THE MAN AT THE HELM
In 1905, William H. Taft, then Secretary of War, made a trip to the
Isthmus of Panama to look over the preparations for the construction
of the Panama Canal, and at the same time to consider the question of
the fortification of the big waterway. On that trip a member of the
General Staff of the Army, who at that time was but little known
outside of Army circles, went with him. He was a tall, broad-shouldered,
bronze-faced, gray-haired man, 47 years old. He came and went
unheralded. Few people knew of the engineering record he had made, and
no one on the Isthmus dreamed that he was destined to become the
commander in chief of the army that would conquer the Isthmian
barrier.
He returned to the United States and wrote his report--a report which,
from the deep mastery of the subject it revealed, attracted the
favorable attention of the Secretary of War. Later when the board of
consulting engineers came to make its report upon the type of canal
which should be built--whether it should be a sea level or a lock
canal--the Secretary of War asked this officer to prepare a draft of
his report to the President recommending the lock canal.
Soon after New Year's Day, 1907, the chief engineer of the canal,
John F. Stevens, dissatisfied with the relations that existed between
the Government and himself, came to the conclusion that he could not
build the canal hampered as he was by red tape at Washington. It then
became a question of whether or not the canal should be built by
contract or by the Army. President Roosevelt asked for a preliminary
report upon this proposition and the unheralded Army engineer who had
visited the Canal Zone in 1905, made it. A few days later there was a
conference between President Roosevelt, Gen. Alexander MacKenzie,
Chief of Engineers of the United States Army, and the Secretary of
War. After this conference Maj. George Washington Goethals was
summoned to the White House and informed by the President that it had
been determined to build the Panama Canal under the auspices of the
Army, and that he was appointed chairman and chief engineer of the
Isthmian Canal Commission. He was requested to keep the fact of his
appointment a secret and to prepare immediately to go to Panama. A
ship sailed for the Isthmus three days thereafter, and he was ready to
sail when the President advised him that he might wait over and
arrange affairs in Washington, leaving in time to get to the Isthmus
to take charge on the first of April.
When the announcement was made to the country that the work of
building the canal was to be put in the hands of the Army, the whole
country began to inquire: Who is Major Goethals? that inquiry revealed
the fact that he was a man who had accomplished much in his 49 years.
Born in 1858, of Dutch parents, whose ancestors had settled in New
York when it was still New Amsterdam, he was appointed to the United
States Military Academy at West Point where he was graduated in the
class of 1880 with such honors that he was entitled to enter the
Engineer Corps of the Regular Army.
In 1891 he rose to the rank of captain, and in 1898 became lieutenant
colonel and chief engineer of the First Volunteer Army Corps in Cuba.
On the last day of that year he was honorably discharged from the
volunteer service, and, in 1900, became a major in the Engineer Corps
of the Regular Army. For a number of years prior to 1898 he had been
instructor in civil and military engineering at West Point. He had
been in charge of the Mussel Shoals canal construction on the
Tennessee River, a work which won praise from engineers both in civil
and in military life. It was in a measure his record made on the
Tennessee River work that led to his appointment as chairman and chief
engineer of the Isthmian Canal.
When he took charge of the work at Panama he was promoted to
lieutenant colonel. Arriving there he immediately informed all hands
that while the work of building the canal had been placed under Army
engineers, no man who was then on the job and faithfully executing his
work need fear anything from that administration. From that time down
to the last stages of the work that statement held good. Trained at
West Point, brought up in the atmosphere of the Army, a lover of its
traditions and in full sympathy with its spirit, he laid aside
everything that might handicap the success of the undertaking and
sought at once to get the full benefit of all that was best in the
Army and in civil life as well. He put his uniform in moth balls when
he started to the Isthmus, and from that day to this no man has ever
seen him on the Canal Zone wearing an Army uniform.
When he took charge of the big job, the foundations upon which he was
to build the superstructure of his success had been laid by his
predecessors, but there were many weak points in these foundations as
well as many strong ones. With a spirit of utilizing to the fullest
extent every advantage that the administrations of the former chief
engineers had left on the Isthmus, he undertook to make only such
changes as time demonstrated were necessary to the success of the
project. At that time 6,000,000 cubic yards of material had been
removed from the big waterway. Confronting him was the task of
removing some 215,000,000 yards the while building a great dam
containing 21,000,000 cubic yards, constructing a series of gigantic
locks containing four and a half million cubic yards of concrete, and
providing for the happiness and welfare of the sixty-odd thousand
people who constituted the canal army and its camp followers.
