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Speaker 1: For anybody new to this channel, I want to take

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Speaker 1: a minute to explain what you're seeing here. We actually

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Speaker 1: have two podcasts on this bear Grease feed, and really

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Speaker 1: almost three. We have our documentary style bear Grease episodes

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Speaker 1: like this one, and then every other week we have

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Speaker 1: what we call the bear Grease Render, which is me

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Speaker 1: and a group of friends discussing and given behind the

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Speaker 1: scenes looks into the making of the bear Grease documentary

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Speaker 1: style episodes. So that's what bear Grease is all about.

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Speaker 1: But every Friday we also have Brent Reeves this country

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Speaker 1: life podcast, which is pure country goal. It's usually under

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Speaker 1: thirty minutes long and just a lot of fun. So

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Speaker 1: this feed isn't exactly simple, but neither are most worthwhile endeavors.

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Speaker 2: I really hope that you enjoy this episode.

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Speaker 3: Rivers are absolutely so uncertain, and the more you work

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Speaker 3: with them, the more you find out that the data

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Speaker 3: that we have is great data. But all this data

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Speaker 3: that we take, it's not absolute. It's just snapshawns in time.

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Speaker 1: The Mississippi Rivers stories are big, turbulent, and touch a

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Speaker 1: far reaching swath of human life. Rivers and men have

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Speaker 1: always been linked when trying to decide the sequence of

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Speaker 1: telling a story. I'll often imagine I'm telling it to

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Speaker 1: my kids, what individual stories and emphasis would I tell

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Speaker 1: a ten year old, And usually that sequence works for

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Speaker 1: the world's brightest minds like you bear grease listeners. So

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Speaker 1: I'm being confronted with where to go with this Mississippi

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Speaker 1: River series, and I know exactly where I'm going, And

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Speaker 1: I would definitely tell my kids about the two Civil

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Speaker 1: War vets who pioneered the doctrine of controlling this great river,

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Speaker 1: Charles Ellett and Andrew Humphreys, and how they're obsession and

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Speaker 1: rivalry shaped the way we managed the river, which led

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Speaker 1: to one of the most costly natural disasters in American history.

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Speaker 1: It really changed America, you know what disaster that was.

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Speaker 1: I'd also tell my kids about Mark Twain, America's most

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Speaker 1: celebrated writer who was obsessed with being a riverboat captain

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Speaker 1: on the Mississippi River. He bottled American culture in his

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Speaker 1: writing and sent it to the world. And that natural

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Speaker 1: disaster that I was talking about, it was the Great

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Speaker 1: Mississippi River Flood of nineteen twenty seven. And you better

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Speaker 1: believe that my kids would be on the edge of

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Speaker 1: their seats when I told them about it, and so

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Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about it too. We're continuing

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Speaker 1: down the river on this third episode of this series,

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Speaker 1: and like William Faulkner were in pursuit of understanding the world,

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Speaker 1: I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one.

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Speaker 4: Last three months of nineteen twenty six, the average reading

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Speaker 4: on every single river gauge was the highest ever known.

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Speaker 4: It didn't take much thinking to figure out that if

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Speaker 4: you got any rain of any significance in nineteen twenty seven,

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Speaker 4: you were going to get a serious flood.

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Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear

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Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search

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Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the

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Speaker 1: story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land.

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Speaker 1: Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and

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Speaker 1: fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the

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Speaker 1: place as we explore.

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Speaker 5: Oh me down.

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Speaker 1: I know this is hard to understand, but I'll explain.

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Speaker 1: Just listen.

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Speaker 5: It down down de water WATERJ do down gown.

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Speaker 1: That was blues singer Charles Patten singing a song called

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Speaker 1: high Water which he recorded in nineteen twenty nine. The

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Speaker 1: recording was so rough you have to feel the energy

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Speaker 1: of what he's singing about. Some say it sounds like

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Speaker 1: the surges of a flood. It's about the flood of

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven. Here's some of the lyrics. Now looking

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Speaker 1: now in leland Lord, the river is rising high. Looky here,

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Speaker 1: boys around Lee tell me the river is raging high.

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Speaker 1: I'm going over to Greenville. Bought the tickets. Goodbye, Look

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Speaker 1: you here. The water dugout, Lordie. The levee broke rolled

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Speaker 1: most everywhere. The water at Greenville and leland Lord, it

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Speaker 1: done rose everywhere. I would go down to Rosedale, but

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Speaker 1: they tell me there's water there. Backwater at Blitheville backed

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Speaker 1: up all around. Backwater at Blitheville don struck Joiner Town.

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Speaker 1: It was fifty families and children. Tough luck. They can drown.

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Speaker 1: The water was rising up in my friend's door. The

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Speaker 1: water was rising up in my friend's door. The man

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Speaker 1: said his woman, folk, Lord, we better go, won't be

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Speaker 1: no more. I want to now read you the words

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Speaker 1: of John Barry, author of Rising Tide. He has something

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Speaker 1: to say about rising water. There is no sight like

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Speaker 1: the rising Mississippi. One cannot look at it without awe

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Speaker 1: or watch it rise and press against the levees without fear.

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Speaker 1: It grows darker, angrier, dirtier. Eddies and whirlpools erupt on

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Speaker 1: its surface. It thickens with trees, rooftops the occasional body

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Speaker 1: of a mule. Its currents royal, more flow, swifter, pummel,

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Speaker 1: its banks harder. When a section of riverbank caves into

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Speaker 1: the river, acres of land at a time collapse, snapping

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Speaker 1: trees with the great crackling sounds of heavy artillery on

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Speaker 1: the water, the sound carries for miles. Unlike a human enemy,

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Speaker 1: the river has no weakness, makes no mistakes, is perfect.

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Speaker 1: Unlike a human enemy, it will find and exploit any weakness.

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Speaker 1: To repel it requires an intense, nearly perfect, and sustained effort.

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Speaker 1: Major John Lee in the nineteen twenties, the Army District

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Speaker 1: engineer in Vicksburg, who in nineteen forty four make the

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Speaker 1: Cover of Time as an important World War two general

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Speaker 1: observed in physical and mental strain a prolonged high water

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Speaker 1: fight on threatened levees can only be compared with real war.

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Speaker 1: Rivers are perfect. They are the lawmaker, judge, and jury

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Speaker 1: of their world, superseding any man concocted laws we could

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Speaker 1: pretend to place. On a river, there is no standard

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Speaker 1: to judge a river against. It is neither moral nor amoral,

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Speaker 1: good or bad, friend or foe. It simply exists and dominates.

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Speaker 1: Mankind is always contended with big rivers, and there's a

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Speaker 1: file in every human's brain holding an instinctual awe when

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Speaker 1: you stand on a great river's bank. No data exists

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Speaker 1: on how many of our ancestors died crossing big rivers,

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Speaker 1: but the evolutionary evidence of the trauma of rivers has

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Speaker 1: branded us. There are many biblical references that the spiritual

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Speaker 1: help granted to the righteous one crossing big water. King

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Speaker 1: David's mighty men were commended for bravery for crossing the

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Speaker 1: Jordan River during its flood stage, and the prophet Isaiah

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Speaker 1: declared to those who are redeemed of the Lord that

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Speaker 1: when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep

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Speaker 1: over you. River crossings in the Bible are a test

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Speaker 1: of faith, and if you cross, there is a new

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Speaker 1: life on the other side. In fifteen twenty eight, the

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Speaker 1: first European inland exploration of what is now America. Happened

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Speaker 1: in Florida and was recorded by a Spaniard named Kebeza

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Speaker 1: de Vaka. In his journal, he recounted a river crossing

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Speaker 1: early in their trip, and he said, quote, that night

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Speaker 1: we came to a river that was very deep and

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Speaker 1: very wide, in the current very strong. Since we could

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Speaker 1: not cross over on rafts, we made a canoe for it.

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Speaker 1: We took a day to cross it on horseman who

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Speaker 1: was called wan Velasquez, not wanting to wait, entered the river.

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Speaker 1: The current, which was strong, swepting from the horse. He

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Speaker 1: kept hold of the reins, and so he and the

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Speaker 1: horse drowned. The Indians of that lord found the horse.

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Speaker 1: They told us where down the river we would find him,

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Speaker 1: and so they went for him. His death gave us

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Speaker 1: much pain, because until then we had not lost anyone.

