"There are," says ex-Governor Lionel Sheldon, "over twenty-three million acres exposed to overflow from the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. The productive power of these lands is not excelled in any part of the world, and by proper cultivation they would annually add many hundreds of millions of dollars to the national wealth and afford profitable employment for several hundreds of thousands of people." Eminent engineers who have examined the levees under the auspices of the Mississippi river commissioners, agree that the problem is one which can be successfully solved if a sufficient amount is appropriated for so gigantic an undertaking, which would require substantial uniformity in the width of the channel of the river by building spurs and dikes at points where the Mississippi is too wide, the proper riveting of the banks wherever caving is likely to occur, together with the building of permanent levees of a height and strength sufficient to confine the waters in the channel. It is stated that since 1865 the cost of repairs has amounted to considerably over forty million dollars, yet owing to the fact that this work is of a temporary character the benefits which would be derived from a permanent levee are lost, and every few years the floods necessitate fresh expenditures of vast sums of money. Hence this patchwork policy is shortsighted and in the long run the most expensive. The carrying out of a comprehensive plan for permanent improvements by the erection of impregnable levees and the governing of the currents by dikes and spurs, would give us a territory, now absolutely useless, which would annually add hundreds of millions of dollars to our national wealth. The great arid plains of the West and the levees of the Mississippi are merely examples of internal improvements of a perfectly legitimate character which could be undertaken most properly by the general government, under Sec. VIII of the Constitution, which authorizes the "raising of revenue to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and the _general welfare_ of the United States." By such internal improvements as those mentioned above the nation's wealth would be increased to a far greater extent than by the amount of outlay required for the completion of the work, while these enterprises would at once give productive employment to our millions of out-of-works, and this army of employed would put into immediate circulation large sums of money which would at once stimulate business through all its ramifications and bring about the long-hoped-for good times.