Though they lack a legal status until Congress meets, the members of the Flood Control Committee of the House of Representatives gathered last week in Washington to begin drafting national legislation. The committee's chairman, Representative Frank R. Reid of Illinois, declared at the outset that nothing but flood control would be undertaken, that party politics would be kept out.
Army engineers had not yet completed their survey and report on the Mississippi Basin, upon which the committee's flood control bill must largely be based. So the committee heard witnesses and suggestions. The first hearing made it plain why Chairman Reid had called his meeting early.
Eleven special trains rumbled into Washington. Out poured some 2,000 politicians from Middle America. From North Dakota came Governor Arthur Gustav Sorlie. From New Orleans came enormously rotund Mayor Arthur J. O'Keefe. Governor Len Small of Illinois was there and Senators James Enos Watson of Indiana and Pat Harrison of Mississippi. There were business boosters from St. Louis, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge; rooster-boosters from Cairo, Keokuk, Dubuque and Quincy. There were a policemen's octet, a quartet of Pullman porters, an Italian band dressed as sailors. One and all wore huge bullseye badges inscribed "America First," "Farm Relief," "Inland Waterways to Double Exports," "National Flood Control to Prevent Disasters." Singing, grinning, shouting, backslapping, this horde converged upon the Mayflower Hotel in an uproarious phalanx around their loudly lumbering leader, Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson of Chicago.
After calling on President Coolidge (see p. 7), Mayor Thompson strode into the caucus room of the House office building, where the Flood Control Committee waited. Representative Reid seemed impressed by his fellow Illinoisian and introduced him to the committee as "the man who knows more about the Mississippi Flood than any other man." (Cheers.) "No man has done more for flood control than William Hale Thompson," said Chairman Reid. (More cheers.)
Mayor Thompson then shouted at the Committee that he had come to state that the U. S. is the only agency to handle flood control. "You can't bust a thousand banks in the Mississippi without putting the rent signs on Bill Thompson's town, and that goes for every other town," he shouted.
Other speakers tried to add to Mayor Thompson's testimony about the flood. They were there, as he had shouted, "to crystallize sentiment." But Chairman Reid's "hearing" resolved itself into little more than roos-ter-boostering for Mayor Thompson.
Said enormous Mayor O'Keefe of New Orleans: " 'Big Bill' will go down in history with Lincoln and Roosevelt!"
Said onetime (1910-13) Senator Leroy Percy of Mississippi: "Big Bill Thompson . . . has made some enemies, but he'll never make an enemy in the Mississippi Valley."