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Speaker 1: The horse made dinner for many that night. End of quote.

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Speaker 1: The first recorded European death of what is now America

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Speaker 1: was from a big, wild, rising, dirty brown river. If

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Speaker 1: I was telling this story to my kids, I'd have

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Speaker 1: told him that we know more about rivers than we

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Speaker 1: ever have. But there's such dynamic systems. Our best science

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Speaker 1: research and minds aren't fully able to predict their next move.

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Speaker 1: This is doctor Bedenharn, a research hydraulic engineer with the

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Speaker 1: core of engineers. He probably knows more about rivers than

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Speaker 1: anybody in the country.

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Speaker 3: If I could have had this interview forty years ago,

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Speaker 3: I'd have had much more definitive answers for you. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: because it was a lot simpler than when I didn't

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Speaker 3: realize how much I didn't know. Because the older I've

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Speaker 3: gotten and the more I've worked with streams, the more

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Speaker 3: conservative I've gotten and more cautious really, because oh yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 3: because rivers are absolutely so uncertain, and the more you

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Speaker 3: work with them, the more you find out that the

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Speaker 3: data that we have is great data. But that is

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Speaker 3: just one snapshot in time of where the river was

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Speaker 3: on that date in nineteen fifteen. We surveyed this river.

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Speaker 3: One month later, it could be completely different. But all

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Speaker 3: this data that we take is absolute. It's not absolute,

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Speaker 3: it's just snapshots in time. I kind of think about

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Speaker 3: it as an inverted pyramid. The Egyptians, you know, and

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Speaker 3: the minds knew what they were doing. They started with

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Speaker 3: a really solid base and then they built their pyramid up.

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Speaker 3: The tip of the pyramid is where we start with

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Speaker 3: very little knowledge and then we build from there. You know,

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Speaker 3: we get more and more precise. I'm not saying we

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Speaker 3: cannot understand and make predictions and do designs on rivers,

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Speaker 3: but there is always a pretty large level of uncertainty

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Speaker 3: that goes into all our analysis and design that we

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Speaker 3: have to recognize it.

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Speaker 1: I appreciate doctor Bidenharn's humility. Like I said, he knows

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Speaker 1: more about rivers than anybody, and he's telling us they're

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Speaker 1: unpredictable and hard to control. And that's exactly what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about. The only constant between man and rivers is

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Speaker 1: this uncertainty and the fact that we could be swept away.

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Speaker 1: And that's what we're going to talk about on this episode,

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Speaker 1: but not before we'd do some review from the last

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Speaker 1: two episodes. The Mississippi River starts at Lake of Tasca

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Speaker 1: in Minnesota and flows roughly twenty three hundred miles through

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Speaker 1: the bread Basket of America to the Gulf of Mexico.

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Speaker 1: You need to know this. If we were to count

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Speaker 1: its tributary, the Missouri River, it would be the longest

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Speaker 1: river in the world. There are approximately twenty four hundred

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Speaker 1: miles of non dammed free flowing river. When you combine

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Speaker 1: the Missouri and the Mississippi. If you go up the

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Speaker 1: Mississippi twelve hundred miles to its first dam and turn

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Speaker 1: left on the Missouri and go another twelve hundred miles

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Speaker 1: to its first dam, that's how you get the twenty

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Speaker 1: four hundred miles, making this one of the longest free

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Speaker 1: flowing bodies of water in the world. The Mississippi River

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Speaker 1: drains parts of thirty one states, roughly forty one percent

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Speaker 1: of America, and also two Canadian provinces. Only the Amazon

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Speaker 1: and the Congo Rivers have larger drainage basins. It drops

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Speaker 1: to the slope, averaging three inches per mile, and has

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Speaker 1: an average current speed of nine miles per hour and

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Speaker 1: eighteen in a flood. The last four hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: miles of the river are below sea level. These stats

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Speaker 1: will never get old to an American, and you'll need

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Speaker 1: to memorize them if you plan on being the most

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Speaker 1: interesting person at camp. This fault, which I'd expect every

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Speaker 1: bear grease listener to beat. Conversations can be boring and

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Speaker 1: lack that gritty, greasy gravitass that's bigger than the weather

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Speaker 1: and cannon, Barbie, we're equipping you with the stories. This

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Speaker 1: is how the Mississippi River was tamed. That's what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about, or at least how they tried to tame it.

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Speaker 1: Here is our friend John Berry. In the eighteen fifties,

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Speaker 1: the US government commissioned two guys to go create a

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Speaker 1: comprehensive report on the Mississippi River, right, which was kind

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Speaker 1: of like a Lewis and Clark expedition of the river.

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Speaker 1: And these guys were pretty unique characters.

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Speaker 4: They were, but you know, they were rivals. They weren't

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Speaker 4: Lewis and Clark worked together. These guys hated each other's

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Speaker 4: guts and they wrote entirely different reports. The first engineering

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Speaker 4: school in the United States was West Point period. But

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Speaker 4: the superstar of the civilians was a guy named Charles

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Speaker 4: Ellett who actually did go to school in France. And

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Speaker 4: he was a wild man. You know. He built a

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Speaker 4: catwalk across Niagara Falls and then rode across it in

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Speaker 4: a chariot.

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Speaker 1: That was he was kind of a daredevil.

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Speaker 6: Oh.

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Speaker 4: He built one of the first bridges across the Ohio,

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Speaker 4: which incidentally later collapsed. He was killed and during the

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Speaker 4: Civil War in front of Vicksburg. He was the captain

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Speaker 4: of naval vessel and Union Naval vessel. But Ellett had

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Speaker 4: studied the Ohio River, and he was a champion of

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Speaker 4: the civilians. The Congress divided in appropriation because of this

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Speaker 4: rivalry between the Army engineers and the Corps of Engineers

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Speaker 4: and the civilians. And this guy named Andrew Adkinson Humphries

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Speaker 4: was in the corps, and again they split the appropriation

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Speaker 4: and Ellen and Humphries went off to do their own studies,

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Speaker 4: which were, as I said, quite different. Humphries was also

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Speaker 4: a bit of more than a character. He loved to

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Speaker 4: fight in the war. He led a charge in Fredericksburg,

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Speaker 4: one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and he

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Speaker 4: wrote afterwards when he lost almost twenty percent of his

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Speaker 4: command in about thirty minutes, that he quote, I felt

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Speaker 4: like a young girl at her first ball. He just

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Speaker 4: loved the glory.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of what it. It almost feels like these

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Speaker 1: guys had to be that way to tackle what they

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Speaker 1: were trying to tackle.

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Speaker 4: Maybe, I mean, they certainly had to have an ego.

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Speaker 1: Ellet and Humphries both did their independent studies of the

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Speaker 1: river before the Civil War. In the eighteen fifties, following

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Speaker 1: a big flood that wrecked the lower Mississippi. Tackling this

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Speaker 1: river was a grand feat. It was an exploration of

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Speaker 1: science relatively new to mankind. Humphries and Elot were both eccentric, brilliant, driven,

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Speaker 1: but egotistical men. Humphries was a decorated Civil War colonel.

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Speaker 1: He tasted the mud of the river, citing its grittiness

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Speaker 1: and taste in his report, and helped plan the trans

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Speaker 1: Continental Railroad route. Ellot directly petitioned Abe Lincoln for funding

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Speaker 1: to develop warships for the Union Army for the sole

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Speaker 1: purpose of ramming and sinking Confederate ships. His ships were

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Speaker 1: significant factors in the Union Army's victories on the Mississippi River.

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Speaker 1: These guys were wild. I'm not suggesting that these two

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Speaker 1: were healthy patterns for manhood. I can't say for sure.

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Speaker 1: I really don't know their personal lives. But when I

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Speaker 1: hear about these guys, it hearkened to mine the historically

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Speaker 1: low testosterone levels and modern men. It's a fact that testosterone,

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Speaker 1: the chemical that makes a man a man, has been dropping,

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Speaker 1: which some studies show about one percent per year for decades.

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Speaker 1: There are many culprits to this, like obesity, sedentary lifestyles,

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Speaker 1: mock estrogens in plastics, which is so real, but some

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Speaker 1: even believe that it's tight men's underwear anyway, testosterone in

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Speaker 1: the rear view mirror. Now, remember that Humphries and Elliott

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Speaker 1: were real ballers. Their stories are interesting because they were

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Speaker 1: confronting the most complex challenges of their time, and the

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Speaker 1: river would end up exposing human nature. This is the

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Speaker 1: theme of rivers, that's what they do.

