It is not necessary to dwell upon the fact that all naval
commanders and commercial masters of the great national and private
vessels of the world are almost to a man opposed unalterably to the
introduction of any lock to lift vessels over the low summit that
nature has left for us to remove.
I am not aware that any material evidence of this character has come
before the Senate Committee on Isthmian Affairs, investigating
conditions at Panama. I do know this, however, that until very recently
it has been the American project to construct a lock canal. All the
former advocates of an American canal by way of Panama or Nicaragua, or
by any other route, contemplated a lock canal of a much more complex
character than the present Panama project. All the advocates of a canal
across the Isthmus, including many distinguished engineers in the army
and navy, have been in favor of a lock canal, and almost without
exception have reported upon the feasibility of a lock canal across the
Isthmus and upon its advantages to commerce and navigation, and in
military and naval operations in case of war. The Nicaragua Canal, as
recommended to Congress and as favored by the first Walker Commission,
provided for a lock project far more complex than the proposition now
under consideration.
Colonel Totten, who built the Panama railroad, recommended as early as
1857 the construction of a lock canal; Naval Commissioner Lull, who made
a careful survey of the Isthmus in 1874, recommended a lock canal with a
summit level of 124 feet and with 24 locks. Admiral Ammen, who, by
authority of the Secretary of War, attended the Isthmian Congress of
1879, favored a lock project, in strong opposition to the visionary plan
of De Lesseps. Admiral Selfridge and many other naval officers who have
been connected with Isthmian surveying and exploration have never, to my
knowledge, by as much as a word expressed their apprehensions regarding
the feasibility or practicability of a lock canal.
As a matter of fact and canal history, the lock project has very
properly been considered "an American conception of the proper treatment
of the Panama canal problem." Mr. C.D. Ward, an American engineer of
great ability, as early as 1879 suggested a plan almost identical with
the one now recommended by the minority of the Consulting Board,
including a dam at Gatun, instead of Bohio or Gamboa; and, in the words
of a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Mr.
Welsh, "The first thought of an American engineer on looking at M. De
Lesseps' raised map is to convert the valley of the lower Chagres into
an artificial lake some twenty miles long by a dam across the valley at
or near a point where the proposed canal strikes it, a few miles from
Colon, such as was advocated by C.D. Ward in 1879." The site referred
to was Gatun, and this was written in 1880, when the sea-level project
had full sway.
So that it is going entirely too far to say that all naval commanders
and commercial masters are in favor of the sea-level project. Admiral
Walker himself, as president of the former Isthmian Commission, and as
president of the Nicaraguan Board, favored a lock canal. Eminent army
engineers, like Abbot, Hains, Ernst, and others, favor the lock project.
It requires no very extensive knowledge of navigation to make it clear
that passing through a waterway which for 35 miles, or 71 per cent. of
its distance, will have a width of 500 feet or more, compared with one
which, for the larger part, or for some forty-one miles, will have a
width of only 200 feet or less, must appeal to the sense of security of
the skipper while taking his vessel through the canal.
But it is a question of general principles, and not of personal
preference. Our concern is with a matter of fact, and not with a theory.
No ship-owner on the Great Lakes considers it a serious hindrance to
navigation for vessels to pass through the lock of the "Soo" Canal; no
shipper running 1,000-ton barges through the future Erie Canal will have
the least apprehension of danger or destruction; no captain navigating a
vessel or boat through the proposed deep waterway from the ocean to the
Lakes will hesitate to pass through locks with a proposed lift of over
forty feet. These apprehensions are imaginary and not real. They are not
derived from experience or from a summary statement of shipmasters and
naval officers, but from the individual expressions and prejudice of a
few who are opposed to the lock project. I am confident that if the
matter is left to the practical navigator, to the ship-owner, and to the
self-reliant naval officer, there will be no serious disagreement with
the opinion that a lock canal, which can be built within a reasonable
period of time, is preferable to any sea-level canal which may be built
and opened to navigation twenty years hence or later.
