The River (1937)

[Music] [Music] 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 twenty-five hundred miles the Mississippi River runs to the go carrying every drop of water the closed-down continent can drill rivulet and Creek carrying all the rivers that run down two-thirds the continent the Mississippi runs to the Gulf of Mexico [Music] down the Yellowstone the milk the whites in Cheyenne's the Cannonball the Musselshell the James in the Sioux down the Judith the grandiose age of the plant the skunk Gasol to black in Minnesota down the rock the Illinois in the Kankakee the Allegheny of the Monongahela Kanawha and the skim down the Miami the war bashful licking in the green the Cumberland the Kentucky in the Tennessee down the watchit or the widget or the Reds in Yazoo [Music] down the Missouri 3,000 miles from the rocky down the Ohio thousand miles from the Allegheny down the Arkansas 1,500 miles from the Great Divide down the ridge thousand miles from Texas down the Great Valley 2500 miles from Minnesota carrying every rivulet Innsbruck Creek can drill carrying all the rivers that run down to third the continent the Mississippi runs to the go [Music] 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 what a thousand miles up the Mississippi a century before we bought the Great Western River the Spanish in 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 desert 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 in their plows in their cotton over to the river down to the boom tree down through Cumberland Gap over from Georgia and South Carolina over from the table over from the old rotten land west to the big river West to the steamboat highway down the highway to the sea [Music] corner notes 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 [Applause] we made cotton kings we rolled a million bales down the river to Liverpool and lead a teen six-year-old 4 million bales down the river roll them off Alabama roll them off Mississippi roll them off Louisiana [Music] [Music] 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 self impoverished and stricken doubly straight 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 [Music] black spruce and Norway pine douglas-fir and red seeded Scarlet Oak and shagbark hickory hemlock and Aspen there was lumber in the north 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 [Music] down from minnesota wisconsin down to st. Paul down to st. Louis st. Joe lumber for the new prominent of the way number four the new mill [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it was lumber in the North Col in the hill iron and coal Gallivan Angie Healy iron and coal down the Ohio down to Pittsburgh down to wheely iron and coal for the steel mill for the railroads driving west and south for the new cities of the Great Valley [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we built new machinery and cleared new land in the way 10 million bales down to the go cotton for the spools of England and France 15 million bales down to the go button for the spools of Italy and Germany [Music] [Applause] we built a hundred cities in a thousand town st. Paul and Minneapolis Davenport and kyoko Moline and Quincy Cincinnati and st. Louis Omaha and Kansas City across to the Rockies in Downton Minnesota 2,500 miles to New Orleans we built a new continent [Music] [Music] black spruce in Norway pine douglas-fir and red cedar scarlet open shagbark hickory [Music] we built a hundred cities and a thousand towns but at watercourse we cut the top off the Allegheny 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 slash-and-burn and moved on [Music] [Music] well the water comes downhill spring and fall down from the cutover mountains down from the plowed or slow from as far west as Idaho and as far east as Pennsylvania down every Brook and drill rivulet and Creek carrying every drop of water that flows down 2/3 the continent 19 319 7 1913-1960 1922 19:27 [Music] 1936-1937 [Music] down from Pennsylvania and Ohio Kentucky and West Virginia Missouri and Illinois down from North Carolina and Tennessee down the Judith the grand Bo sage in the Platte the rock assault the black in Minnesota down the Monongahela the Allegheny - no one Muskingum the miami the war - been licking in the green the white the wolf the cat in the black down the corn Kaskaskia the red in Yazoo down the Cumberland Kentucky of the Tennessee down the Ohio a thousand miles of Pittsburgh down the Arkansas a thousand miles from Texas down [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] New Orleans to Baton Rouge Baton Rouge to Natchez Natchez have exposed Vicksburg to Memphis Memphis to Cairo thousand miles down the levee the long vigil star 38 feet at Baton Rouge River rising rising hero river rising a thousand miles to go thousand miles of levee to hold coast guard patrol needed at Paducah coast guard patrol needed at Paducah 200 volts wanted at Hickman two hundred boats wanted at Hickman levy patrol mender Blytheville levy patrol men to blytheville [Music] 2,000 men wanted a Cairo 2,000 men wanted a Cairo a hundred thousand men to fight the old river we send every branch of the service down the river to help us meet this engineers by the battle on a 2,000 mile front the Army in the Navy the Coast Guard in the Marine Corps the CCC and the WPA the Red Cross in the health service or at night and day to hold the old river off the valley [Music] food and water needed at Louisville 500 dead 5,000 day old food and water needed at Cincinnati food and medicine needed at Lawrenceburg 35,000 homeless in Evansville food and medicine needed in Aurora pooled in medicine and shelter and clothing 750,000 down in the valley [Music] last time we held the ready the Mississippi claimed haveli he backed into Tennessee and Arkansas and Illinois and Missouri she spread her arms over thousands of acres of land and she left proms ruined stop drought houses torn [Music] 19:3 19-7 1915 1916 1922 19:37 we built a hundred cities and a thousand town but at what a cost [Music] 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 [Music] 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 guy year in year out the water comes down down from a thousand hillside washing the top of the valley for 50 years we dug for cotton and moved west from the land gave out for 50 years we ploughed the corn and moved on with a lan-evo 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 [Music] [Music] and Poland makes poor people poor people make poor laughs for a quarter of a century we have been forcing more and more farmers entertainers day forty percent of all the farmers in the Great Valley are tenants ten percent of sharecroppers down on their knees in the valley a share of the crop their only security no homes no land of their own aimless foot loose and impoverished unable to eat even from the land because their cash crop is their only livelihood credit at the store their only reserved [Music] you [Music] and a generation growing up with no new land in the West no new continent to build a generation whose people Luke Kings Mountain and Shiloh a generation whose people knew Fremont and custom but a generation facing a life of debt and poverty disease and budget growing up without proper food medical care or school ill-clad ill how and ill fed and in the greatest river valley in the world [Music] 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 too alarming extremes when we first found the Great Valley it was 40 percent forested today for every hundred acres of forests we found we have ten left today five percent of the entire van 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 and we are forcing 30,000 more into Tennessee and cropping every year flood control of the Mississippi means control in the Great Delta that must carry all the water brought down from 2/3 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 Commission 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 time with more water than any other tributary of the Ohio [Music] first came the dance upon the clinch at the head of the river we built Norris - a great barrier to hold water in floods time and to release water down the river for navigation in low-water season [Music] next came wheeler then Guntersville and Pickwick in Chickamauga a series of great barriers that eventually will transform the old Tennessee into a link of fresh water pool locked and damned regulated and controlled down six hundred and fifty miles to Paducah [Music] but you cannot plan for water unless you plan for land for the cutover mountain the eroded Hill the gully feed the poor their waters unchecked down to the river the CCC working with the Forest Service and agricultural experts have started to put the Warren fields and hillsides back together black walnut and pine for the worn-out fields in the gully no side 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 Preserve Soil Conservation men have worked out crop systems with the farmers of the valley props to conserve and enrich the topsoil so that today a million acres of land of the Tennessee Valley are being killed scientists 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 valid 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 [Music] [Music] all over the farm for years to be patented of urban life however the villages and cities and factories West Virginia not Tennessee and Mississippi Georgia and Alabama power to make a new Tennessee Valley for a new generation power enough to make the river work [Music] you