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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
THE PANAMA CANAL
* * * * *
[Illustration: The 5 Points of Authority]
The 5 Points of Authority in this Book
1. All of the chapters in this book pertaining to the actual
construction of the Canal were read and corrected by Colonel
George W. Goethals, Chairman and Chief Engineer of the Isthmian
Canal Commission.
2. All of the illustrations were made from photographs taken by
Mr. Ernest Hallen, the official photographer of the Commission.
3. The book contains the beautiful, colored Bird's-eye View of
the Canal Zone, made under the direction of the National
Geographic Society, as well as the black-and-white official map
of the Canal.
4. The extensive index was prepared by Mr. G. Thomas Ritchie, of
the staff of the Library of Congress.
5. The final proofs were revised by Mr. Howard E. Sherman, of the
Government Printing Office, to conform with the typographical
style of the United States Government.
"The American Government,"
by the same author, was read by millions of Americans, and still holds
the record as the world's best seller among all works of its kind.
* * * * *
[Illustration: ATLANTIC OCEAN PACIFIC OCEAN
Courtesy, National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C.
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE PANAMA CANAL
Copyright, 1913, by the J. N. Matthews Co., Buffalo, N. Y.]
THE PANAMA CANAL
by
FREDERIC J. HASKIN
Author of "The American Government," etc.
[Illustration: logo]
Illustrated from photographs taken by
ERNEST ALLEN
Official Photographer of the Isthmian Canal Commission
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1913
Copyright, 1913, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York
PREFACE
The primary purpose of this book is to tell the layman the story of
the Panama Canal. It is written, therefore, in the simplest manner
possible, considering the technical character of the great engineering
feat itself, and the involved complexities of the diplomatic history
attaching to its inception and undertaking. The temptation to turn
aside into the pleasant paths of the romantic history of ancient
Panama has been resisted; there is no attempt to dispose of political
problems that incidentally concern the canal; in short, the book is
confined to the story of the canal itself, and the things that are
directly and vitally connected with it.
Colonel Goethals was good enough to read and correct the chapters
relating to the construction of the canal, and, when shown a list of
the chapters proposed, he asked that the one headed "The Man at the
Helm" be omitted. The author felt that to bow to his wishes in that
matter would be to fail to tell the whole story of the canal, and so
Colonel Goethals did not read that chapter.
Every American is proud of the great national achievement at Panama.
If, in the case of the individual, this book is able to supplement
that pride by an ample fund of knowledge and information, its object
and purpose will have been attained.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The grateful acknowledgments of the author are due to Mr. William
Joseph Showalter for his valuable aid in gathering and preparing the
material for this book. Acknowledgments are also due to Colonel George
W. Goethals, chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmian Canal
Commission, for reading and correcting those chapters in the book
pertaining to the engineering phases of the work; to Mr. Ernest
Hallen, the official photographer of the Commission, for the
photographs with which the book is illustrated; to Mr. Gilbert H.
Grosvenor, editor of the _National Geographic Magazine_, for
permission to use the bird's-eye view map of the canal; to Mr. G.