There are two objections made by the majority of the Senate committee
against a lock canal which require more extended consideration. These
are, the protection of the canal in case of war and the danger of
serious injury or total destruction by possible earth movements or
so-called "earthquakes." Regarding the military aspects of the canal
problem, the majority of the Senate committee say:
The Spooner act and the Hay-Varilla treaty contemplated the
fortification and military protection of the canal route. No
proposition affecting this policy is now before the Senate. In so
far as the type of canal to be adopted has a bearing upon the
jeopardy to or immunity of the canal from risk of malicious injury,
the subject of safety and protection is pertinent and most
important. If a canal of one type would be more liable to injury
than another, this liability should under no circumstances be
neglected in determining the type or plan. It does not require
argument that the use of the canal by the United States will cease
if the control passes to a hostile power between which and the
United States a state of war exists, but this is true whatever the
type may be.
As the majority of the committee point out, "no proposition affecting
this project is now before the Senate." In my opinion, none is
necessary. The neutrality of the canal is, by implication at least,
assured, and we have pledged our national good faith that the waterway
will be open to all the nations of the world. Some time in the future,
when the canal is completed and an accepted fact, it may be advisable to
adopt the course pursued in the case of the Suez Canal. The original
concession for that canal provided, by section 3, for its subsequent
fortification, but this was never carried into effect. By a convention
dated December 22, 1888, among Great Britain, Germany, and other
nations, the free navigation of the Suez Canal was made a matter of
international agreement, and the same has been reprinted as Senate
Document No. 151, Fifty-sixth Congress, first session, under date of
February 6, 1900.
This, in any event, is a problem of the future. The canal is the
property of the United States, and we shall always retain control. In
the event of war we shall rely with confidence upon our navy to protect
our interests on the Pacific and in the Caribbean Sea, but even more may
we rely upon the all-important fact that it could never be to the
interest of any other nation sufficient in size to be at war with us to
destroy this international waterway, which will become an important
necessity to the commerce of each and all. No neutral nation engaged in
extensive commerce or trade would for an instant allow another nation at
war with the United States to injure or destroy the canal or to
seriously interfere with the traffic passing through it. To destroy as
much as a single lock, to injure as much as a single gate, would be
considered equal to an act of war by every commercial nation of the
earth. In this simple fact lies a greater assurance of safety than in
all the treaties which might be made or in all the fortifications which
might be established to protect the canal.
The majority of the committee well say in their report, that the power
of mischief "is within easy reach of all." The possibility of an assumed
occurrence is very remote from its reasonable probability. We have to
rely upon our own good faith and the watchful eyes of our officers.
Against possible contingencies, such as are implied in the assumed
destruction of the locks by dynamite or other high explosives, we can do
no more than take the same precautions which we take in all other
matters of national importance. We have to take our chances the same as
any other nation would; the same as commercial enterprise would.
Certainly the remote possibility of such an event, the still more remote
contingency that the injury would be serious or fatal to the operation
of the canal, should not govern in a decision to construct a canal for
the use of the present generation rather than for the generations to
come. No canal can be built free from vulnerable points; no forts, no
battleships, can be built free from such a risk. It would be folly to
delay the construction of a canal; it would be folly to sink a hundred
million dollars or more upon so remote a contingency as this, which
belongs to the realm of fanciful or morbid imagination rather than to
the domain of substantial fact and actual experience.
As a last resort, the opposition to a lock canal brings forward the
earthquake argument. It is a curious reminder of the early and bitter
opposition to the building of the Suez Canal; its enemies had to fall
back upon the absurd theory that the canal would prove a failure because
the blowing sands of the desert would soon fill the channel. It was
seriously proposed to erect a stone wall four feet high on each side of
the embankment to provide against this imaginary danger to the canal.
Another early objection to the Suez Canal was that the Red Sea level was
30 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, only set at rest in 1847
by a special commission, which included Mr. Robert Stephenson, the great
son of a great father, bitter to the last in his opposition to the
canal, which he considered an impracticable engineering scheme. There
was much talk about the assumed prevalence of strong westerly winds on
the southern Mediterranean coast, and the danger of constantly
increasing deposits of the Nile, it was said, would render the
establishment of a port impossible. It was necessary to place a war-ship
for a whole winter at anchor three miles from the shore to prove the
error of this assumption and set at rest a foolish rumor which came near
proving fatal to the enterprise.
