cannot be cleared. Still others have been leached and silted and might be put back speedily into crops. Here and there great holes many feet deep have been scoured into fertile fields. Great cracks and gullies have appeared. Many hundreds of acres are covered with lakes of trapped water left when the rivers subsided. Streams have changed their courses. Terraces have been washed away and huge chunks eaten out of cultivated land along the banks of streams. Some idea of the national impact of this disaster can be gained from consideration of the fact that losses to the 1951 farm crop will mean 7.5 percent less wheat, 5.5 percent less pork, and 1.1 percent less beef for the country as a whole. Looking at it another way, the wheat loss means the equivalent of 4,993,000,000 loaves of bread have been taken away from the American consumer this year. Thus, every man, woman, and child in the United States has lost, as a result of this disaster, the equivalent of 33 loaves of bread, 20 days' supply of pork, and 4 days' supply of beef.

The invaluable resource of the land will be most economically maintained if rehabilitation measures are taken promptly.

Industrial damage

In all, it is estimated that nearly 6,000 business concerns ranging from big assembly plants and huge packing plants to cross-roads grocery stores were destroyed or seriously damaged to the value of more than $191,000,000. To this should be added the railroad damage, which is put at about $132,000,000, and the loss of utilities running to more than $7,500,000.

The production of the large corporations was quickly restored or replaced. These companies used their large resources to do an unbelievably rapid job of recovery. This much of the threat to the national economy was removed.

At the peak of the disaster, there were 1,000 A. T. & T. circuits out and 38,000 telephones. In less than 4 weeks all the circuits were in operation, and the only telephones not in service were those of subscribers whose homes or places of business have been demolished. Telephones were installed as rapidly as

needed.

Railroad lines were cut in many places, and railroad yards suffered greatly. The Santa Fe's hump yard was under 22 feet of water at one time. There were 16,410 railroad cars damaged or destroyed. The success of the repair job can be judged by this extract from the Defense Transport Administration's report:

"Interchange at terminals from July 13-22 was 19.9 percent of normal. This increased from July 23 through August 1 to 53.2 percent of normal operation * * *. With exception of Union Pacific, through service is approaching normal. (This was August 9.) U. P. has considerable rerailing and rebuilding to do and this is progressing as rapidly as possible.”

Other urban damage

Perhaps the most tragic losses were those sustained by the more than 40,000 families whose homes were inundated-10,000 of them washed away or left as empty, unrepairable shells or so severely damaged that they will require major reconstruction. Thousands of families in more than 100 cities and towns came back to their homes after the water went down to find at best a gutted house in which there was not a single sliver of glass and the only contents 2 or 3 feet of mud and slime.

Many of these dwellings were completely under water; in one place in the industrial and workers' area of Kansas City, Kans., the water was more than 50 feet deep, enough to cover a five-story building. At another spot the water was racing through homes and shops at a speed of 18 miles an hour. Some of the homes that are standing will have to be torn down; it will be cheaper to rebuild than repair. The sense of desolation as one passes today through these streets of ghost houses is overpowering.

Relatively few of the owners of these houses are in a position to proceed with the repair work once they have themselves shoveled the silt out of their homes. That they have done this is testified by the pile of mud outside virtually every window. Most of the owners were left destitute by the flood. Understandably they hesitate to incur large debts, even if they could get credit, on top of what they already owed on their homes.

The damage to homes is now estimated at more than $75,000,000. Schools, churches, municipal and State buildings have suffered to a value of more than $20,000,000.

Other damage

Of the remaining material loss, the greatest is to the highways. Hundreds of bridges are down, many miles of road and city streets gouged out, undermined or buried. In Kansas alone, some 700 bridges of varying sizes from spans across tiny creeks to crossings of the Missouri River have been washed out. A conservative estimate of damage here is about $30 million, almost equally divided between the Federal-State road systems and county roads.

The intangible losses are as real as damage to property and even more difficult to estimate. The Labor Department put unemployment at 100,000 industrial workers, but many found temporary work cleaning silt and debris from flooddamaged property. Nevertheless, by the end of July a net increase of about 17,000 in unemployment insuraace claims for the States of Kansas and Missouri had been recorded. In August, the claims in Kansas had doubled and those in Missouri had risen by nearly 50 percent. Growing hardship, threatening mass unemployment, is inevitable as long as the recovery measures stagnate, and it must be said that despite the efforts of the people, this is the outlook unless Federal aid is promptly provided. The number of workers not covered by unemployment insurance is large, but it would be impossible to more than guess at the total income loss.