Thomas Ritchie, of the Library of Congress, for assistance in
preparing the index; and to Mr. Howard E. Sherman, of the Government
Printing Office, for revising the proofs to conform with the
typographical style of the United States Government.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Land Divided--The World United 3
II. Greatest Engineering Project 23
III. Gatun Dam 32
IV. The Locks 45
V. The Lock Machinery 57
VI. Culebra Cut 70
VII. Ends of the Canal 82
VIII. The Panama Railroad 93
IX. Sanitation 105
X. The Man at the Helm 118
XI. The Organization 133
XII. The American Workers 145
XIII. The Negro Workers 154
XIV. The Commissary 164
XV. Life on the Zone 176
XVI. Past Isthmian Projects 194
XVII. The French Failure 206
XVIII. Choosing the Panama Route 221
XIX. Controversy with Colombia 233
XX. Relations with Panama 246
XXI. Canal Zone Government 256
XXII. Congress and the Canal 268
XXIII. Sea Level Canal Impossible 277
XXIV. Fortifications 283
XXV. Fixing the Tolls 295
XXVI. The Operating Force 309
XXVII. Handling the Traffic 317
XXVIII. The Republic of Panama 326
XXIX. Other Great Canals 335
XXX. A New Commercial Map 347
XXXI. American Trade Opportunities 358
XXXII. The Panama-Pacific Exposition 368
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Birdseye View of the Panama Canal Zone _Color insert_
FACING PAGE
George W. Goethals, Chairman and Chief Engineer 10
A Street in the City of Panama 11
Theodore Roosevelt 18
William Howard Taft 18
Woodrow Wilson 18
Vendors in the Streets of Panama 19
A Native Boy Marketing 19
Lieut. Col. W. L. Sibert 43
The Upper Locks at Gatun 43
Toro Point Breakwater 43
Concrete Mixers, Gatun 50
A Center Wall Culvert, Gatun Locks 50
The Machinery for Moving a Lock Gate 51
Steam Shovels Meeting at Bottom of Culebra Cut 74
L. K. Rourke 74
The Man-made Canyon at Culebra 75
The Disastrous Effects of Slides in Culebra Cut 82
U. S. Ladder Dredge "Corozal" 83
A Mud Bucket of the "Corozal" 83
W. G. Comber 83
Col. William C. Gorgas 106
The Hospital Grounds, Ancon 106
Lieut. Frederic Mears 107
The Old Panama Railroad 107
Sanitary Drinking Cup 114
Mosquito Oil Drip Barrel 114
Spraying Mosquito Oil 114
Typical Quarters of the Married Laborer 115
A Native Hut 115
Maj. Gen. George W. Davis 138
Rear Admiral J. G. Walker 138
Theodore P. Shonts 138
John F. Wallace 138
John F. Stevens 138
Charles E. Magoon 138
Richard Lee Metcalfe 139
Emory R. Johnson 139
Maurice H. Thatcher 139
Joseph Bucklin Bishop 139
H. A. Gudger 139
Joseph C. S. Blackburn 139
Brig. Gen. Carroll A. Devol 146
American Living Quarters at Cristobal 146
Harry H. Rousseau 147
Lowering a Caisson Section 147
John Burke 170
Meal Time at an I. C. C. Kitchen 170
Washington Hotel, Colon 171
Major Eugene T. Wilson 171
The Tivoli Hotel, Ancon 171
Floyd C. Freeman 178
I. C. C. Club House at Culebra 178
A. Bruce Minear 179
Reading Room in the I. C. C. Club House, Culebra 179
Col. Chester L. Harding 202
The Gatun Upper Locks 202
Lieut. Col. David D. Gaillard 203
Culebra Cut, Showing Cucaracha Slide in Left Center 203
The Man of Brawn 210
Ferdinand de Lesseps 211
An Old French Excavator Near Tabernilla 211
Philippe Bunau-Varilla 211
S. B. Williamson 234
The Lower Gates, Miraflores Locks 234
Middle Gates, Miraflores Locks 235
H. O. Cole 235
The Pay Car at Culebra 242
Edward J. Williams 242
Uncle Sam's Laundry at Cristobal 243
Smoke from Heated Rocks in Culebra Cut 266
Tom M. Cooke 267
The Post Office, Ancon 267
A Negro Girl 274
A Martinique Woman 274
San Blas Chief 274
An Indian Girl 274
An Italian 274
A Timekeeper 274
A Spaniard 274
A Negro Boy 274
Testing the Emergency Dam, Gatun Locks 275
Col. Harry F. Hodges 275
The Ancon Baseball Park 298
Caleb M. Saville 399
Gatun Spillway from Above and Below 299
An Electric Towing Locomotive in Action 306
Blowing Up the Second Dike South of Miraflores Locks 307
DIAGRAMS
A Graphic Illustration of the Material Handled at Panama 25
A Cross Section of the Gatun Dam 35
Plan of the Gatun Dam and Locks 36
A Profile Section of the Canal 40
From a Model of Pedro Miguel Lock 48
A Cross-section of Locks, Giving an Idea of Their Size 49
One of the 92 Gate-leaf Master Wheels 64
A _Mauretania_ in the Locks 67
The Effect of Slides 72
Average Shape and Dimensions of Culebra Cut 75
The _Corozal_ and its Method of Attack 85
International Shipping Routes 351
A Map Showing Isthmus with the Completed Canal 379
The Panama Canal
"_I have read the chapters in 'The Panama Canal' dealing with the
engineering features of the Canal and have found them an accurate and
dependable account of the undertaking._"
GEO. W. GOETHALS.