Earthquakes have occurred on the Isthmus, and there is record of one
shock of some consequence in 1882. The matter has been inquired into in
a general way by the various Isthmian commissions, and assumed some
prominence during the discussions and debates regarding a choice of
routes. It was plain to even the least informed that the volcanic belt
of Nicaragua constituted a real menace to a canal in that region; and
one of the strongest arguments advanced in the minority report of the
Senate committee of 1902, submitted by Senator Kittredge, now a leading
advocate of the sea-level project, in opposition to the Nicaragua Canal,
was the assertion of the practical freedom of the Panama Isthmus from
the danger of earth movements.
The minority of the Senate committee of 1902 in their report, summing up
the final reasons in favor of the Panama route (section 12), said:
At Panama earthquakes are few and unimportant, while the Nicaraguan
route passes over a well-known coastal weakness. Only five
disturbances of any sort were recorded at Panama, all very slight,
while similar official records at San Jose de Costa Rica, near the
route of the Nicaragua Canal, show for the same period fifty
shocks, a number of which were severe. (P. 11, S. Rep. 783, part 2,
57th Cong., 1st session, May 31, 1902.)
In another part of their report the committee said:
With the dreadful lessons of Martinique and St. Vincent fresh in
our minds, we should be utterly inexcusable if we deliberately
selected a route for an Isthmian canal in a region so volcanic and
dangerous, when a route is open to us which is exposed to none of
these dangers and is in every other respect more advantageous.
And they quote Professor Heilprin, an authority on the subject, in part,
as follows:
It has, however, been known for a full quarter of a century that
the main Andes do not traverse the Isthmus of Panama, and that
there are no active or recently decayed volcanoes in any part of
the Isthmus. So far, however, as danger from direct volcanic
contacts is concerned, the Panama route is exempt. (Pp. 22-23.)
And further:
This district represents the most stable portion of Central
America. No volcanic eruptions have occurred there since the end of
the Miocene epoch, and there are no active volcanoes between
Chiriqui and Tolima, a distance of about four hundred miles. Such
earthquakes as have occurred are chiefly those proceeding from the
disturbed districts on either hand, with intensity much diminished
by the distance traversed. The canal lies in a sort of dead angle
of comparative safety.
The report continues:
The situation being, then, that the danger from volcanoes at Panama
is nothing, and that from earthquakes practically nothing, while at
Nicaragua the canal would be situated in one of the most dangerous
regions of the world from both these causes, the question should be
considered settled.
This was the opinion of the committee of 1902; it was emphatic and plain
in its language; it had considered expert views and the available data.
It had before it the full report of the Nicaragua Canal Commission,
printed under date of May 15th of the same year, Chapter VII of which
considers the subject at much greater length than has been done since
that time and with a full knowledge of the facts and free from bias or
prejudice. With the then recent occurrence at Mount Pelee in mind, and
with a full understanding of the liability of the Isthmus to seismic
shocks of minor importance, the committee emphatically indorsed the
lock-canal project at Panama.
Much can be said with regard to this matter, and it is one which should,
and no doubt will, receive the most careful consideration of the
engineers in charge of the work. Seismic disturbances have occurred in
all parts of the world, and they have occurred at Panama. Where they are
not directly of volcanic origin they appear to be the result of
subsidence or contraction of the earth's crust, and they have occurred
and caused serious destruction far from centers of volcanic activity,
among other places, at Lisbon, Portugal, and at Charleston, S.C. Some
sections of the earth, as for illustration Japan and the Philippines,
are no doubt more subject to these movements than others, and sections
subject to such movements at one period of time may be exempt for many
years if not forever thereafter.
The fearful earthquake which affected Charleston, S.C., in 1886 had no
corresponding precedent in that section, nor has it been followed by a
similar disturbance. Regardless of the terrible experience of 1886, the
government has now in course of construction at Charleston a navy-yard,
and a great dry-dock, costing many millions of dollars, which will be
operated by locks or gates, and, I presume, the question of earthquakes
or earth movements has not been raised in any of the reports which have
been made regarding this undertaking. Earthquakes formerly were quite
frequent in New England, and they extended to New York during the early
years of our history, and for a time Boston and Newbury, Mass.,
Deerfield, N.H., and particularly East Haddam, Conn., were the centers
of seismic activity, which by inference might be used as an argument
against our navy-yards at Portsmouth, N.H., and Charlestown, Mass., our
torpedo station at Newport, or the fortifications at Willets Point. The
earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755 might with equal propriety be
used as an argument against the building of the extensive docks and
fortifications at Gibraltar, but no one, I think, has ever questioned
the solidity of the Rock.