In the years that followed his appointment he proved himself in every
way worthy of his assignment as the managing director of the most
stupendous piece of work ever undertaken by man. Furthermore, he
established a claim to the title of the "Great Digger." No other man
in the history of the world has ever superintended the excavation of
an amount of earth half as great as that which has been taken out of
the Panama Canal during his administration. Since he went to the canal
to "make the dirt fly" the material excavated under his command,
together with that placed in the locks and dams, equals the amount
necessary to take out to cut a tunnel 13 feet square through the earth
at the Equator.
No man ever carried to a great position less fuss and feathers than
Colonel Goethals took to his work as chairman and chief engineer of
the Panama Canal. When, during the construction period, one visited
his office at Culebra, on almost any afternoon, he would find there an
unpretentious little room in the corner of the administration
building, about 18 feet square, containing four windows, overlooking
the cut from two sides, its painted walls hung with maps, its floors
uncarpeted, and in the center a large double-sided, flat-top desk
covered with papers. A swivel chair at the desk and two or three other
chairs constituted the furnishings of this room. The visitor walked
directly into the office of his private secretary and the chief clerk,
and if he had anything worth while about which to see the chairman and
chief engineer he was detained only long enough for the man ahead of
him to get out. With "no time like the present" as his motto in
handling the business of his office, he, the busiest man on the
Isthmus, and one of the busiest in the world for that matter, always
seemed to have more time than many men of lesser responsibilities and
far fewer burdens. He once declared that he had a contempt for the man
who always tried to make it appear that he was too busy to see his
callers, because his callers were frequently as busy as he himself.
The fact is that he is a man with a very unusual gift in the dispatch
of work. System has been the key-note of his success. With thousands
of details every day to look after, he has always kept his work so
well in hand that to the casual observer he seemed to be the most
leisurely man on the Isthmus. He maintained a well-established routine
all through his career on the canal. His mornings usually were spent
going over the work. When the morning trains passed Culebra at 7
o'clock they found him up, breakfasted, and at the station.
Although these trains carried parlor cars, one would seldom see the
chairman and chief engineer riding in them. Rather, he consistently
chose to ride in the ordinary day coaches with his sub-engineers, with
the steam-shovel men, and with the rank and file of the Americans who
made possible the success of the work at Panama. There were few of
these Americans whom he did not know by name, and with whom he did not
pass a pleasant word whenever he chanced to meet them.
A morning trip over the work with this presiding genius of the big
ditch reveals perhaps better than anything else the makeup of the man
and the secret of his success.
"Meet me on the early train to-morrow morning at Miraflores," said he
to one of his visitors in the early summer of 1913, "and we will go
over the Pacific end of the work."
This meant that both the chief engineer and the visitor had to leave
comfortable beds at 5 o'clock in the morning to keep the appointment.
At 7 o'clock they met at Miraflores. "We will walk through the tunnel
if you don't mind," said he, "as I don't want to hold up a dirt train
if it can be avoided."
At the other end of the railroad tunnel, the only one on the Isthmus,
a railway motor car stood on the siding ready to pick up the
distinguished engineer and carry him to the Miraflores Locks. This
motor car is something like a limousine on railroad trucks, and was
affectionately known by the people on the Isthmus, as "the yellow
peril" and "the brain wagon." The first stop was at the concrete work
on the spillway dam at Miraflores.
"How soon do you expect to have this dam up to its full height?" he
asked of the division engineer who joined him there. "Can't you find
room to operate another temporary concrete mixer down there?" he
queried further. "Is there anything else you need to keep the work
moving forward so as to be certain to complete the dam by the time you
promised?"
Going a little farther he came to a place where one division was doing
some work for another division. "Don't you think it would be more
satisfactory to keep both parts of that work under one division? Why
don't you allow it all to be done by the other people?"
Walking across the locks on the temporary bridge the chief engineer
and his assistant came to a point where the concrete lamp posts for
lighting the locks were being set up. "Don't you think that it would
better avoid any settling if you were to place beams of railroad iron
across those spaces and rest the posts on them?" he queried.
A little farther on he met the engineer in charge of the work of the
company erecting the gates. "When do you think you will have the gates
in the west chambers completed so that we can put the dredge through?"
he inquired of Mr. Wright.