THE PANAMA CANAL
CHAPTER I
THE LAND DIVIDED--THE WORLD UNITED
The Panama Canal is a waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, cut through the narrow neck of land connecting the continents
of North and South America. It is the solution of the problem of
international commerce that became acute in 1452 when the Eastern
Roman Empire fell before the assaults of the Turks, and the land
routes to India were closed to Western and Christian Europe.
Forty years after the Crescent supplanted the Cross on the dome of St.
Sophia in Constantinople, Columbus set sail to seek a western route to
the Indies. He did not find it, but it was his fortune to set foot on
the Isthmus of Panama, where, more than four centuries later, the goal
of his ambition was to be achieved; not by discovery, but by virtue of
the strength and wealth of a new nation of which he did not dream,
although its existence is due to his own intrepid courage.
Columbus died not knowing that he had multiplied the world by two, and
many voyagers after him also vainly sought the longed-for western
passage. Magellan sought it thousands of leagues to the southward in
the cold and stormy seas that encircle the Antarctic Continent. Scores
of mariners sought it to the northward, but only one, Amundsen, in the
twentieth century, was able to take a ship through the frozen passages
of the American north seas.
Down the western coast of the new continent from the eternal ice of
Alaska through the Tropics to the southern snows of Tierra del Fuego,
the mighty Cordilleras stretch a mountain barrier thousands and
thousands and thousands of miles.
Where that mountain chain is narrowest, and where its peaks are
lowest, ships may now go through the Panama Canal. The canal is cut
through the narrowest part of the Isthmus but one, and through the
Culebra Mountain, the lowest pass but one, in all that longest,
mightiest range of mountains. There is a lower place in Nicaragua, and
a narrower place on the Isthmus east of the canal, but the engineers
agreed that the route from Colon on the Atlantic to Panama on the
Pacific through Culebra Mountain was the most practicable.
The canal is 50 miles long. Fifteen miles of it is level with the
oceans, the rest is higher. Ships are lifted up in giant locks, three
steps, to sail for more than 30 miles across the continental divide,
85 feet above the surface of the ocean, then let down by three other
locks to sea level again. The channel is 300 feet wide at its
narrowest place, and the locks which form the two gigantic water
stairways are capable of lifting and lowering the largest ships now
afloat. A great part of the higher level of the canal is the largest
artificial lake in the world, made by impounding the waters of the
Chagres River, thus filling with water the lower levels of the
section. Another part of the higher level is Culebra Cut, the channel
cut through the backbone of the continent.
Almost before Columbus died plans were made for cutting such a
channel. With the beginning of the nineteenth century and the
introduction of steam navigation, the demand for the canal began to be
insistent.
Many plans were made, but it remained for the French, on New Year's
Day of 1880, actually to begin the work. They failed, but not before
they had accomplished much toward the reduction of Culebra Cut. They
expended between 1880 and 1904 no less than $300,000,000 in their
ill-fated efforts.
In 1904 the United States of America undertook the task. In a decade
it was completed and the Americans had spent, all told, $375,000,000
in the project.
Because the Atlantic lies east and the Pacific west of the United
States, one is likely to imagine the canal as a huge ditch cut
straight across a neck of land from east to west. But it must be
remembered that South America lies eastward from North America, and
that the Isthmus connecting the two has its axis east and west. The
canal, therefore, is cut from the Atlantic south-eastward to the
Pacific. It lies directly south of Pittsburgh, Pa., and it brings Peru
and Chile closer to New York than California and Oregon. The first 7
miles of the canal, beginning at the Atlantic end, run directly south
and from thence to the Pacific it pursues a serpentine course in a
southeasterly direction.