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Speaker 4: Humphries did some really rigorous work, made some measurements that

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Speaker 4: stand up today. Ellott was more of a pure genius

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Speaker 4: conceptualize saying how to approach the river. He wrote a

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Speaker 4: port which called, for example, for reservoirs to contain, you know,

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Speaker 4: hold water back from floods and things like that. There

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Speaker 4: was a theory at the time called the levees only policy,

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Speaker 4: that you use levees to control floods and only level levees,

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Speaker 4: because the theory was that the levees, by containing the river,

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Speaker 4: would force the river to dig out its own channel,

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Speaker 4: essentially dredge its own channels, so it would become deeper

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Speaker 4: and deeper. By concentrating the flow, you would concentrate this,

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Speaker 4: you would increase the currents. Like narrowing the nozzle of

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Speaker 4: a garden hose, the water speeds up, and that you

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Speaker 4: point it at mud and they'll cut right through it.

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Speaker 4: So the levees only theory was based on that, and

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Speaker 4: that the river, if you narrowed it, it would speed

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Speaker 4: up and cut through it soft bottom, and pretty soon

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Speaker 4: would be deep enough naturally that it would accommodate a flood.

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Speaker 4: It was a nice theory. It didn't work.

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Speaker 1: Being a human is a weird condition in which you

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Speaker 1: roll into the earth, and a lot of problems have

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Speaker 1: already been solved. At the time, they didn't know how

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Speaker 1: to control the river, and the leading theory was called

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Speaker 1: the levees only policy. Ellett, however, hypothesized that a combination

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Speaker 1: of levees and outlets into reservoirs was a key to

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Speaker 1: controlling the river. But the outlets sounded radical and dangerous

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Speaker 1: and unnecessary to some. Why would you want to let

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Speaker 1: this dragon out of its earthen levee cage, Here's John.

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Speaker 4: The problem was that levees are only in contact with

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Speaker 4: the river for a few weeks a year during a flood.

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Speaker 4: That's there's not a constant influence. So even though the

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Speaker 4: river probably would deepen itself when the current increased, it

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Speaker 4: wouldn't deepen itself enough to comminate the enormous increase of

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Speaker 4: water that came in a great flood. Anyway, Ellett and

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Speaker 4: Humphries agreed that this sery was nonsense. It would never work. Yeah, yeah, Nonetheless,

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Speaker 4: that became the policy of the corp of Engineers. Even

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Speaker 4: though there's one thing those two guys agreed upon. It's,

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Speaker 4: you know, truly a strange story. How a bureaucracy can

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Speaker 4: get something into its head and you can't get it out.

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Speaker 4: It's not just a bureaucracy. People get wrong information in

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Speaker 4: their heads all the time, and just dig in.

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Speaker 1: People get wrong information in their heads all the time,

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Speaker 1: and just dig in. What how could this have happened?

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Speaker 4: But Ellett's view of what went on and how to

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Speaker 4: handle the river was, you know, without a doubt, in

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Speaker 4: my mind, the best view. Humphrey's study was accurate, but Elliott,

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Speaker 4: published much before Humphreys, and Humphreys was so competitive and

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Speaker 4: needed glories so much. He called Ellot's study and I

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Speaker 4: mean there are hundreds, you know, several centuries of engineers

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Speaker 4: studying rivers. He called Eli's study the worst ever in history,

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Speaker 4: because Elliott had made certain recommendations. You know, Humphreys wanted

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Speaker 4: his work to be, as he said, the work of

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Speaker 4: my life. You can't have a great work if all

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Speaker 4: you do is confirm someone else's work that came first.

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Speaker 4: So he ended up recommended against what his own measurements

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Speaker 4: said and what Elliot had said, just because he had

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Speaker 4: to be first, and he was a claim. Humphreys was

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Speaker 4: acclaimed by the scientific community. As I said, Elliot couldn't

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Speaker 4: rebut anything he said because Ellen was dead. Humphries was

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Speaker 4: a war hero. He was one of the initial founders

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Speaker 4: of the National Academy of Sciences, and you know, honorary

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Speaker 4: member of half a dozen European scientific societies and so

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Speaker 4: forth and so on. And after the Civil War it

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Speaker 4: became out of the corp of engineers, so there was

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Speaker 4: nobody to dispute them.

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Speaker 1: And so what's so interesting about that from a human

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Speaker 1: perspective is ego totally dominated. This guy's definitely a prognosis

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Speaker 1: of what needed to be done that was going to

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Speaker 1: affect millions and millions of people, and he just needed

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Speaker 1: to have a theory that stood out from what his

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Speaker 1: dead competitor said, right, I mean, does that not happen

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Speaker 1: all across life, at all different levels.

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Speaker 4: Unfortunately. Yeah, most of us, if not all of us,

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Speaker 4: like to think that we make judgments rationally. I certainly

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Speaker 4: like to think that hopefully I have enough sense of

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Speaker 4: the absurd and of my own weaknesses that I do.

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Speaker 4: But I'm sure I have biases. I know I have biases.

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Speaker 4: You just try to count for them. I mean, when

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Speaker 4: I was a football coach, we used to run I

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Speaker 4: guess we'd call it a four or four today, but

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Speaker 4: it was a wide tackle six. In that defense, you

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Speaker 4: basically line up two defensive tackles on the guards, so

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Speaker 4: they're out numbered three to two by the center and

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Speaker 4: two offensive guards. So you know you're outnumbered, and you

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Speaker 4: know that's a weakness of your defense. And every day

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Speaker 4: in practice we used to work on that weakness. Everybody

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Speaker 4: we play would try to exploit it, and you know,

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Speaker 4: some had some success, but I don't know that anybody

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Speaker 4: actually beat us because of that, because we were so

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Speaker 4: aware of that weakness. So, you know, I take the

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Speaker 4: same approach to my biases. I try to be aware

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Speaker 4: of my biases and adjust for them. Humphries didn't do that.

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Speaker 4: Humphries did not do that, and some of the conclusions

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Speaker 4: sea reach. For example, Ellett wanted outlets for the Mississippi

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Speaker 4: River when it was near the ocean to let water

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Speaker 4: out during the flood. Humphreys recommended against that and then

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Speaker 4: became the core of engineer's policy to oppose outlets. But

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Speaker 4: some of it made sense on a cost benefit analysis

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Speaker 4: at the time, but it was really pure ego.

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Speaker 1: We are all aware that other people around us, friends,

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Speaker 1: family members, and even enemies have blind spots in their life.

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Speaker 1: Am I right or am I right? Spanning from eating

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Speaker 1: too loudly to complete unawareness of how they dominate conversations,

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Speaker 1: or blindness of how they treat their spouse. But how

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Speaker 1: much energy do we exert trying to identify the blind

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Speaker 1: spots in our own lives. It's the healthy practice of

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Speaker 1: normal humans across the planet, and the work is never done.

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Speaker 1: It should be on our eternal checklist of things will

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Speaker 1: never stop doing. Massively simplify the current strategy of flood

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Speaker 1: control that ended up working. It's a system of levees

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Speaker 1: and outlets. When the water inside the levee gets too high,

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Speaker 1: they open up floodways or outlets that allow massive amounts

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Speaker 1: of water to escape the main channel of the river.

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Speaker 1: These planned floodways are outside the levees and are usually

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Speaker 1: agricultural areas. Ellett, the Union soldier, the one who died

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Speaker 1: in the Civil War at Vicksburg, suggested a system of

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Speaker 1: levees and outlets. I'd now like John Berry to introduce

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Speaker 1: us to a third character of the Mississippi River. A

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Speaker 1: brilliant man born in eighteen twenty, the year of Daniel

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Speaker 1: Boone's death, by the name of James Buchanan Eads.

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Speaker 4: James Buchanan Aids is one of the great geniuses in

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Speaker 4: American history. In the nineteen thirties, deans of American colleges

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Speaker 4: of engineering put together a list of the five greatest

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Speaker 4: engineers of all time, talking about people like Leonardo da

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Speaker 4: Vinci in Edison and so forth, and he was on

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Speaker 4: the list. He was dropped out of school, literally selling

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Speaker 4: apples on the street at Saint Louis when he was

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Speaker 4: eleven years old. He arrived in Saint Louis and his

396
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Speaker 4: steamboat sank. He almost around to begin with, but he

397
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Speaker 4: was an absolute genius. He taught himself calculus, there were

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Speaker 4: a lot of boats and steamboats sinking. He made a

399
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Speaker 4: fortune when he was a very very young man designing

400
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Speaker 4: ways to salvage those sunken steamboat the cargoes in those steamboats.