"Well, sir," replied Mr. Wright, "if we have good luck I hope to have
them done by the first of September; if we have fair luck we ought to
have them completed by the middle of September; but at the lowest
calculation I can promise them to you by the first of October."
"But have you taken into consideration all of the time you are likely
to lose as the result of heavy rains?" queried the chief engineer.
"I have made full allowance therefor, I think," responded Mr. Wright.
Walking on, the watchful eye of the chief engineer fell upon a new
baby railway track which was being laid through the eastern lock
chambers. "What are you planning to do there?" he asked of the
division engineer.
"We wanted to get some additional material through the locks and Mr.
Wright informed us that if we would furnish the timbers, he would make
it so that we could run these little engines through there," responded
the engineer.
"But did you have a definite understanding with him that this should
afford no excuse for any further delay in completing the gates?"
queried Colonel Goethals.
"We did, sir," responded the division engineer.
"All right then, go ahead."
At this point the party boarded the motor car again and was taken to
the big dike which was to hold the Pacific Ocean from flooding the
locks after a dike a mile farther down had been blown out. "How much
water do you have in the stretch between the two dikes?" he asked of
the division engineer. He next wanted to know how many million cubic
feet they were able to pump and siphon in, and how much the Rio Grande
was bringing in per day. Then he wanted to know if every possible
precaution had been taken to insure the watertightness of the new
dike; how many thousand pounds of dynamite had been placed under the
one to be blown up; how many holes this dynamite was placed in; and a
large number of other bits of information which would tell him whether
every safeguard had been thrown around the plan to insure its success.
Going up on the other side of the canal the party came to the earth
dam joining the west lock walls with the hills, so as to impound 58
feet of water in Miraflores Lake. "How soon do you expect to get that
connection made between the lock walls and the dam proper?" he queried
of the engineer in immediate charge.
"In four weeks, sir."
"All right," answered Colonel Goethals, "you can't get that done any
too soon to suit me."
And so he went over the work around Miraflores from beginning to end,
talking now with an Irishman in charge of dumping the material on the
inside of the dam, now with a man in charge of some concrete work,
and now with the division engineer himself. By 11 o'clock he had
inspected every part of this division and was ready to take his car
back to Culebra. In four hours he had seen every man responsible for
any important work around Miraflores; had offered a suggestion there,
a word of encouragement here, and had obtained a bit of information at
another place.
Each day's morning program was like this one except as to the place he
visited and the people with whom he talked. One morning he might be
tramping over Cucaracha Slide, studying the prospects of its future.
Another morning he might be down at Gatun watching an official test of
an emergency dam. On these trips he usually wore either a most
unmilitary-looking blue serge or gray cheviot, with a somewhat
weather-beaten sailor straw hat, and carried a cheap dollar umbrella.
When Colonel Goethals went to the Isthmus he promised that every man
with a grievance should have a hearing. Each Sunday morning he had at
his office at Culebra what he termed his Sunday "at homes," the best
attended functions on the Isthmus, where the blackest Jamaica negro on
the job found as much of a welcome as the highest official. These
functions were for the purpose of hearing the canal employees who had
grievances. Once a visitor was congratulating him upon the smooth
manner in which the canal-building machine seemed to be working. "You
ought to attend one of my Sunday 'at homes,'" he replied. "You would
think that there was no smoothness at all to its running."
Here is the wife of one of the engineers: She wants to find out why it
is that she cannot get bread from the Ancon Hospital bakery. She
informs Colonel Goethals that Joseph B. Bishop, secretary of the
commission, gets bread from the hospital bakery and wants to know why
she cannot. "I will look into the matter for you," says the chief
engineer, and a note of this complaint is made. Later the telephone
bell rings and Mr. Bishop is asked if he gets bread at the hospital
bakery. He replies in the affirmative, explaining that about three
years ago he had breakfasted with Colonel Gorgas who arranged for him
to buy his bread there instead of at the commissary, this bread being
more to his liking. "Can't any other employee of the Canal Commission
get bread there under the same terms?" queries the chief engineer. "I
will see, sir," responds the secretary of the commission. "If they can
not," answers the chief engineer, "you must have your bread stopped at
once." And it was stopped.
The next person received is the representative of the Kangaroos, a
fraternal order. "The Spanish American War veterans get free
transportation on a special train on Memorial Day," he is informed,
"and the fraternal orders on the Zone are crowded out." "Let a
committee of all the fraternal orders appear next Sunday and talk it
over with me and we will see what we can do," responds the chief
engineer.