At the northern, or Atlantic, terminus are the twin cities of Colon
and Cristobal, Colon dating from the middle of the nineteenth century
when the railroad was built across the Isthmus, and Cristobal having
its beginnings with the French attempt in 1880. At the southern, or
Pacific, terminus are the twin cities of Panama and Balboa. Panama was
founded in 1673 after the destruction by Morgan, the buccaneer, of an
elder city established in 1519. The ruins of the old city stand 5
miles east of the new, and, since their story is one, it may be said
that Panama is the oldest city of the Western World. Balboa is yet in
its swaddling clothes, for it is the new American town destined to be
the capital of the American territory encompassing the canal.
The waterway is cut through a strip of territory called the Canal
Zone, which to all intents and purposes is a territory of the United
States. This zone is 10 miles wide and follows the irregular line of
the canal, extending 5 miles on either side from the axis of the
channel. This Canal Zone traverses and separates the territory of the
Republic of Panama, which includes the whole of the Isthmus, and has
an area about equal to that of Indiana and a population of 350,000 or
about that of Washington City. The two chief Panaman cities, Panama
and Colon, lie within the limits of the Canal Zone, but, by the
treaty, they are excepted from its government and are an integral part
of the Republic of Panama, of which the city of Panama is the
capital. Cristobal and Balboa, although immediately contiguous to
Colon and Panama, are American towns under the American flag.
The Canal Zone historically and commercially has a record of interest
and importance longer and more continuous than any other part of the
New World. Columbus himself founded a settlement here at Nombre de
Dios; Balboa here discovered the Pacific Ocean; across this narrow
neck was transported the spoil of the devastated Empire of the Incas;
here were the ports of call for the Spanish gold-carrying galleons;
and here centered the activities of the pirates and buccaneers that
were wont to prey on the commerce of the Spanish Main.
Over this route, on the shoulders of slaves and the back of mules,
were transported the wares in trade of Spain with its colonies not
only on the west coasts of the Americas, but with the Philippines.
Not far from Colon was the site of the colony of New Caledonia, the
disastrous undertaking of the Scotchman, Patterson, who founded the
Bank of England, to duplicate in America the enormous financial
success of the East India Company in Asia.
Here in the ancient city of Panama in the early part of the nineteenth
century assembled the first Pan American conference that gave life to
the Monroe doctrine and ended the era of European colonization in
America.
Here was built with infinite labor and terrific toll of life the first
railroad connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans--a railroad
less than 50 miles in length, but with perhaps the most interesting
story in the annals of railroading.
Across this barrier in '49 clambered the American argonauts, seeking
the newly discovered golden fleeces of California.
This was the theater of the failure of Count de Lesseps, the most
stupendous financial fiasco in the history of the world.
And this, now, is the site of the most expensive and most successful
engineering project ever undertaken by human beings.
It cost the French $300,000,000 to fail at Panama where the Americans,
at the expenditure of $375,000,000, succeeded. And, of the excavation
done by the French, only $30,000,000 worth was available for the
purpose of the Americans. That the Americans succeeded where the
French had failed is not to be assigned to the superiority of the
American over the French nation. The reasons are to be sought, rather,
in the underlying purposes of the two undertakings, and in the
scientific and engineering progress made in the double decade
intervening between the time when the French failure became apparent
and the Americans began their work.
In the first place, the French undertook to build the canal as a
money-making proposition. People in every grade of social and
industrial life in France contributed from their surpluses and from
their hard-earned savings money to buy shares in the canal company in
the hope that it would yield a fabulously rich return. Estimates of
the costs of the undertaking, made by the engineers, were arbitrarily
cut down by financiers, with the result that repeated calls were made
for more money and the shareholders soon found to their dismay that
they must contribute more and yet more before they could hope for any
return whatever. From the beginning to the end, the French Canal
Company was concerned more with problems of promotion and finance than
with engineering and excavation. As a natural result of this spirit at
the head of the undertaking the whole course of the project was marred
by an orgy of graft and corruption such as never had been known. Every
bit of work was let out by contract, and the contractors uniformly
paid corrupt tribute to high officers in the company. No watch was set
on expenditures; everything bought for the canal was bought at prices
too high; everything it had to sell was practically given away.