States and municipalities have been hard hit in the sums required for relief work during the emergency, in the loss of their own public property, and in the loss of taxes. In Kansas, for example, the sales tax for July 1951, brought in $437,050.58 less than it had in the corresponding month of 1950, a drop of more than 13 percent in one of the State's chief sources of revenue. The State's 2-year appropriation for the National Guard will be entirely consumed in a few months. There were as many as 3,000 men on duty, and some units were called out again by the threat of the September rains. Missouri estimates tax losses as a result of the flood at $1,750,000.

The losses to business and individuals outside the flood area through decreased purchasing power of the victims cannot be assessed. It is large, however, and will continue until the devastated region is rehabilitated.

Based on data now available, the best statistical analysis of flood damage is presented in the table which follows:

Direct property damage caused by great flood of 1951 1

See footnotes at end of table, p. 16.

Direct property damage caused by great flood of 1951 1-Continued

1 These figures do not include accounts receivable, professional equipment, and loss of operating income, wages, salaries, interest, dividends, and local, State, and Federal tax

8 Based on ICC data and individual company reports. Total figures, applying to entire area, shown in Kansas, since unfeasible to give breakdown by States.

Previous disaster experience

It should be emphasized again that we have no previous experience of a disaster as destructive of property as the great flood of July 1951. The Weather Bureau estimated the average flood loss of the country from 1924 to 1949 at $110,000,000 a year. The Legislative Reference Service estimated, on the basis of early reports, that the Kansas-Missouri flood this year raised the average to $150 million. Later figures raise it still further to about $190 million. Thus, the single disaster almost doubled the 25-year average. Yet the earlier total had included the two most destructive in the Nation's history, the Mississippi flood of 1927 and the Ohio-Mississippi flood of 1937. None of the hurricanes, conflagrations, or other floods had approached these in total property damage.

Even if we correct the total damage figures to allow for inflated prices of 1951, we find that the 1951 flood was three to four times as destructive as the next greatest, that of 1937. The 1937 disaster caused total damage estimated at $432 million; that of 1927 was estimated at $284 million.

In neither of these was the Federal Government active in any other rehabilitation programs than the restoration of Federal property destroyed and the rebuilding of dikes and levees. In 1927, some $5 million of Federal funds were spent solely for emergency relief activities and in 1937 a total of $31 million, also for relief. In the next 10 years, indirect Federal assistance in various emergencies was supplied through the Disaster Loan Corporation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The total for the 10 years was $38,900,000. Since 1947, Federal disaster programs have been more coordinated, and allocations have amounted to $4 million. Allocations for emergency operations in the present flood as of September 2, 1951, amount to $16,080,000.

REPAIRING THE DAMAGE

The program to restore the economy of the flood area has grown out of the experience of the struggle for rehabilitation which has been going on since that "Black Friday," July 13, when the levees were topped and broken at Kansas City. The people of the flooded communities, their neighbors, their public officials, both State and local, and personnel from more than 50 Federal agencies worked together in the emergency and have worked together to draw up the program of rehabilitation which the President outlined in his message to the Congress.

Because Kansas and Missouri were the hardest hit, they set up flood advisory committees composed of leaders in labor, agriculture, industry, finance, and civic groups as well as public officials. The program had the unanimous support of these committees, their only reservations being that the sums provided may not be enough. As the President outlined it and as H. R. 5259 provides, it consists of three major measures which together can achieve both the humanitarian and coldly practical objective of restoring the economy of the flooded area. These three are

1. Direct rehabilitation assistance where needed by owners of private property: Total cost, $190,000,000.

2. Liberal loans for reconstruction and rehabilitation over and above those now available through the various Government lending agencies: Total cost, $160,000,000.

3. Federal flood insurance to provide protection for future flood victims anywhere in the country: Total cost, $50,000,000.

The total appropriation asked, therefore, is $400,000,000. The next three sections of this statement will explain the reasons for the requests and the manner in which the various programs will be operated.

The principle

1. DIRECT AID FOR RESTORING PRODUCTIVITY

There is nothing new or unprecedented in direct financial aid from the Federal Government to maintain the economy of the country by building up the productivity of its citizens. The drought of the 1930's which created the Dust Bowl was a national disaster, which could only be met by national action. The whole program of rebuilding and protecting the soil was the Nation's answer to that call. The disaster's cost was one with which no single farmer or group of farmers, no county or group of counties, no single State could cope. Not only was the cost too great, but protective and constructive measures had to be taken across State lines. The result has been an immeasurable benefit to all the people.