Seismology is a very complex branch of geologic inquiry and it is a
subject regarding which very little of determining value is known.
Theories have been advanced that under certain geological conditions
earth movements would be comparatively infrequent, if not impossible.
Whether such conditions exist at Panama would have to be determined by
the investigations of qualified experts. It would seem, however, from
such data as are available, that the local conditions are decidedly
favorable to a comparative immunity of this region from serious seismic
shocks, at least such as would do great and general damage. Nor can it
be argued that the locks and dams would be exposed to special risk. The
earthquake of 1882 did more or less damage, but the reports are of a
very fragmentary character. Newspaper reports in matters of this kind
have very small value. Injury was done to the railway, but not of very
serious consequence.
If the risk exists, it would affect equally a sea-level canal, in that
it would threaten the tidal lock, the dam at Gamboa, and the excavation
through Culebra cut. Very little is known regarding earthquake motions,
and there are very few seismic elements which are really calculable in
conformity to a mathematical theory of probability. It is a subject
which has not received the attention in this country of which it is
deserving, but enough of seismic motion is known to warrant the
conclusion that the Senate committee of 1902 was, in all human
probability, entirely correct when it made light of the danger of the
probability of seismic shocks at Panama.
In fine, the earthquake argument has little or no force against a
lock-canal project, and it has never received serious consideration as
such or been used in arguments against a lock canal until the recent San
Francisco disaster brought the subject prominently before the public. It
is a danger as remote as a possible destruction of the proposed terminal
plants at Colon and Panama by flood waves equal in magnitude to the one
which destroyed Galveston in 1900, but such dangers are inherent in all
human undertakings. They must be taken as a matter of chance and remote
possibility, which for all present purposes may be left out of account,
except that the subject should receive the due consideration of the
engineers and perhaps be made a matter of special and comprehensive
inquiry by the Geological Survey. In any serious consideration of the
facts for or against a lock canal, I am confident that the earthquake
risk may safely be ignored. The comprehensive report of the minority
members of the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Affairs is a sufficient
and conclusive answer to all the important points which are in
controversy, and it remains for Congress to cut the "Gordian knot" and
put an end to an interminable discussion of much solid and substantial
conviction on the one hand and of a vast amount of opinion and guesswork
on the other hand. All of the evidence, all of the supplementary expert
testimony which may be obtained upon the merits of the two propositions,
will not change the position of those who rest their conclusions upon
American experience and upon the judgment of American engineers, and who
favor a lock canal. While there is no doubt that such a canal can be
constructed and can be made a practicable waterway, there is a very
serious question whether a sea-level canal can be constructed and made a
safe and practicable waterway, at least within the limits of the
estimated amount of cost and within the estimated time.
The view which I have tried to impress upon the Senate is nothing more
nor less than a business view of what is, for all practical purposes,
only a business proposition. If a lock canal can be built, useful for
all purposes, at half the cost and within half the time of a sea-level
canal, then I can come to no other conclusion than that a lock canal
would be decidedly to our political and commercial advantage. A
decision, however, should be arrived at. The canal project has reached a
stage where the final plan or type must be determined, and it is the
duty of Congress to act and to fix, for once and for all time, the type
of canal, with the same courage and freedom from prejudice or bias as
was the case in the decision which finally fixed the route by way of
Panama.
Any amount of additional testimony and expert opinion will only add to
the confusion and tend to produce a more hopeless state of affairs. Let
Congress fix the type in broad outlines and leave it to responsible
engineers in actual charge to solve problems in detail, and to adapt
themselves to local conditions and to new problems which in the course
of construction are certain to arise. Let us take counsel of the past,
most of all from the experience gained in the construction of the Suez
Canal, an engineering and commercial success which challenges the
admiration of the world. We know how near it came to utter defeat by the
conflict of opinion, by the intrigue of conniving and jealous powers,
and last, but not least, by the ill-founded apprehensions and fears of
those who were searching the vast domain of conjecture and remote
possibilities for arguments to cause a temporary delay or ultimate
abandonment.