In the next place, the French were pitiably at the mercy of the
diseases of the Tropics. The science of preventive medicine had not
been sufficiently developed to enable the French to know that
mosquitoes and filth were enemies that must be conquered and
controlled before it would be possible successfully to attack the land
barrier. Yellow fever and malaria killed engineers and common laborers
alike. The very hospitals, which the French provided for the care of
the sick, were turned into centers of infection for yellow fever,
because the beds were set in pans of water which served as ideal
breeding places for the death-bearing stegomyia.
In this atmosphere of lavish extravagance caused by the financial
corruption, and in the continual fear of quick and awful death, the
morals of the French force were broken; there was no determined spirit
of conquest; interest centered in champagne and women; the canal was
neglected.
Yet, in spite of this waste, this corruption of money and morals, much
of the work done by the French was of permanent value to the
Americans; and without the lessons learned from their bitter
experience it would have been impossible for the Americans or any
other people to have completed the canal so quickly and so cheaply.
The Americans brought to the task another spirit. The canal was to be
constructed not in the hope of making money, but, rather, as a great
national and popular undertaking, designed to bring the two coasts of
the great Republic in closer communication for purposes of commerce
and defense.
The early estimates made by the American engineers were far too low,
but the French experience had taught the United States to expect such
an outcome. Indeed, it is doubtful if anybody believed that the first
estimates would not be doubled or quadrupled before the canal was
finished.
[Illustration: Signature of George Goethals
_Chairman and Chief Engineer_]
[Illustration: A STREET IN THE CITY OF PANAMA]
The journey of the U. S. S. _Oregon_ around the Horn from Pacific
waters to the theater of the War with Spain in the Caribbean, in 1898,
impressed upon the American public the necessity of building the canal
as a measure of national defense. Commercial interests long had been
convinced of its necessity as a factor in both national and
international trade, and, when it was realized that the _Oregon_ would
have saved 8,000 miles if there had been a canal at Panama, the
American mind was made up. It determined that the canal should be
built, whatever the cost.
From the very first there was never any question that the necessary
money would be forthcoming. It is a fact unprecedented in all
parliamentary history that all of the appropriations necessary for the
construction and completion of the Isthmian waterway were made by
Congress without a word of serious protest.
During the same War with Spain that convinced the United States that
the canal must be built, a long forward step was taken in the science
of medicine as concerned with the prevention and control of tropical
diseases. The theory that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes
had been proved by a Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finley, a score of
years earlier. An Englishman, Sir Patrick Manson, had first shown that
disease might be transmitted by the bites of insects, and another
Englishman, Maj. Roland Ross, had shown that malaria was conveyed by
mosquitoes. It remained, however, for American army surgeons to
demonstrate, as they did in Cuba, that yellow fever was transmissible
only by mosquitoes of the stegomyia variety and by no other means
whatsoever.
With this knowledge in their possession the Americans were able to do
what the French were not--to control the chief enemy of mankind in
torrid climes. In the first years of the work the public, and
Congress, reflecting its views, were not sufficiently convinced of the
efficacy of the new scientific discoveries to afford the means for
putting them into effect. The Isthmian Canal Commission refused to
honor requisitions for wire screens, believing that they were demanded
to add to the comfort and luxury of quarters on the Zone, rather than
for protection against disease. But the outbreak of yellow fever in
1905 was the occasion for furnishing the Sanitary Department, under
Col. W. C. Gorgas, with the necessary funds, and thus provided, he
speedily and completely stamped out the epidemic. From that time on,
no one questioned the part that sanitation played in the success of
the project. The cities of Panama and Colon were cleaned up as never
were tropical cities cleaned before. All the time, every day, men
fought mosquitoes that the workers in the ditch might not be struck
down at their labors.