401
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Speaker 4: He designed a diving bell which he couldn't get anybody

402
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Speaker 4: else to go down in, so he went down himself initially,

403
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Speaker 4: so he learned what the Mississippi River was like by

404
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Speaker 4: walking the bottom and feeling the softness of it, and

405
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Speaker 4: you just sink and it was like you couldn't see

406
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Speaker 4: anything once you get more than a foot or two

407
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 4: below the surface because of the sediment load is so dark.

408
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Speaker 4: But just feeling like a lizard in front of his anyway,

409
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Speaker 4: after making fortune building a fleet of salvage vessels, he

410
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 4: then built a fleet of ironclads called turtles that basically

411
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Speaker 4: conquered the Mississippi River for the Union. They gave Grant

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Speaker 4: his first victories at Forts Henry and Donaldson. He built

413
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Speaker 4: them in a matter of a boy, I think delivered

414
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Speaker 4: them in a little over six months from the time

415
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Speaker 4: that they were as someone put it, you know, they

416
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 4: were standing in the forest until his delivery was a

417
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 4: little over six months. And again, you know, Grant used

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Speaker 4: them before the federal government even paid for him. So

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00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 4: that was his second great triumph. After the war, Saint

420
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Speaker 4: Louis was losing out in competition to Chicago. Saint Louis

421
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Speaker 4: was by far the biggest city in the Midwest, which

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Speaker 4: Chicago was gaining rapidly because of rail transport. And the

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Speaker 4: problem with Saint Louis was the Mississippi River. You can

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Speaker 4: get trains across the Mississippi River except by ferry, which

425
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Speaker 4: is pretty inefficient. So Yads got together a group to

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Speaker 4: build the first bridge across the real Mississippi River. There

427
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 4: were bridges way up river at the narrows of the river, yeah,

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Speaker 4: both not necessarily narrow or but not. You didn't have

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Speaker 4: the forts of the water. You had a different kind

430
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 4: of bottom and much more stable bottom and things like that.

431
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 4: Was much easier upriver. He decided to make it out

432
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 4: of steel. Now. Number one, this was going to be

433
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 4: the first steel bridge anywhere in the world. Number two,

434
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 4: it had the longest arches of any bridge in the world.

435
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 4: Number three, it was the first bridge Eads had ever

436
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 4: designed in his life. So he had a consulting engineer

437
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 4: who was a chief bridge builder for the Pennsylvania railroad

438
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 4: who said he refused to attach his name to this

439
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 4: bridge which was doomed to fall. So he's responded to

440
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 4: the criticism by firing the guy and abolishing the position

441
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 4: of consulting engineer. And EIDs did build his bridge, and

442
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 4: it is still standing and still in.

443
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: Use, really still standing today, Yes, built in eighteen seventy four.

444
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, And as I say, he's still in use. Where

445
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 4: is the bridge St. Louis? They run metro trains over it.

446
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: Remember all that talk of hubris that it takes to

447
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: conquer a river. I'd say Eid's had a lot of confidence,

448
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: but he backed it up. Here's how EIDs Bridge impacted

449
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: America in a unique way.

450
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 4: Aids essentially forced Carnegie to transform steel making into a science.

451
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:59,240
Speaker 4: EIDs didn't test random plates off a production run. He

452
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 4: tested every single plate that went into his bridge.

453
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: Okay, so the steel was unpredictable and the quality wasn't

454
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:08,840
Speaker 1: consistent correct, And so he came in and said, if

455
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: we're gonna build this bridge, it's every piece has got

456
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: to be exactly right.

457
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 4: And Carnegie rebelled, but couldn't do anything about it because

458
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 4: otherwise they weren't gonna you know, he tried to force

459
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 4: them to accept the custom of the trade, but instead

460
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 4: Aids in a way, transformed American steelmaking by requiring the

461
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 4: precision that he insisted upon. And that's why the bridge

462
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 4: is still standing. At the time, more than twenty percent

463
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 4: of all the bridges made in the United States would

464
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 4: fall down. You know.

465
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 1: I guess in some ways you could look at it

466
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:48,840
Speaker 1: and say that the bigness of the river and the

467
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: formidable obstacle that it was caused people to rise to

468
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 1: a new challenge. I mean even saying that Ads, this

469
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 1: guy that had to build this bridge, change the steel

470
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: industry and maybe if we didn't have a Mississippi River

471
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: we'd still have crummy steel. Well by now it'd probably

472
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: be okay. But Carnegie wanted Ads to just accept the

473
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: custom of the trade, which was a crummy, inconsistent steel strength.

474
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 1: And we all know why he didn't want to raise

475
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: the industry standard. It was that moo law, the dough

476
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: that's chin. I don't know the full situation, so it's

477
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: not entirely fair for me to cast this kind of

478
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: judgment on Carnegie. But this kind of stuff makes me angry.

479
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 1: It makes me wonder where in today's corporate world is greed, money,

480
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: stifling advancement, no doubt, it's everywhere. Capitalism, with all its

481
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: glory and benefits, which we all love, has placed the

482
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: highest priority of our society on the acquisition of wealth

483
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: and making money. But this is a double edged sword

484
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: that our society is and will be paying for in

485
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 1: the future. But in defense of Carnegie, don't hate the player,

486
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: hate the game, And you can't say you hate corporate

487
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: America if you drive a fancy vehicle and have an

488
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: iPhone and buy Big Box store bot meat. Our society,

489
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:15,320
Speaker 1: including Klay Nukem, is a circus of contradictions. But I

490
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: stand by the idea. The mighty Mississippi, what a chalk

491
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 1: tawk called the river beyond any age, spurred America to greatness,

492
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: or at least greatness as far as empires gauge it.

493
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 1: All right, brothers and sisters, There was another man who

494
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: was on the river during the same time period as Humphreys,

495
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 1: Ellot and EAD's. He was not an engineer, but he

496
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:41,479
Speaker 1: was studying the river. It was a young man in

497
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: his twenties named Samuel Clemens. He was obsessed with the

498
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,760
Speaker 1: Mississippi River in between eighteen fifty seven and eighteen fifty nine,

499
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: he spent two years as a cub pilot in training

500
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: to be a full fledged riverboat pilot. He'd later go

501
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: by the name of Mark Twain, which is a riverboat

502
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: term used to describe twelve feet of water or two

503
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,720
Speaker 1: twain fathoms. His time on the river exposed him to

504
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: so many different types of people. It helped him become

505
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: one of America's top, if not the top writer. People

506
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: on the river were talkers. It was almost like an

507
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: exhibition of being human in the microcosm of a small ship.

508
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty three, later in Twain's life, he would

509
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,360
Speaker 1: write a book called Life on the Mississippi. It's considered

510
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: by many to be the greatest prose in American literature.

511
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:34,880
Speaker 1: In the book, he idolized river pilots. He said, all

512
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: pilots are tireless talkers when gathered together, and as they

513
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: talk only about the river, they are always understood and

514
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: always interesting. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on

515
00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation

516
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: surpasses the pride of kings. I like that. He went

517
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 1: on to describe the absolute power of the Mississippi River

518
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: pilots in contras when as to other perceived earthly power.

519
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 1: Good writing is good thinking, and it makes us see

520
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: something from a totally different angle. I think you'll understand

521
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: why he's considered the greatest when you listen to the

522
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:18,600
Speaker 1: clarity of his writing. Here's Mark Twain on pilots. If

523
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 1: I have seemed to love my subject, it is no

524
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: surprising thing, for I have loved the profession far better

525
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: than any I have followed since, and I took measureless

526
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:30,799
Speaker 1: pride in it. The reason is plain. A pilot in

527
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 1: those days was the only unfettered and entirely independent human

528
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 1: being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the

529
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: hampered servants of parliament, and the people Parliament sit in

530
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: chains forged by their constituency. The editor of a newspaper

531
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: cannot be independent, but must work with one hand tied

532
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: behind him by the party and patrons, and be content

533
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: to utter only half or two thirds of his mind.