It is not difficult to secure the opinion of eminent authority for or
against any project when the facts themselves are in dispute, and when
the objects and aims are not well defined. The great Lord Palmerston,
the most bitter opponent of the Suez Canal scheme, in want of a more
convincing argument, seriously claimed that France would send soldiers
disguised as workmen to the Isthmus of Suez, later to take possession of
Egypt and make it a French colony. By one method or another Palmerston
tried to defeat the scheme in its beginning and to bring it to disaster
during the period of construction. It is a far from creditable story.
History always more or less repeats itself, whether it be in politics or
engineering enterprise, but in few affairs are there more convincing
parallels than in the canal projects of Panama and Suez. Lord Palmerston
and Sir Henry Bulwer, then the ambassador at Constantinople, did all in
their power to destroy public confidence in the enterprise, and they
were completely successful in preventing English investments in the
stock of the canal.[2]
It was the same Sir Henry Bulwer who, in 1850, succeeded by questionable
diplomatic methods in foisting upon the American people a treaty which
was contrary to their best interests and which for half a century was a
hindrance and barrier to an American Isthmian canal. We owe it chiefly
to the masterly and straightforward statesmanship of the late John Hay
that this obstacle to our progress was disposed of to the entire
satisfaction of both nations. I refer to these matters, which are facts
of history, only to point out how an interminable discussion of matters
of detail is certain to delay and do great injury to projects which
should only receive Congressional consideration in broad outlines and
upon fundamental principles. If we are to enter into a discussion of
engineering conflicts, if we are to deliberate upon mere matters of
structural detail, then an entire session of Congress will not suffice
to solve all the problems which will arise in connection with that
enterprise in the course of time. I draw attention to the Suez
experience solely to point out the error of taking into serious account
minor and far-fetched objections which assume an undue magnitude in the
public mind when they are presented in lurid colors of impending
disasters to a national enterprise of vast extent and importance.
So eminent an engineer as Mr. Robert Stephenson by his expert opinion
deluded the British people into the belief that the Suez Canal would not
be practicable; that, even if completed, it would be nothing but a
stagnant ditch. Said Palmerston to De Lesseps:
All the engineers of Europe might say what they pleased, he knew
more than they did, and his opinion would never change one iota,
and he would oppose the work to the end.
Stephenson confirmed this view and held that the canal would never be
completed except at an enormous expense, too great to warrant any
expectation of return--a judgment both ill advised and erroneous as was
clearly proved by subsequent events. I need only say that the Suez Canal
is to-day an extremely profitable waterway, and that although the work
was commenced and brought to completion without a single English
shilling, through French enterprise and upon the judgment of French
engineers, it was only a comparatively few years later when, as a matter
of necessity and logical sequence, the controlling interest in the canal
was purchased by the English government, which has since made of that
waterway the most extensive use for purposes of peace and of war.
These are the facts of history, and they are not disputed. Shall history
repeat itself? Shall we delay or miscarry in our efforts to complete a
canal across the Isthmus of Panama upon similar pretensions of assumed
dangers and possibilities of disaster, all more or less the result of
engineering guesswork? Shall we take fright at the talk about the
mischief-maker with his stick of dynamite, bent upon the destruction of
the locks and the vital parts of the machinery, when history has its
parallel during the Suez Canal agitation in "the Arab shepherd, who,
flushed with the opportunity for mischief and with a few strokes of a
pickax, could empty the canal in a few minutes"? Shall we be swayed by
foolish fears and apprehensions of earthquakes or tidal waves, and waste
millions of money and years of time upon a pure conjecture, a pure
theory deduced from fragmentary facts? Again the facts of canal history
furnish the parallel of Stephenson and other engineers, who successfully
frightened English investors out of the Suez enterprise by the statement
that the canal would soon fill up with the moving sands of the desert,
that one of the lakes through which the canal would pass would soon fill
up with salt, that navigation of the Red Sea would be too dangerous and
difficult, that ships would fear to approach Port Said because of
dangerous seas, and, finally, that in any event it would be impossible
to keep the passage open to the Mediterranean.
It was this kind of guesswork and conjecture which was advanced as an
argument by engineers of eminence and sustained by one of the foremost
statesmen of the century. How absurd it all seems now in the sunlight of
history! The Panama Canal is a business enterprise, even if carried on
by the nation, and with a thorough knowledge of the general facts and
principles we require no more expert evidence, so called, nor additional
volumes of engineering testimony. The nation is committed to the
construction of a canal. The enterprise is one of imperative necessity
to commerce, navigation, and national defense, and any further
discussion, any needless waste of time and money, is little short of
indifference to the national interests and objects which are at stake.
