Rolling On

Crowded out by President Roosevelt's Supreme Court shocker (see p. 16) and the fateful automobile strike in Flint and Detroit (see below), the Great Flood of 1937 seeped off the nation's front pages last week. But for a half-million people along the lower Mississippi it was still prime news. From Cairo, Ill. to New Orleans an army of 125,000 reliefers, convicts and volunteers worked feverishly to raise and strengthen the thousand-mile, billion-dollar levee system which stood between them and disaster. The levees were still holding as the hump in the river's back reached Memphis at week's end. High wind or heavy rain might still send the swollen river roaring through and over them. It was going to be an anxious three weeks until the worst U. S. flood rolled out into the Gulf and history.*

*For flood curiosities, see p. 66.

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