534
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: No clergyman as a free man and may speak the

535
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 1: whole truth, regardless of his parish's opinion. Writers of all

536
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: kinds are monacled servants of the public. We write frankly

537
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:09,760
Speaker 1: and fearlessly. But then we modify before we print. In truth,

538
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 1: every man and woman and child has a master, and

539
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,799
Speaker 1: worries and frets in servitude. But in the day I

540
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 1: write of the Mississippi pilot had none. The moment that

541
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: boat was under way in the river, she was under

542
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,000
Speaker 1: the soul and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could

543
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,879
Speaker 1: do with her exactly as he pleased, run her win,

544
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: and withther he chose, and tire her up on the

545
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: bank whenever his judgment said that that course was best.

546
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: His movements were entirely free. He consulted no one, He

547
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 1: received commands from nobody. He promptly resisted even the merest suggestions. Indeed,

548
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 1: the law of the United States forbade him to listen

549
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: to commands or suggestions, rightly, considering that the pilot necessarily

550
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 1: knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could

551
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: tell him. So here was the novelty of a king

552
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 1: without a keeper, an absolute monarch who was absolute in

553
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: sober truth, and not by a fiction of words. The

554
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 1: absolute authority of a river pilot is a novel idea.

555
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: Though certainly romanticized by Twain, it's hard not to see

556
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: his point. Perhaps The most intriguing section of his book

557
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 1: is him describing the incredible navigation skills that a Mississippi

558
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,680
Speaker 1: pilot had to have. Rex weren't just common, they were

559
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: the norm. There are stretches of the river where he

560
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:33,279
Speaker 1: said shipwrecks averaged one per mile. I think here in

561
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:36,880
Speaker 1: Twain's voice about the river is important to understanding America.

562
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:39,720
Speaker 1: At the time, his writing would have been top level

563
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,239
Speaker 1: entertainment for Americans. It would be more influential than the

564
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: trendy Hollywood movie Today. Books and reading were everything. Radio

565
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 1: didn't even exist until the nineteen hundreds. Here's Mark Twain's

566
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:56,160
Speaker 1: pilot describing to him how to navigate a river in

567
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: the dark. You see, this has got to be learned.

568
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: It isn't any getting around it. A clear starlet knight

569
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 1: throws such heavy shadows that if you don't know the

570
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,359
Speaker 1: shape of the shore perfectly, you would claw away from

571
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 1: every bunch of timber, because you would take the black

572
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: shadow of it for a solid cape. And you see,

573
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 1: you would be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes.

574
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 1: By the watch. You would be fifty yards from the

575
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 1: shore all the time, when you ought to be within

576
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in

577
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 1: one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is,

578
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: and the shape of the river tells you when you're

579
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: coming to it. Then there's your pitch dark knight. The

580
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 1: river is a very different shape on a pitch dark

581
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: knight from what it is on the starlet night. All

582
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: the shore seemed to be straight lines then, and mighty

583
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: dim ones too, and you'd run them for straight lines,

584
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: only you know better. You boldly drive your boat into

585
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:47,000
Speaker 1: what seems to be a solid straight wall, and that

586
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,399
Speaker 1: wall falls back and makes way for you. And then

587
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,479
Speaker 1: there's your gray mist. You take a night when there's

588
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: one of those grizzly, drizzly gray mist and there isn't

589
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 1: any particular shape to a shore. A gray miss would

590
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: tangle ahead of the oldest man that ever lived. Well,

591
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:06,280
Speaker 1: then there's different kinds of moonlight that changed the shape

592
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,360
Speaker 1: of the river in different ways. You see, Twain interrupts

593
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,680
Speaker 1: this pilot. Oh, don't say anymore, please, I've got to

594
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: learn the shape of the river according to all these

595
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand different ways. If I tried to carry

596
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: all that cargo in my head, it would make me

597
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: stoop shoulder. My spirits were down in the mud again.

598
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: Two things seem pretty apparent to me. One was that

599
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: in order to be a pilot, a man has got

600
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: to learn more than any one man ought to be

601
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: allowed to know. The other was that he must learn

602
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: it all over again in a different way every twenty

603
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: four hours. This River pilot dissected the different categories of

604
00:38:45,719 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: night clear, starlet nights, pitch dark knights, and a night

605
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: with a gray mist. I like the hyper specific competence

606
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: in this master's ability to parse out difference in what

607
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: appears to be a monolithic thing. The dark Twain was

608
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 1: enamored with the pilot's skill set. He said, I think

609
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in

610
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: the world. To know the Old and New Testaments by heart,

611
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: and to be able to recite them ghibli forward and back,

612
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: or begin at random anywhere in the book and recite

613
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: both ways and never trip or make a mistake. Is

614
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 1: no extravagant, massive knowledge and no marvelous faculty compared to

615
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 1: a pilot's massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous

616
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 1: faculty in the handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately,

617
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: and I believe I am not expanding the truth. When

618
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: I do, many will think the figure too strong, but

619
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: pilots will not. End of quote. Here's Twain on reading water,

620
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: and again I think it's important that we hear Old

621
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:53,240
Speaker 1: Twain's voice. The face of the water in time became

622
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,280
Speaker 1: a wonderful book, a book that was a dead language

623
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to

624
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as if

625
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 1: it uttered them with a voice. And it was not

626
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: a book to be read once and thrown aside, for

627
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: it had a news story to tell every day. Throughout

628
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: the long twelve hundred miles, there was never a page

629
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,399
Speaker 1: that was void of interest, never one that you could

630
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: leave unread without loss, never one you could want to skip,

631
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:22,959
Speaker 1: thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.

632
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,000
Speaker 1: There was never so wonderful a book written by man,

633
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:29,600
Speaker 1: never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so

634
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 1: sparklingly renewed with every reprousal. The passenger who could not

635
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint

636
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:39,800
Speaker 1: dimple on its surface. On the rare occasions when he

637
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: did not overlook it altogether. But to the pilot it

638
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,560
Speaker 1: was an italicized passage. Indeed, it was more than that.

639
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 1: It was a legend of the largest capitals, with a

640
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it.

641
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: For it meant that a wrecker or rock was buried

642
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 1: there that could tear the life out of the strongest

643
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,839
Speaker 1: vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simple

644
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,319
Speaker 1: expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to

645
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 1: a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not

646
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty

647
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 1: pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by

648
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 1: the clouds, whereas the trained eye they were not pictures

649
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 1: at all, but the grimest and most dead earnest of

650
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 1: reading material. When I had mastered the language of this water,

651
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 1: and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered

652
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: the great river as familiar as I knew the letters

653
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 1: of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But

654
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: I had lost something too. I had lost something which

655
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:37,319
Speaker 1: could never be restored to me. While I lived all

656
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 1: the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of

657
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 1: the majestic river, I still kept in mind a certain

658
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: wonderful sunset, which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me.

659
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: A broad, expansive river was turned to blood. In the

660
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 1: middle distance, the red hue brightened into gold, through which

661
00:41:55,440 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: a solitary log came, floating black and conspicuous, like one bewitched.

662
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: I drank it in in a speechless rapture. The world

663
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: was new to me, and I'd never seen anything like

664
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: this at home. But as I have said, a day

665
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: came when I began to cease from noting the glories

666
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:12,880
Speaker 1: and the charms which the moon and the sun and

667
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: the twilight wrought upon the river's face. Another day came

668
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 1: and I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that

669
00:42:19,120 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 1: sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon

670
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 1: it without rapture, and should have commented on it inwardly

671
00:42:25,880 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: after this fashion. The sun means that we're gonna have

672
00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: wind tomorrow. That floating log means the river is rising

673
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: small thanks to that. That slant mark on the water

674
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 1: refers to a bluff reef which is gonna kill somebody's

675
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 1: steamboat one of these nights. No, the romance and beauty

676
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 1: of it were all gone from the river. All the

677
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: value of any feature of it had for me now

678
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 1: was to amount of its usefulness it could furnish towards

679
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days

680
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 1: I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the

681
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,440
Speaker 1: lovely flush and the beauty's cheek mean to a doctor?