The Americans, too, made mistakes. In the beginning they attempted to
build the canal under the direction of a commission with headquarters
in Washington. This commission, at long distance and by methods
hopelessly involved in red tape, sought to direct the activities of
the engineer in charge on the Isthmus. The public also was impatient
with the long time required for preparation and insistently demanded
that "the dirt begin to fly."
The work was begun in 1904. It proceeded so slowly that two years
later the chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission asserted that it
must be let out to a private contractor, this being, in his opinion,
the only way possible to escape the toils of governmental red tape.
The then chief engineer, the second man who had held that position
while fretting under these methods, was opposed to the contract
system. Bids were asked for, however, but all of them were rejected.
Fortunately, Congress from the beginning had left the President a
practically free hand in directing the course of the project. Mr.
Roosevelt reorganized the commission, made Col. George W. Goethals, an
Army engineer, chairman of the commission and chief engineer of the
canal. The constitution of the commission was so changed as to leave
all the power in the hands of the chairman and to lay all of the
responsibility upon his shoulders.
It was a master stroke of policy, and the event proved the choice of
the man to be admirable in every way. From the day the Army engineers
took charge there was never any more delay, never any halt in
progress, and the only difficulties encountered were those of
resistant Nature (such as the slides in Culebra Cut) and those of
misinformed public opinion (such as the absurd criticism of the Gatun
Dam).
The Americans, too, in the early stages of the work were hampered by
reason of the fact that the final decision as to whether to build a
sea-level canal or a lock canal was so long delayed by the conflicting
views of the partisans of each type in Congress, in the executive
branches of the Government, and among the engineers. This problem,
too, was solved by Mr. Roosevelt. He boldly set aside the opinion of
the majority of the engineers who had been called in consultation on
the problem, and directed the construction of a lock canal. The wisdom
of this decision has been so overwhelmingly demonstrated that the
controversy that once raged so furiously now seems to have been but a
tiny tempest in an insignificant teapot.
One other feature of the course of events under the American régime at
Panama must be considered. Graft and corruption had ruined the French;
the Americans were determined that whether they succeeded or not,
there should be no scandal. This, indeed, in part explains why there
was so much apparently useless circumlocution in the early stages of
the project. Congress, the President, the engineers, all who were in
responsible position, were determined that there should be no graft.
There was none.
Not only were the Americans determined that the money voted for the
canal should be honestly and economically expended, but they were
determined, also, that the workers on the canal should be well paid
and well cared for. To this end they paid not only higher wages than
were current at home for the same work, but they effectively shielded
the workers from the exactions and extortions of Latin and Oriental
merchants by establishing a commissary through which the employees
were furnished wholesome food at reasonable prices--prices lower,
indeed, than those prevailing at home.
As a result of these things the spirit of the Americans on the Canal
Zone, from the chairman and chief engineer down to the actual diggers,
was that of a determination to lay the barrier low, and to complete
the job well within the limit of time and at the lowest possible cost.
In this spirit all Americans should rejoice, for it is the highest
expression of the nearest approach we have made to the ideals upon
which the Fathers founded our Republic.
It is impossible to leave out of the reckoning, in telling the story
of the canal, the checkered history of the diplomatic engagements on
the part of the United States, that have served both to help and to
hinder the undertaking. What is now the Republic of Panama has been,
for the greater part of the time since continental Latin America threw
off the yoke of Spain, a part of that Republic having its capital at
Bogota, now under the name of Colombia, sometimes under the name of
New Granada, sometimes a part of a federation including Venezuela and
Ecuador. The United States, by virtue of the Monroe doctrine, always
asserted a vague and undefined interest in the local affairs of the
Isthmus. This was translated into a concrete interest when, in 1846, a
treaty was made, covering the construction of the railroad across the
Isthmus, the United States engaging always to keep the transit free
and open. Great Britain, by virtue of small territorial holdings in
Central America and of larger claims there, also had a concrete
interest, which was acknowledged by the United States, in the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, under which a projected canal should be
neutral under the guarantee of the Governments of the United States
and Great Britain.
