The first considerable issue of cash and furniture orders was made on April 9—about $10,000. Since that time the number of registered families ready for decision has been so great that it taxes the energy of the central office in spite of the excellent facilities at its disposal. In some instances these grants will have to be only first installments on account of a larger plan; in many others, and it is hoped the large majority, it will be all that is necessary. In each envelope with furniture order or check, Mr. Devine is inserting, over his signature, a printed slip as follows: “The Dayton Citizens’ Relief Committee and the American Red Cross beg you to accept this expression of sympathy for your losses and hardships and their best wishes for the speedy restoration of your prosperity and accustomed manner of living.” FLOOD PROBLEMS TACKLED BY DRAINAGE CONVENTION The date of the Third National Drainage Congress which convened in St. Louis April 10 to 12, seems almost to have been planned providentially. Just as significance attached to a similar meeting in New Orleans at the time of the Mississippi flood last year, the attention of this year’s gathering was concentrated on the problems which the floods of the central states have so insistently raised. Important resolutions were passed in response to a suggestion from President Wilson that Congress should formulate some plan for the prevention of floods and their disastrous consequences. The resolutions were addressed to the President and Congress. They urged that the government, under the welfare clause of the constitution, should take adequate measures to control the water resources of the country, and continued: “We respectfully petition the immediate consideration of adequate provisions for flood control, for the regulation and control of stream flow, and for the reclamation of swamp and overflow lands and arid lands, and in furtherance thereof we pray that in your wisdom you create a body which will put in effect at the earliest moment possible such plans, in co-operation with the several states and the other agencies, as will meet the needs of the several localities of the United States, and we believe the most effectual and direct means will be the establishment of a Department of Public Works with a secretary in charge thereof who shall be a member of the President’s cabinet. “Be it further resolved that the wide scope of the problem of flood water control, affecting practically all the states of the Union, can best be conducted under the immediate supervision of the President of the United States in the exercise of such authority as is conferred upon him by the Congress of the United States.”