682
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: But a break that ripples above some deadly disease? Are

683
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: not all her visible charms? So thick with what are

684
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: to him signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he

685
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,320
Speaker 1: ever see her beauty at all? Or doesn't he simply

686
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 1: view her professionally in comment upon her unwholesome condition? And

687
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or

688
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 1: lost most by learning his trade? What an incredible question?

689
00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 1: Did he lose or gain something by learning this trade

690
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: of being a Mississippi River pilot. Naivety can carry an empty,

691
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 1: fleeting bliss, But the naive don't change the world with

692
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:49,839
Speaker 1: their literature or tame giant ancient raging rivers. Twain went

693
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:52,720
Speaker 1: through as training to become a pilot, but the Civil

694
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: War ended his career and ultimately ended a sixty year

695
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 1: steamboat era. He said that Mississis be steamboating was born

696
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: about eighteen twelve, and at the end of thirty years

697
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 1: it had grown into mighty proportions, and in less than

698
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:11,280
Speaker 1: thirty years more it was dead. So from eighteen twelve

699
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 1: to eighteen sixty was the Mississippi River steamboating era. After Humphreys,

700
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 1: Elliott and the aid studies. By the eighteen seventies, government

701
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:30,440
Speaker 1: levies were changing the river, making it safer and partly

702
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:34,840
Speaker 1: taming it. Twain would lament the passing of the wild river.

703
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because you'd think in the late eighteen

704
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 1: hundreds that the Mississippi River was wild, but Twain thought

705
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:46,400
Speaker 1: it was tamed. And our boy Twain actually addressed ads

706
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:52,840
Speaker 1: in his book. Here's Twain. The military engineers of the

707
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 1: commission had taken up on their shoulders the job of

708
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 1: making the Mississippi over again, a job transcended in size

709
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: by only the original job of creating it. They are

710
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,600
Speaker 1: building wing dams here and there to direct the current,

711
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 1: and dykes to confine it into narrower bounds. One who

712
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: knows the Mississippi will promptly say, not aloud but to himself,

713
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: that ten thousand river commissions, with the minds of the

714
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 1: world that they're back. Cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot

715
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 1: curb it or confine it, cannot say to it go

716
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: here or go there and make it obey. Cannot save

717
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,040
Speaker 1: a shore which has been sentenced, cannot bar it's path

718
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: with an obstruction that it will not tear down, dance

719
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,120
Speaker 1: over and laugh at. But a discreet man will not

720
00:45:36,200 --> 00:45:39,280
Speaker 1: put these things into spoken words. But the West Point

721
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: engineers have not their superiors anywhere. They know all that

722
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: can be known of their obstruse science. And so since

723
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:49,879
Speaker 1: they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river

724
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: and bossom, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man

725
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: to keep still, lie low and wait till they do it.

726
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: Captain eads, there's our boys, with his jetties, has done

727
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 1: a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed

728
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:08,399
Speaker 1: clearly impossible. So we do not feel full confidence now

729
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 1: to prophesy against the like impossibilities. Otherwise one might pipe

730
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 1: out and say the Commission might as well bully the

731
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 1: comments in their courses and undertake to make them behave

732
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: as to try to bully the Mississippi into right in

733
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 1: reasonable conduct, Twain expressed his lack of confidence in science

734
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 1: and man's bullying in eighteen eighty three, which would have

735
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:36,399
Speaker 1: been the start of man's biggest push to manipulate the river.

736
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because he would be right in that

737
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: lack of confidence, at least at first. Mark Twain would

738
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:47,760
Speaker 1: die in nineteen ten, seventeen years before his words would

739
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:51,239
Speaker 1: prove true in the flood of nineteen twenty seven. We're

740
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: going to read one more section of Twain, and I

741
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: think it shows his sarcasm, humor, and his thoughts on

742
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 1: the science of the time. And where we're going to

743
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:04,839
Speaker 1: start this passage. In the previous paragraph he'd cited all

744
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:08,000
Speaker 1: the man made cutoffs that had shortened the river by

745
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty two miles. Here's Twain, this is

746
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:16,239
Speaker 1: the last one. Now, if you want to be one

747
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 1: of those ponderous scientific people and let on to prove

748
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:22,759
Speaker 1: what had occurred in the remote past by what had

749
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,360
Speaker 1: occurred in a given time in the recent past, or

750
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: what will occur in the far future by what has

751
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 1: occurred in the late years. What an opportunity is here.

752
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:34,360
Speaker 1: Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data

753
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: to argue from, nor development of species either. That's a

754
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: jab at Darwin. Glacial epics are great things, but they

755
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:43,319
Speaker 1: are vague.

756
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 4: Vague.

757
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: Please observe, in the space of one hundred and seventy

758
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: six years, the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred

759
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: and forty two miles. That is an average of a

760
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 1: trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore,

761
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: any calm person who is not blind or idiotic can

762
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,200
Speaker 1: see that in the Old Silurian period, just a million

763
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 1: years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward

764
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:14,480
Speaker 1: of one million, three hundred thousand miles long and stuck

765
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:16,879
Speaker 1: out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod.

766
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: And by the same token, any person can see that

767
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 1: seven hundred and forty two years from now, the Lower

768
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: Mississippi will only be a mile and three quarters long,

769
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 1: and kro and New Orleans will have joined their streets

770
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 1: together and be plotting comfortably along under a single mayor

771
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating

772
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 1: about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out

773
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:50,239
Speaker 1: of such trifling investment of fact. That was good and sarcastic.

774
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,439
Speaker 1: Mister Mark Twain, you know if you understand the math. There,

775
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 1: you see what he's doing. He's making fun of it,

776
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: and that's wild that he was doing that in the

777
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties. And he was even poking fun at are

778
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: one and the idea of speciation. Did you hear that.

779
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by science and believe in the endeavor wholeheartedly.

780
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: But it's not much different than the way I'm fascinated

781
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: and have pledged my allegiance to writing sheerfooted mules in

782
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: the backwoods. I'm conflicted. Mules and science have a lot

783
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: in common. You see. They're both incredible functional beasts, but

784
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: will kill you if mishandled, and their purpose is easily

785
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: misunderstood too. Joy ride your kids on a dead broke horse,

786
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: not on a vinegar spit and flashy mule. Likewise, don't

787
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 1: send science to do the work of a spiritual philosopher.

788
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: That's like asking a pinball machine to make bread. And

789
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: if your rational Western mind tells you that science outranks

790
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: and supersedes a man's verified, bonafide spiritual belief backed with

791
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: real life and real faith, I will submit that you

792
00:49:56,560 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 1: have taken the bait, and the hook will shortly enter

793
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:02,320
Speaker 1: your upper lift, leading you to a stringer of human

794
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 1: existence that is very new to the planet. Only taking

795
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: into consideration the natural without the spiritual is very new

796
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: to mankind. Woom, I'm done. I'm now stepping off this

797
00:50:19,080 --> 00:50:22,840
Speaker 1: box of Irish spring. Let's talk about the Great Flood

798
00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty seven.

799
00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 6: When it rain five days and the sky the dog

800
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 6: as night. When it rained five days and the sky

801
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:47,279
Speaker 6: the dog as night.

802
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:51,880
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen twenty seven, just a month before

803
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:55,359
Speaker 1: the start of the Great Flood, Bessie Smith recorded the

804
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 1: song Backwater Blues about the floods of nineteen twenty six,

805
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: When it rains five or six days and the skies

806
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: are dark as night, Then trouble taken place in the

807
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: lowlands at night.

808
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 4: She said.

809
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: She was known as the Impress of the Blues and

810
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:14,320
Speaker 1: would become the most famous female blues singer of the

811
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Little did she know what was coming.

812
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 4: Last three months of nineteen twenty six, the average reading

813
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:29,320
Speaker 4: on every single river gauge, not only on the Mississippi itself,

814
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 4: but on the Ohio, on the Missouri, on every other

815
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:36,320
Speaker 4: tributary was the highest ever known only six times in history.

816
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:43,759
Speaker 4: At Vicksburg, had the gauge ever broken thirty feet in October,

817
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 4: and it had never broken thirty one feet. In October

818
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:52,880
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty six, it broke forty feet. So the whole

819
00:51:53,480 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 4: drainage basin was saturated. And it didn't take much thinking

820
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 4: to figure out that if you got any rain of

821
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,960
Speaker 4: any significance in nineteen twenty seven, you were going to

822
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 4: get a serious flood. And in fact, you just got

823
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:14,880
Speaker 4: more rain. You had five storms in the spring of

824
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:18,799
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty seven, each of which was greater than any

825
00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 4: single storm in the preceding ten years. This is on

826
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 4: top of a river basin that's already filled with water.