Of objections to either plan there is no end, and there will be no end
as long as the subject remains open for discussion. To answer such
objections in detail, to search the records for proof in support of one
theory or another, is a mere waste of time which can lead to no possible
useful result. Among others, for illustration, there has been placed
before us a letter from the chief engineer of the Manchester Ship Canal,
who is emphatically in favor of a sea-level waterway. It would have been
much more interesting and much more valuable to the members of Congress
to have received from Mr. Hunter a statement as to why he should have
changed his opinions; or why, in 1898, he should have signed the
unanimous report of the technical commission in favor of a lock canal,
while now he so emphatically sustains those who favor the sea-level
project. It is not going too far to say, appealing to the facts of
history, that Mr. Hunter may be seriously in error in this matter and
may have drawn upon his imagination rather than upon his engineering
experience, the same as Mr. Robert Stephenson was in serious error in
his bitter opposition to the canal enterprise at Suez.
Mr. Hunter, in his letter, argues, among other points, that the lifts of
the proposed locks would be without precedent. Without precedent? Why,
of course, they would be without precedent. Is not practically every
large American engineering enterprise without precedent? Was not the
Erie Canal, completed in 1825, without precedent? Were not the first
steamboat and the first locomotive without precedent? Were not the
Hoosac Tunnel and the Brooklyn Bridge feats of American engineering
enterprise without precedent?
Without precedent is the great barge canal which the State of New York
is about to build, which will mean a complete reconstruction of the
existing waterway which connects the ocean with the Great Lakes.[3]
All this is without precedent. But it is American. It is progress, and
takes the necessary risk to leave the world better, at least in a
material way, than we found it. In the proposed deep waterway, which is
certain some day to be built to connect the uttermost ends of the Great
Lakes with tide-water on the Atlantic, able and competent engineers of
the largest experience have designed locks with a lift of 52 feet.[4]
That will be without precedent. On the Oswego Canal, proposed as a part
of the new barge canal of the State of New York, there will be six
locks, two of which will each have a lift of 28 feet,[5] and that will
be without precedent, but neither dangerous nor detrimental to
navigation interests.
Need I further appeal to the facts of past canal history? Is it
necessary to recite one of the best known and most honorable chapters in
the history of inland waterways--I mean the problems and difficulties
inherent in the great project of constructing the canal of Languedoc, or
"Canal du Midi," which forms a water communication between the
Mediterranean and the Garonne and between the Garonne and the Atlantic
Ocean, one of the best known canals in France and in the world? Need I
refer to that pathetic story of its chief engineer, Riquet, one of the
greatest of French patriots, who, in his abiding faith in this great
engineering feat, stood practically alone? Need I recall that he met
with scant assistance from the government, with the most strenuous
opposition from his countrymen; that he was treated even as a madman and
that he died of a broken heart before the great work was finished?
That canal stands to-day as an engineering masterwork and as a most
suggestive illustration of man's ingenuity and power to overcome
apparently insuperable natural obstacles. It has been in existence and
successful operation, I think, since 1681. For a sixth part of its
distance it is carried over mountains deeply excavated. It has, I think,
ninety-nine locks and viaducts, and as one of its most wonderful
features it has an octuple lock, or eight locks in flight, like a ladder
from the top of a cliff to the valley below. If in 1681 a French
engineer had the ability and the daring to conceive and construct an
octuple lock, will any one maintain that more than two hundred years
later, with all the enormous advance in engineering, with a better
knowledge of hydraulics and a more perfect method of transportation and
handling of materials--will any one maintain that we are not to-day
competent to construct successfully a lock canal such as is proposed to
be built at Panama upon the judgment of American engineers?