For years the United States was inclined to favor a canal cut through
Nicaragua, rather than one at Panama, and, after 1898, when the
American nation had made up its mind to build a canal somewhere, the
partisans of the Panama and Nicaragua routes waged a bitter
controversy.
Congress finally decided the issue by giving the President authority
to construct a canal at Panama, with the proviso that should he be
unable to negotiate a satisfactory treaty with Colombia, which then
owned the Isthmus, he should proceed to construct the canal through
Nicaragua. Under this threat of having the scepter of commercial power
depart forever from Panama, Colombia negotiated a treaty, known as the
Hay-Herran treaty, giving the United States the right to construct the
canal. This treaty, however, failed of ratification by the Colombian
Congress, with the connivance of the very Colombian President who had
negotiated it.
But President Roosevelt was most unwilling to accept the alternative
given him by Congress--that of undertaking the canal at Nicaragua--and
this unwillingness, to say the least, encouraged a revolution in
Panama. This revolution separated the Isthmus from the Republic of
Colombia, and set up the new Republic of Panama. As a matter of fact,
Panama had had but the slenderest relations with the Bogota
Government, had been for years in the past an independent State, had
never ceased to assert its own sovereignty, and had been, indeed, the
theater of innumerable revolutions.
The part the United States played in encouraging this revolution, the
fact that the United States authorities prevented the transit of
Colombian troops over the Panama Railway, and that American marines
were landed at the time, has led to no end of hostile criticism, not
to speak of the still pending and unsettled claims made by Colombia
against the United States. Mr. Roosevelt himself, years after the
event and in a moment of frankness, declared: "I took Panama, and left
Congress to debate it later."
Whatever may be the final outcome of our controversy with Colombia, it
may be confidently predicted that history will justify the coup d'état
on the theory that Panama was the best possible site for the
interoceanic canal, and that the rupture of relations between the
territory of the Isthmus and the Colombian Republic was the best
possible solution of a confused and tangled problem.
These diplomatic entanglements, however, as the canal is completed,
leave two international disputes unsettled--the one with Colombia
about the genesis of the canal undertaking, and the other with Great
Britain about the terms of its operation.
Congress, in its wisdom, saw fit to exempt American vessels engaged
exclusively in coastwise trade--that is to say, in trade solely
between ports of the United States--from payment of tolls in transit
through the canal. This exemption was protested by Great Britain on
the ground that the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, which took the place of the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, provided that the canal should be open to all
nations on exact and equal terms. The future holds the termination of
both these disputes.
Congress, that never begrudged an appropriation, indulged in many
disputes concerning the building and operation of the canal. First,
there was the controversy as to site, between Nicaragua and Panama.
Next, came the question as to whether the canal should be at sea level
or of a lock type. Then there was the question of tolls, and the
exemption of American coastwise traffic. But, perhaps the most
acrimonious debates were on the question as to whether or not the
canal should be fortified. Those who favored fortification won their
victory, and the canal was made, from a military standpoint, a very
Gibraltar for the American defense of, and control over, the
Caribbean. That this was inevitable was assured by two facts: One that
the trip of the _Oregon_ in 1898 crystallized public sentiment in
favor of constructing the canal; and the other that the canal itself
was wrought by Army engineers under the direction of Colonel Goethals.
Colonel Goethals never for a moment considered the possibility that
Congress would vote against fortifications, and the whole undertaking
was carried forward on that basis.
If the military idea, the notion of its necessity as a feature of the
national defense, was the determining factor in initiating the canal
project, it remains a fact that its chief use will be commercial, and
that its money return, whether small or large, nearly all will be
derived from tolls assessed upon merchant vessels passing through it.
[Illustration: THE THREE PRESIDENTS UNDER WHOSE DIRECTION THE CANAL
WAS BUILT]
[Illustration: VENDERS IN THE STREETS OF PANAMA]
[Illustration: A NATIVE BOY MARKETING]
The question of the probable traffic the canal will be called upon to
handle was studied as perhaps no other world-wide problem of
transportation ever was. Prof. Emory R. Johnson was the student of
this phase of the question from the beginning to the end. He
estimates that the canal in the first few years of its operation will
have a traffic of 10,000,000 tons of shipping each year, and that by
1975 this will have increased to 80,000,000 tons, the full capacity of
the canal in its present form. Provision has been made against this
contingency by the engineers who have so constructed the canal that a
third set of locks at each end may be constructed at a cost of about
$25,000,000, and these will be sufficient almost to double the present
ultimate capacity, and to take care of a larger volume of traffic than
now can be foreseen.