827
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:31,359
Speaker 4: So beginning on New Year's Day, you had floods in Pittsburgh,

828
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 4: and you know, proceeding Downriver Louisville, you had, you know,

829
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:39,600
Speaker 4: floods on basically every tributary system in the entire river.

830
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:43,840
Speaker 4: So the net result was, I mean, you knew this

831
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:46,760
Speaker 4: was going to be a bad year. The book actually

832
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,080
Speaker 4: opens with a scene on what turned out to be

833
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 4: the biggest storm of the year, and that one the

834
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 4: scenes in Greenville, Mississippi. But on that day in New

835
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 4: Orleans they got fourteen point ninety six inches of rain

836
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 4: in twenty four hours. Wow, you were going to have

837
00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 4: a problem.

838
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: And indeed, at that time there were government built levees,

839
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 1: one thousand miles of government built levees up the river

840
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:16,279
Speaker 1: right basically the Gulf of Mexico all the way up

841
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 1: to Illinois.

842
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 4: Correct.

843
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:22,080
Speaker 1: And these these levees were touted to the people of

844
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:24,640
Speaker 1: the river basin as unbeatable.

845
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:24,839
Speaker 4: Right.

846
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 1: It was like the Titanic, Right, it was like.

847
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:30,800
Speaker 4: Yeah, in nineteen twenty six and the official report of

848
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 4: the Corps of Engineers it said, I think for the

849
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 4: first time it said, you know, we're now in a

850
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 4: position to protect the territory from overflow.

851
00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:43,840
Speaker 1: Classic Cubris, yeah, classic, yeah.

852
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 4: Yeah.

853
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 1: And then the big break was in Mounds, Mississippi.

854
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 4: The single biggest break. There were plenty of big.

855
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,040
Speaker 1: Breaks, right, that was kind of the one that like

856
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: when it happened that people knew we're in big trouble.

857
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 4: Well, they'd already knew they were in big trouble. That

858
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:05,919
Speaker 4: particular break. There had already been flooding. As I said,

859
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,799
Speaker 4: you know, people died in Virginia, they died in Oklahoma.

860
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:14,960
Speaker 4: That one break was probably the biggest single break, not

861
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 4: only in that flood but maybe in any flood that

862
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,440
Speaker 4: we know of, because you know, close to four hundred

863
00:54:22,480 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand cubic feet a second was coming out

864
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 4: of the river. That's an army rouge. Yeah. Well, the levee,

865
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 4: of course had breached. There wasn't any levee. Yeah, but

866
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:38,319
Speaker 4: that single levee break flooded and land seventy miles to

867
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:44,400
Speaker 4: the east to the hills of Mississippi, and for probably

868
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,239
Speaker 4: about eighty miles I guess it is from there until

869
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 4: Vicksburg where her so it filled the delta. It flooded

870
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,839
Speaker 4: about twenty seven thousand square miles on the lower Mississippi.

871
00:54:55,880 --> 00:55:03,240
Speaker 4: That's not counting you know, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Knoxville, Oklahoma City.

872
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 4: It's not counting that land about twenty seven thou square

873
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 4: miles of the lower Mississippi and Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana

874
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:16,240
Speaker 4: so forth.

875
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: Here's an excerpt from John Berry's Rising Type. There the

876
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:27,920
Speaker 1: river had lingered for months, not leaving all the land

877
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 1: until September. Then it finally fell back within its banks,

878
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 1: languid once again, like a snake that had swallowed its

879
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:40,040
Speaker 1: prey and lay now digesting it, it left behind ruin

880
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:43,279
Speaker 1: and rotted at the site of each crevasse. It had

881
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: dug out blue holes, pockets of deep water lakes where

882
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: fishing was often best and that exists still, and deposited

883
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:54,520
Speaker 1: mountains of sand. Over thousands of acres and the entire

884
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,839
Speaker 1: flooded region, fifty percent of all animals, half of all

885
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 1: the mules, horses, cattle, hogs, and chickens had drowned. Thousands

886
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:06,040
Speaker 1: of tenant farmer shacks had simply disappeared, Hundreds of sturdy barns,

887
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: cotton gins, warehouses, farmhouses had been swept away. Buildings by

888
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:12,840
Speaker 1: the tens of thousands had been damaged, and in towns

889
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:15,840
Speaker 1: whole blocks had become heaps of splintered lumber, like the

890
00:56:15,920 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 1: leavings of a tornado. In some places, great mounds of

891
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: sand covered fields and streets. On the fields, in the forests,

892
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 1: in the streets and yards and homes and businesses and barns,

893
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,279
Speaker 1: the water left a reeking muck. It filled the air

894
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:33,800
Speaker 1: with stench, and then the sun lay baking and cracking

895
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 1: like broken pottery dung, colored and unvarying to the horizon.

896
00:56:41,239 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 1: The Mississippi River flood of nineteen twenty seven, caused the

897
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:48,120
Speaker 1: Ohio to flow backwards, covered some Delta towns with over

898
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:51,400
Speaker 1: thirty feet of water, and caused more economic damage than

899
00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina. The flood displaced over seven hundred thousand people,

900
00:56:56,520 --> 00:57:01,080
Speaker 1: but disproportionately affected over five hundred thousand Black Americans, which

901
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:04,799
Speaker 1: comprised seventy five percent of the population of the Delta.

902
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: Official reports showed two hundred and fifty deaths from the flood,

903
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: but deaths resulting from the impacts of the flood, not

904
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 1: just drowning in the initial water rise, were likely in

905
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:18,920
Speaker 1: the thousands. The flood highlighted the discrepancy of treatment between

906
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: Blacks and whites. Much of John Berry's book is about

907
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: the refugee camps and the thousands of men working twenty

908
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: four hours a day repairing levees during the flood. I

909
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: want to read an excerpt from Rising Tide, and it's

910
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: an important thing to realize that the forty two year

911
00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:38,920
Speaker 1: old William Alexander Percy, who was Leroy Percy's son. We

912
00:57:39,040 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: talked about him extensively on episode two, was appointed by

913
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover to oversee the Red Cross operations in the

914
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:51,280
Speaker 1: refugee camps on the levees, So the young Percy was

915
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:54,440
Speaker 1: in charge of the levee camps. They were camping on

916
00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: the levees because it was the only land that wasn't underwater.

917
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:00,880
Speaker 1: The short version of that story is that the Blacks

918
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:04,360
Speaker 1: were forced by the National Guard to stay in refugee

919
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: camps on the levees, while most whites were allowed to

920
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:11,720
Speaker 1: leave on boats. If you remember, a lot of the

921
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: issues of the South came from their desperate need for

922
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 1: labor in agriculture. Here's John Barry. In the first hours

923
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 1: of the flood, black and white had risked their lives

924
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: to save each other. There had been a feeling of humanity,

925
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: not race. Now the disparity between life for black and

926
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: white seemed greater than in normal life. Blacks, who had

927
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 1: believed Greenville to be a special place felt betrayed. Petty

928
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:44,560
Speaker 1: insults stirred more resentment. Whenever the steamer Capital pulled away

929
00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 1: from the dock, its calliope routinely played by by Blackbird.

930
00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 1: It was like a slap in the face of the blacks.

931
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:56,240
Speaker 1: Even many whites were bothered. The blacks also resented Will's orders,

932
00:58:56,400 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 1: which were printed every day on the newspaper's front page. First,

933
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: he required quote groups of negroes outside of Greenville to

934
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 1: get to the levee and be rationed there. Leaders of

935
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 1: the black community complained, so did the whites, but the

936
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 1: most serious grievance penetrated the soul. The Blacks were no

937
00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:16,720
Speaker 1: longer free. The National Guard patrolled the perimeter of the

938
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 1: levee camp with the rifles and fixed bayonets. To enter

939
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 1: or leave, one needed to pass. They were imprisoned. This

940
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:27,160
Speaker 1: was true in every camp in the state. Mississippi was

941
00:59:27,200 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: determined to keep its workers, even if it required force

942
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:35,280
Speaker 1: to do so. I told you the name of will

943
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:37,920
Speaker 1: Percy would come up later. He was the one that

944
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: made the decision, with the influence of his father Leroy,

945
00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 1: to not evacuate the Blacks out of the camps, but

946
00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: rather make them stay. They were afraid they'd leave and

947
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 1: never come back, which is exactly what would happen to many.

