ase our
domestic and foreign commerce; to aid and develop mining and building;
and to render to labor in every field of useful occupation the liberal
wages and adequate rewards to which skill and industry are justly
entitled. The necessity of the passage of a tariff law which shall
provide ample revenue, need not be further urged. The imperative demand
of the hour is the prompt enactment of such a measure, and to this
object I earnestly recommend that Congress shall make every endeavor.
Before other business is transacted, let us first provide sufficient
revenue to faithfully administer the Government without the contracting
of further debt, or the continued disturbance of our finances.

WILLIAM McKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _April 7, 1897_.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

Information which has recently come to me from the governors of
Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and from prominent citizens of
these States and Tennessee, warrants the conclusion that widespread
distress, involving the destruction of a large amount of property and
loss of human life, has resulted from the floods which have submerged
that section of the country. These are stated, on reliable authority, to
be the most destructive floods that have ever devastated the Mississippi
Valley, the water being much higher than the highest stage it has
reached before. From Marion, Ark., north of Memphis, to Greenville,
Miss., a distance of more than 250 miles by river, it is reported there
are now at least fifty towns and villages under water, and a territory
extending from 100 miles north of Memphis to 200 miles south, and from
5 to 40 miles wide, is submerged. Hundreds of thousands of acres of
cultivated soil, with growing crops, are included in the submerged
territory. In this section alone there are from 50,000 to 60,000 people
whose property has been destroyed and whose business has been suspended.
Growing crops have been ruined, thousands of cattle have been drowned,
and the inhabitants of certain areas threatened with starvation. As a
great majority of the sufferers are small farmers, they have thus been
left entirely destitute, and will be unprepared for work even after the
floods have subsided.

The entire Mississippi Valley in Arkansas is flooded and communication
with many points cut off. In Mississippi a like condition exists. The
levees in Louisiana, with a single exception, have held; but the water
is rising and the s