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<br />Gilbert ~'. Wl1ite <br /> <br />A: Yes. <br /> <br />Q: And then he asked you to work on the Mississippi Valley Committee. What <br />kind of work did you do for Professor Barrows on the committee. <br /> <br />A: The committee was established by Harold Ickes and Colonel Henry Waite, <br />who was the deputy director of PW A [Public Works Administration], because <br />following the establishment of PW A they had been deluged with projects for <br />water management, chiefly for the Mississippi Valley. And Waite and Ickes <br />began to have questions as to how one Mississippi Valley project related to <br />another. <br /> <br />There was, as you know, a series of reports that the Corps of Engineers had <br />begun to prepare under Section 308 of the earlier Flood Control Act [1927 <br />River and Harbor Act]. But in addition to those reports, the first of which <br />was on the Tennessee River, there were numbers of projects that were <br />beginning to emerge from the Corps' studies, from Bureau of Reclamation <br />studies, and from some state agencies. <br /> <br />As I heard the explanation, Waite said he'd hke to have someone tell him how <br />these various proposals fitted together, the extent to which they raised <br />common problems of policy, and the extent to which what was being proposed <br />in the near future with PW A financing would assist or work against what <br />might be considered a long-term plan. He appointed a group to prepare a <br />report to be presented some time in 1934. The members of the committee <br />divided up the task of writing the report. Barrows had the responsibility for <br />writing a section on the Missouri Basin. Sherman M. Woodward, who had <br />headed the Hydraulics Lab at the University of Iowa, was given responsibility <br />for the lower Mississippi. I found myself digging up information, preparing <br />syntheses of available reports, and doing some field collection of data through <br />state agencies and in offices of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of <br />Engineers. The other members were Herbert S. Crocker, Glen E. Fodgerton <br />(Edgerton frequently represented Markham), Henry S. Graves, Edward M. <br />Markham, Charles H. Paul, and Harlow S. Person. <br /> <br />So in the months from March on in 1934 I very quickly gained a firsthand <br />acquaintance with the District offices of the Corps of Engineers in the <br />Missouri and lower Mississippi areas and viSited Vicksburg and New Orleans. <br />I generally collected data which Barrows and Woodward used in preparing <br />their sections of the Mississippi Valley Committee report. <br /> <br />7 <br />