948
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: That's wild stuff. Here's John Berry with how the flood

949
00:59:57,240 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty seven impacted America. If you were just

950
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:06,080
Speaker 1: describing in a in a in a short version, which

951
01:00:06,080 --> 01:00:08,520
Speaker 1: obviously this is what your whole book is about. Is

952
01:00:08,560 --> 01:00:12,920
Speaker 1: how this flood changed America. What's what's a version that

953
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: we can understand of how this flood changed America?

954
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 4: Well, they're you know, number one, it elected Herbert Hoover president.

955
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 4: You know, you can demonstrate that almost with mathematical certainty.

956
01:00:25,720 --> 01:00:28,920
Speaker 4: Hoover was put in charge of the rescue and rehabilitation

957
01:00:29,120 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 4: of close to a million people, and he actually did

958
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:33,320
Speaker 4: a great job.

959
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:36,320
Speaker 1: It create gained a national fame from you.

960
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:40,040
Speaker 4: He was already had, you know, it was extremely well

961
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:44,440
Speaker 4: known from his activities in World War One. He was

962
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 4: already had a He was referred to as a great humanitarian.

963
01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:52,360
Speaker 4: He was a logistics genius and just getting there were

964
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 4: there were seven hundred thousand people being fed by the

965
01:00:55,360 --> 01:00:59,880
Speaker 4: Red Cross and just handling the logistics of getting that done.

966
01:01:00,200 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 4: He's in charge of that, and he did a terrific job.

967
01:01:03,040 --> 01:01:07,680
Speaker 4: So that's number one. Number Two, it changed the policy

968
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 4: the corp of Engineers and pretty much every engineer anywhere

969
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 4: in the world in terms of how you deal with rivers.

970
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:19,040
Speaker 4: You recognize that you can't simply contain them within the levees.

971
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:22,480
Speaker 4: You have to give them room to spread out. The

972
01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 4: end result was, you know, just an outlet to the ocean.

973
01:01:26,080 --> 01:01:28,280
Speaker 4: Just well, to the Lake Parncha train and through Lake

974
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,080
Speaker 4: Poncha Train to the Gulf of Mexico just above New Orleans,

975
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 4: about fifteen miles above New Orleans. You know, there are

976
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 4: other spill ways if necessary, that start above Baton Rouge.

977
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:42,640
Speaker 4: It also will lead to the ocean. There are reservoirs,

978
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 4: you know, throughout the Mississippi River basin on both sides

979
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:47,959
Speaker 4: of the river to keep water out of the river,

980
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:52,000
Speaker 4: and of course they increase the levees as well. People

981
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 4: don't realize it, but in twenty eleven, which is probably

982
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 4: the second biggest flood ever, they were close to ten

983
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:02,720
Speaker 4: thousand square miles of land flooded by design. This was

984
01:02:02,840 --> 01:02:07,640
Speaker 4: land that was essentially set aside to allow the river

985
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 4: room to expand. That's number two. Number three. It was

986
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:20,920
Speaker 4: an enormous spur to African American migration out of the

987
01:02:20,960 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 4: Mississippi Delta, and not just Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana as well

988
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 4: to you know, Chicago to Detroit to Los Angeles. You know,

989
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:33,280
Speaker 4: there was upwards of eight hundred thousand people who left

990
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 4: that region because of the flood, and that it didn't

991
01:02:38,320 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 4: start the Great Migration, but it was a huge spur

992
01:02:42,680 --> 01:02:47,320
Speaker 4: to it. It also began the shift of African American

993
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:51,040
Speaker 4: voters from the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, to

994
01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:54,560
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party. That was because of some deals at

995
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 4: Hoover cut to get the nomination. You know, in those days,

996
01:02:59,680 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 4: every African American who voted basically voted Republican, and they

997
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:08,640
Speaker 4: didn't control any state parties except in the South, because

998
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 4: in those days, the Democratic Party controlled pretty much every

999
01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:15,760
Speaker 4: Southern state and they were all white. They didn't allow

1000
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:19,720
Speaker 4: any black participation. So you're African American. Even though you

1001
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 4: couldn't vote in a state election in Alabama, you could

1002
01:03:23,720 --> 01:03:26,480
Speaker 4: be active in the Republican Party in the state of Alabama.

1003
01:03:26,520 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 4: And that was worth something because if you had a

1004
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:31,440
Speaker 4: Republican president, you had a saying who got to be

1005
01:03:31,520 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 4: the post you run a post office in your town,

1006
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:39,280
Speaker 4: or who got nominated to a court. Even though you

1007
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:43,160
Speaker 4: couldn't vote, the Republican White House might listen to you.

1008
01:03:44,080 --> 01:03:47,120
Speaker 4: Hoover had cut a deal to get the nomination with

1009
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:52,080
Speaker 4: African American leaders, and he later betrayed them. The most

1010
01:03:52,120 --> 01:03:56,240
Speaker 4: important change is probably the most subtle and the hardest

1011
01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:59,920
Speaker 4: to prove, but it shifted the way people thought of

1012
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:02,640
Speaker 4: about the responsibility of federal government to help people in

1013
01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:03,240
Speaker 4: a disaster.

1014
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:07,600
Speaker 1: I want to close with the reading of the last

1015
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:14,640
Speaker 1: page of Rising Tide. The first sentence of Will Percy's autobiography,

1016
01:04:14,760 --> 01:04:18,680
Speaker 1: Leonards on the Levee reads, My country is the Mississippi Delta,

1017
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,440
Speaker 1: the river country. The river had created the Delta, and

1018
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 1: the white man, the Percys and men liked them, had

1019
01:04:25,400 --> 01:04:28,000
Speaker 1: brought blacks to the Delta to clear it entertainment and

1020
01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 1: to transform it into an empire. Together they had done that,

1021
01:04:31,720 --> 01:04:34,520
Speaker 1: They had built that empire. Will believed that he was

1022
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: watching that empire disintegrate. Near the end of his autobiography,

1023
01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: completed only months before his death in nineteen forty one,

1024
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:44,080
Speaker 1: he wrote, the old Southern way of life in which

1025
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: I had been reared existed no more, and its values

1026
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:50,960
Speaker 1: were ignored or derided. A tarnish has fallen over the

1027
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:55,400
Speaker 1: bright world, dishonor and corruption triumph. My own strong people

1028
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 1: have become lotus eaters. The feet is here again, the

1029
01:04:59,160 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 1: last most abhorrent. He seemed to accept that defeat, if

1030
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:08,800
Speaker 1: only he accepted the absurd and finally himself. A society

1031
01:05:08,840 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 1: does not change in sudden jumps, whether it moves in

1032
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:15,360
Speaker 1: multiple small steps along a broad front. Most of these

1033
01:05:15,400 --> 01:05:19,479
Speaker 1: steps are parallel, if not quite simultaneous. Some advance further

1034
01:05:19,520 --> 01:05:22,440
Speaker 1: than others, and some even more in an opposite direction.

1035
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:26,200
Speaker 1: The movement rather resembles that of an amoeba, with one

1036
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 1: part of the body extending itself outward than another, even

1037
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:32,080
Speaker 1: while the main body stays back until enough of the

1038
01:05:32,160 --> 01:05:35,800
Speaker 1: mass has shifted to move the entire body. The Great

1039
01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:41,320
Speaker 1: Mississippi River flood of nineteen twenty seven forced many small steps.

1040
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:53,680
Speaker 1: Those are the words of John Barry. I can't thank

1041
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:57,160
Speaker 1: you enough for listening to Bear Grease. On the next episode,

1042
01:05:57,320 --> 01:05:59,440
Speaker 1: we're going to get back into the science of the

1043
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:02,720
Speaker 1: river and even its danger. We're going to talk about

1044
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:05,840
Speaker 1: it's fish and turtles and all that cool stuff. If

1045
01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:08,520
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend

1046
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:13,280
Speaker 1: and leave us a review on iTunes. I can't wait

1047
01:06:13,320 --> 01:06:15,880
Speaker 1: to talk with all the folks on the Bear Grease

1048
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 1: Render next week.