Mr. President, the overshadowing importance of the subject has led me to
extend my remarks far beyond my original intention. I express my strong
convictions in favor of a lock canal and of the necessity for an early
and specific declaration of Congress regarding the final plan or type of
canal which the nation wants to have built at Panama. I am confident
that it lies entirely within our power and means to build either type of
waterway; that our engineering skill can successfully solve the
technical problems involved in either the lock or the sea-level plan;
but there is one all-important factor which controls, and which, in my
opinion, should have more weight than any other, and that is the element
of time. If I could advance no other reasons, if I knew of no better
argument in favor of a lock canal, my convictions would sustain the
project which can be completed within a measurable distance of years and
for the benefit and to the advantage of the present generation. Time
flies, and the years pass rapidly. Shall this project languish and
linger and become the spoil of political controversy and a subject of
political attack? Can we conceive of anything more likely to prove
disastrous to the canal project than political strife, which proved the
undoing of the French canal enterprise at Panama?
Shall the success of this great project be imperiled by the possible
changes in the fortunes of parties? Shall we incur the risk that changes
in economic conditions, hard times, or panic and industrial depressions
may bring about? Time flies, and in the progress of industry and
commerce, in international competition and the growth of modern nations,
no factor is of more supreme importance than the years, with new
opportunities for political and commercial development. Shall we, then,
neglect our chances? Shall we fail to make the most of this the greatest
opportunity for the extension of our commerce and navigation into the
most distant seas which will ever come to us in our history, because of
the demands of idealists, who, with theoretical notions of the
ultimately desirable, would deprive the nation and the world of what is
necessary and indispensable to those who are living now?
Vast commercial and political consequences will follow the opening of
the transisthmian waterway. In the annals of commerce and navigation it
is not conceivable that there will ever be a greater event or one
fraught with more momentous consequences than uninterrupted navigation
between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Little enough can we comprehend or
anticipate what the far-distant future will bring forth, but this much
we know--that it is our duty to solve the problems of _to-day_ and not
to indulge in dreams and fancies in a vain effort to solve the problems
of a far-distant future.
But _money_ also counts. Can we defend an expenditure of an additional
$100,000,000 or more for objects so remote, and upon a basis of theory
and fact so slender and so open to question, when a plan and a project
feasible and practicable is before us which will meet all of our needs
and the needs of generations to come? Shall we disregard in the building
of this canal every principle of a sound national economy and commit
ourselves to an enormous waste of funds and to the imposition of
needless burdens upon the taxpayers of this nation and upon the commerce
of the world? At least $2,000,000 more per annum will be required in
additional interest charges, at least $100,000,000 more will be
necessary as an original investment. Do we fully realize what that
amount of money would do if applied to other national purposes and
projects?
I want to place on record my convictions and the reasons governing my
vote in favor of the minority report for a lock canal across the Isthmus
at Panama. I entered upon an investigation of the subject without
prejudice or bias and have examined the facts as they have been
presented and as they are a matter of record and of history. I have
heard or read with care the evidence as it has been presented by the
Board of Consulting Engineers and the vast amount of oral testimony
before the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Affairs. I am confident that
the minority judgment is the better and that it can be more relied upon,
because it is strictly in conformity with the entire history of the
Isthmian canal project. I am confident that the objections which have
been raised against the lock plan are an undue exaggeration of
difficulties such as are inherent in every great engineering project,
and which, I have not the slightest doubt, will be successfully solved
by American engineers, in the light of American experience, exactly as
similar difficulties have been solved in many other enterprises of great
magnitude.
I am not impressed with the reasons and arguments advanced by those who
favor the sea-level project, for they do not appeal to me as being
sound, and in some instances they come perilously near to being
engineering guesswork characteristic of the earlier enterprises of De
Lesseps. I cannot but think that bias and prejudice are largely
responsible for the judgment of foreign engineers so pronounced in favor
of a sea-level project. Furthermore, I am entirely convinced that the
judgment and experience of American engineers in favor of a lock canal
may be relied upon with entire confidence, and that such an enterprise
will be brought to a successful termination. I believe that in a
national undertaking of this kind, fraught with the gravest possible
political and commercial consequences, only the judgment of our own
people should govern, for the protection of our own interests, which are
primarily at stake. I also prefer to accept the view and convictions of
the members of the Isthmian Commission, and of its chief engineer, a man
of extraordinary ability and large experience.
It is a subject upon which opinions will differ and upon which honest
convictions may be widely at variance, but in a question of such
surpassing importance to the nation, I, for one, shall side with those
who take the American point of view, place their reliance upon American
experience, and show their faith in American engineers.
[Illustration: Founded by JOHN F. DRYDEN