Here comes a negro who says that his boss is a tyrant and abuses his
men: "I will look into that," responds the presiding genius of the
canal, and the Jamaican goes away with an expansive smile on his
face.
And so it went. Small affairs, big affairs, and indifferent ones were
brought to his attention. In perhaps 80 per cent of them he could not
do what was requested, but when able he did it so promptly, and in
such a positive, straightforward manner, that his "at homes" have been
compared, by the French ambassador to the United States, to the court
of justice held by Saint Louis beneath the oak at Vincennes.
A railroad engineer on one of the dirt trains got drunk and ran over a
negro. He was sent to the penitentiary. The railroad men issued an
ultimatum saying that if he were not released by a certain hour on a
certain day, every dirt train on the canal would stop. A committee
conveyed this ultimatum to Colonel Goethals and asked his decision.
"You will get it at the penitentiary," he replied. "This man will
remain in prison and every man who quits work on that account will be
dropped from the rolls." There was no strike of engineers.
At another time the waiters at the Tivoli Hotel went on strike. The
whole force was promptly discharged, and the official paper of the
Canal Commission carried their names with the announcement that
thereafter they would not be eligible to employment in any capacity on
the Canal Zone.
If the chairman and chief engineer of the canal is just and firm in
his relations with his men, he is no less generous in giving credit
where credit belongs. Upon one occasion he was talking about the
success of the canal project with a friend, and declared that the
world would never give to John F. Stevens the credit that was due him
in the construction of the canal. "You know," said he, "the real
problem of building this canal has been that of removing the spoil;
that problem was preeminently the problem of a railroad man and to
solve it demanded the services of one of the best men in the railroad
business. We have extended the facilities laid out by Mr. Stevens, and
have modified them as experience and conditions have demanded, but
they have been operated from that day to this under the general plan
of transportation laid out by Mr. Stevens. I do not think that any
Army engineer in the United States could have laid out such excellent
transportation facilities."
At another time, in discussing this same matter, he declared that it
was his firm opinion that the canal could have been built by either of
the former chief engineers, John F. Wallace or John F. Stevens, if
they had been allowed a free hand. "You see," said he, "they were men
who were accustomed to handling big construction jobs. They would
outline their project and the cost of executing it to a board of
directors who would pass upon it and then leave them absolutely
unhampered in the matter of personnel and method, with results as the
only criterion of their success. When they came to the Isthmus they
found their hands tied by red tape. They had never dealt with a
President, a Secretary of War, a Congress, and the public at large.
Naturally, they grew restive under the conditions which confronted
them and resigned.
"The whole difference is largely that of training. The Army officer
knows from the time he leaves West Point that he has to work in
harmony with his superiors, with the President, the Secretary of War,
and Congress. That is why we have been able to stay where men from
civil life have thrown up the job."
Another remarkable characteristic of the Great Digger is his desire to
do his work economically as well as to do it promptly. When he went to
the Isthmus there was an insistent demand that the dirt be made to
fly. Along with the administration in Washington he realized that the
only way to gain the faith and confidence of the people in the work, a
faith and confidence essential to its full success, was to measure up
to their desire that the dirt begin to fly. It was not a time to
consider economies then. But, as soon as those demands had been met
and the people had been shown that the Army could make good, a
cost-keeping system was introduced. Men doing identical work were
pitted against one another; Army engineers were placed in command of
one task here and civilian engineers in command of another task there;
and thus a healthy rivalry was established.
As Colonel Gaillard, member of the commission, and engineer of the
Central Division, testified before a congressional committee, his
early work in Culebra Cut was to get out as much dirt as possible,
while his later work was given over largely to a study and comparison
of cost sheets with a view to cutting down the expense of removing a
yard of material, with the result that he was able to show a saving of
$17,000,000 in a 9-mile section of the Panama Canal as compared with
the estimates of 1908.
In other words, Colonel Goethals took that golden rule of all great
soldiers, "get there first with the most men," and adapted it to read
"dig the most dirt with the least money." He had ever in mind three
things: Safe construction, rapid progress, and low costs. On these
three foundation stones in his mind was reared the structure that
stands as the highest example of engineering science, and as the
proudest constructive accomplishment of the American Republic.
At the northern entrance to the Suez Canal stands a statue of de
Lesseps, a beckoning hand inviting the shipping of the world to go
through. Perhaps no such statue of Goethals ever will stand at Panama,
but there is no need. The canal itself is his monument and its story
will ever endure.