Americans are interested, first of all, in what the canal will do for
their own domestic trade. It brings Seattle 7,800 miles nearer to New
York; San Francisco, 8,800 miles nearer to New Orleans; Honolulu 6,600
miles nearer to New York than by the Strait of Magellan. Such saving
in distance for water-borne freight works a great economy, and
inevitably must have a tremendous effect upon transcontinental
American commerce.
In foreign commerce, also, some of the distances saved are tremendous.
For instance, Guayaquil, in Ecuador, is 7,400 miles nearer to New York
by the canal than by the Strait of Magellan; Yokohama is nearly 4,000
miles nearer to New York by Panama than by Suez; and Melbourne is
1,300 miles closer to Liverpool by Panama than by either Suez or the
Cape of Good Hope. Curiously enough, the distance from Manila to New
York, by way of Suez and Panama, is almost the same, the difference in
favor of Panama being only 41 miles out of a total of 11,548 miles.
The difference in distance from Hongkong to New York by the two
canals is even less, being only 18 miles, this slight advantage
favoring Suez.
But it is not by measure of distances that the effect of the canal on
international commerce may be measured. It spells the development of
the all but untouched western coast of South America and Mexico. It
means a tremendous up-building of foreign commerce in our own
Mississippi Valley and Gulf States. It means an unprecedented
commercial and industrial awakening in the States of our Pacific coast
and the Provinces of Western Canada.
While it was not projected as a money-making proposition, it will pay
for its maintenance and a slight return upon the money invested
from the beginning, and in a score of years will be not only
self-supporting, but will yield a sufficient income to provide for the
amortization of its capital in a hundred years.
The story of how this titanic work was undertaken, of how it
progressed, and of how it was crowned with success, is a story without
a parallel in the annals of man. The canal itself, as Ambassador Bryce
has said, is the greatest liberty man has ever taken with nature.
Its digging was a steady and progressive victory over sullen and
resistant nature. The ditch through Culebra Mountain was eaten out by
huge steam shovels of such mechanical perfection that they seemed
almost to be alive, almost to know what they were doing. The rocks and
earth they bit out of the mountain side were carried away by trains
operating in a system of such skill that it is the admiration of all
the transportation world, for the problem of disposing of the
excavated material was even greater than that of taking it out.
The control of the torrential Chagres River by the Gatun Dam, changing
the river from the chief menace of the canal to its essential and
salient feature, was no less an undertaking. And, long after Gatun Dam
and Culebra Cut cease to be marvels, long after the Panama Canal
becomes as much a matter of course as the Suez Canal, men still will
be thrilled and impressed by the wonderful machinery of the
locks--those great water stairways, operated by machinery as ingenious
as gigantic, and holding in check with their mighty gates such floods
as never elsewhere have been impounded.
It is a wonderful story that this book is undertaking to tell. There
will be much in it of engineering feats and accomplishments, because
its subject is the greatest of all engineering accomplishments. There
will be much in it of the things that were done at Panama during the
period of construction, for never were such things done before. There
will be much in it of the history of how and why the American
Government came to undertake the work, for nothing is of greater
importance. There will be something in it of the future, looking with
conservatism and care as far ahead as may be, to outline what the
completion of this canal will mean not only for the people of the
United States, but for the people of all the world.
Much that might be written of the romantic history of the Isthmian
territory--tales of discoverers and conquistadores, wild tales of
pirates and buccaneers, serio-comic narratives of intrigue and
revolution--is left out of this book, because, while it is
interesting, it now belongs to that antiquity which boasts of many,
many books; and this volume is to tell not of Panama, but of the
Panama Canal--on the threshold of its story, fitted by a noble birth
for a noble destiny.