"No Period" McGee Prophesies Revolution

1908

Railways, Navigation, Rights Granted

Dr. W J McGee, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist, who is the secretary and mainspring of the inland waterways commission, predicts a revolution within a few years, if the railways are allowed to continue grabbing riparian rights, throttling navigation and depriving the country of its greatest single source of wealth, its waterways.

And Dr. McGee is no wild sensationalist, but a cool-headed scientist and investigator. He points out that, with the exception of Vicksburg, there is not a single town between St. Paul and New Orleans whose river fronts and bridges have not been grabbed by the railways with the kind assistance of the legislatures. The doctor's idea is that by redeeming the river fronts and developing waste water power, the whole cost of improving the rivers would be paid for in a few years.

Dr. McGee is a self-taught scientist. While he was working on a farm he was studying Latin, higher mathematics, astronomy and surveying. He had charge of the bureau of ethnology from 1893 to 1903, resigning to become chief of the department of anthropology at the St. Louis exposition. He was the first president of the American Anthropological society, and later was president of the National Geographical society. He has done some valuable exploring work himself, his topographic survey of northwestern Iowa being the most extensive ever made in America without public aid. He is now secretary of the inland waterways commission, which has in charge the deepening and improving of our inland navigation, together with the reclamation of land and the development of water power.

Dr. McGee was born in Iowa in 1853. He is known among his friends as "No Period" McGee, for he never uses periods after his initials. He maintains that everyone calls him "W J," and that that has become his name and ceased to be initials.