their canoes and return in the same way to their shifting abodes in the Everglades. The New River is a swift, deep stream of pure, fresh water getting its supply from the vast Everglades overflow and empty ing into the Atlantic some three or four miles from Fort Lauderdale at what is known as New River Inlet. * * * And here let me digress for a mo ment to mention a most enjoyable hour which we spent with Hon. Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia, at his beautiful home on the north point of New River Inlet, w’here the Georgia statesman spends a portion of the winter season and, far from the busy haunts of men, enjoys the quietude of nature while he pursues the literary work which has made him famous and edits the magazine which bears his name. His home is a beautiful place, overlooking the Atlantic from the east doorway and a placid lagoon from the west and surrounded by palms, cocoanut trees, and plants and flowewg peculiarly indigenous to that tropic clime. Los Olas, the Spanish term for quietude, I believe he calls the place, and it is well named, for aside from the song of the mocking bird and his feathered associates and the cease less murmur of the waves which “seek to utter half the story of the sea and die in music with the tale un told,” there is nothing to disturb eith er the rest or the work of the man whose name as the author of the “Life of Napoleon” and the “Story of France” is as familiar to the literary world as it is to his millions of fel low citizens in America who have either read his “Life of Jefferson” or watched his career as one of the mas ter minds which the world of politics and economics has produced. I would not transgress the proprieties of the occasion by relating anything of the purely personal and social conversa tion which that brief hour encom- cjOOfli \ w Mm R I if k( We Commenced Selling' Good Clothing Sixteen Years Ago We improve our Manufacturing facilities with every season's advent. We can't possibly see where there’s any room for improving our Clothing. We know there's no room to improve prices. But they have always been very reasonable. New Spring Suits for Mens7.so, $lO, $12.50, sls, S2O, $25. Boys' and Children's Suitssl.so, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6.50. Men’s Pantssl.so, $2, $2.50, $3, $4, $5, $6.50, $7.50.. Everything that’s right in Hats and Furnishings. Mail Orders:—'Samples of Suits or Pants will be sent to any address. But always give size and price goods wanted. THE GLOBE CLOTHING COMPANY 89-91 WHITEHALL ST., ATLANTA, GA. WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. passed, but I have never been more thoroughly impressed with the mental penetration of a man or met one with a spirit so infectious as when, in company with the governor of Fiori, da, I formed one of a party of Flori dians who called to pay their re spects to the noted Georgia citizen who has done as much probably in the moulding of public opinion as any other one man of his time. ♦ ♦ ♦ But to the Everglades drainage work. Some six or eight miles up New River and back into the Ever glades, the state has two dredges in operation. One has only recently been completed and is only just be ginning its real work. The othe/ is making steady progress in a north westerly direction toward Lake Okee chobee some fifty miles away. It is the intention to cut two parallel ditches six miles apart direct from New River to Lake Okeechobee, thus reclaiming the strip between the ditches as the work progresses and demonstrating the feasibility as well as the value of the drainage project. I have never had any doubt as to the feasibility of draining the Ever glades—there has never been any question in my mind that it could be done —the question that has always bothered me was whether or not the work, when completed, would be worth the cost. But about that fur ther on. * ♦ * The ditch which is now being cut is 65 feet wide at the top, 50 feet at the bottom, is 14 feet deep, and the water, as affected by the tide and river, comes to within about three feet of the top, making 11 feet of water in the excavation. The dredge has since the beginning been cutting its way through coral rock of which there is over three miles from the point where the ditch leaves the river to the nearest point on the route where it strikes the seft mud forma tion which the greater part of the route includes. It will, according to the engineer’s estimate, require six months’ work to get out of this coral rock and into the mud, and progress then will be much easier and faster. ♦ * ♦ The prediction was made that a canal cut through this coral ledge would either be impossible with the equipment which the governor provid ed, or would be so costly that it would bankrupt the state. Yet Governor Broward tells me that, figuring in all expenses of operation and 20 per cent on the value of the dredge for wear and tear, he is cutting this ditch for 6 cents per cubic yard through the rock and can do it for 4 cents per cubic yard through the mud. This is much cheaper than Mr. Flagler’s dredges are working in Biscayne Bay or at Key West and cheaper than any contract dredging has ever been done in the sand on Pensacola bar. ♦ * * The drainage of the Everglades, as embodied in Governor Broward’s plan, embraces two main features —first, a means of lowering the water in Lake Okeechobee which, fed by the Kissim mee river and other streams from the north, annually overflows the 21-foot rim which surrounds it and floods the entire surrounding territory; and, second, a means of draining from the flat glades the 60-inch annual rain fall sufficiently to make them fit for cultivation. ♦ * ♦ The lowering of Lake Okeechobee contemplates simply the cutting of one or more ditches sufficient to carry off the excess volume of water which fills that huge basin at different times in the year and thus prevent the overflows. The drainage of the glades, after the Lake Okeechobee overflow has been prevented, contemplates the cutting of small lateral ditches by the owners of the land, connecting with the main state ditches and at such depths and distances apart as may be necessary. This done, the land be comes immediately tillable and no one knows just how valuable it may then become. ♦ ♦ ♦ This Everglades soil is undoubtedly the richest in the world. All the way up New River I saw large fields of to mato plants, many of which had been drained by the individual owners. At several points on either side of the big drainage ditch which the dredge is now cutting I saw tomato plants in fruit on the land that a few months ago was under water, but whose black muck soil is now producing the heavi est crops that can be grown anywhere in the world. I walked through an orange grove on a small island in the Everglades which the owner told me was yielding him a handsome profit but to which he could seldom get access except by water. He can drive to it by team now. * ♦ ♦ As I said before, there has never been any doubt in my mind as to the feasibility of drainage. There is no doubt in my mind that the soil, when drained, will produce the heaviest crops that can be produced anywhere. But the scheme is so vast, the cost so great, and the obstacles so numer ous that I have always hesitated to lend my approval to a project whose benefits seemed so expensive and so remote. I do not therefore even now pretend to say that the plan, simply as a drainage proposition, will prove a profitable one, but after traversing this big ditch and seeing the actual work of excavation which is going on, I have no hesitancy in in my judgment at least one canal should be cut into Lake Okeechobee, and the old Diston ditch which now connects the lake with the Caloosahatchee on the west should be widened and deep ened to a like capacity with the canal from New River on which the dredge is now at work. “Why?” do you ask. * * * Listen. The East Coast Canal Com pany, a private enterprise, has now practically completed the dredging of an inland waterway from Miami through the shallow lagoons along the east coast to St. Augustine. This waterway parallels a railroad. From St. Augustine, the company will cut some twelve miles west into the St. John’s River, giving them communica tion with Jacksonville and again away to the southward of the interior to ward the head of the St. John’s — and over all of this territory this waterway is but paralleling highways of commerce (railroads) that are al ready established. • * * The cutting of Governor Broward’s ditch from the Atlantic ocean into Lake Okeechobee will give the pub lic a waterway—a highway of com merce —straight across the state from the Atlantic to the gulf. If it is worth the while of a private canal company to dredge a waterway along the east coast where a great highway of commerce, like a railroad, already ex ists, will it not be worth the state’s while to dig a canal across the state itself, through a section where no communication is now possible, thus (Continued on page 11.) ksi lr