Chapter 4

The time of transit, in the opinion of the majority committee of the Senate, would be somewhat longer in the case of a lock canal. This may be so, though much depends upon the class of ships passing through and their number. To the practical navigator the loss of a few hours would be a negligible quantity compared with the higher tolls that will necessarily be charged if an additional $100,000,000 is expended in construction and an additional interest burden of at least $2,000,000 per annum has to be provided for. I understand that the actual value of an hour or two in the case of commercial ships of average size would be a matter of comparatively no importance in contrast with the all-suggestive fact that the alternative project of a sea-level canal would provide no navigation whatever across the Isthmus for probably ten years more. If it is an advantage to gain an hour or two in transit ten years hence by having no transisthmian shipping facilities for the ten years in the meantime, then it might as well be argued that it would be better to project a sea-level canal 300 feet wide at every point, so that the commerce of the year 2000 may be properly provided for. But to the practical navigator of the year 1916, who leaves the port of New York for San Francisco by way of Cape Horn, a possible loss of two or three hours or more would be many times preferable, if the Isthmus were open for traffic, to a certain loss of from forty to fifty days to make the voyage all around South America.

Upon the question of cost of maintenance the majority committee in their report point out that the Board of Consulting Engineers did not submit the details of any estimate of cost of maintenance, repairs, etc., but they say that this factor was properly taken into account by the minority favoring a lock canal. Now, there is probably no more important question connected with the whole canal problem than this, for if the annual expense of maintenance, to be provided for by Congressional appropriations, should attain such an exorbitant figure as to make any fair return upon the investment impossible, it is conceivable that the most serious political and financial consequences might arise and the success of the enterprise itself might be placed in jeopardy. Upon a maximum cost, in round figures, of $200,000,000 for a lock canal, and of $300,000,000 as a minimum for a sea-level canal, the additional annual interest charge would be at least $2,000,000.

But Mr. Stearns estimates that under certain conditions a sea-level canal might cost as much as $410,000,000, which would add millions of dollars more per annum to the fixed charges which must be included in the cost of maintenance, to say nothing of a possibly much higher cost of operation. Nor can I agree to the statement that the cost of operation of a sea-level canal would be $800,000 per annum less than in the case of a lock canal; but, on the contrary, I am fully satisfied that the expense would be very much greater in the sea-level project, if proper allowance is made for interest charges upon the additional outlay, which cannot be rightfully ignored. Upon this important point the evidence of the engineers and of the minority members of the Board is strongly in favor of the lock-canal project.

As regards ultimate cost, the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the Senate committee say:

There are two estimates now before the Senate, both originating with the Board of Consulting Engineers. The basis of computation of cost at certain unit prices was adopted unanimously by the Board, and we are told that the cost, with the 20 per cent. allowance for contingencies, will be, for the sea-level canal, the sum of $247,021,200. Your committee has adopted the figures stated by the majority on page 64 of its report of a total of $250,000,000 for the ultimate final cost of the sea-level canal.

The estimate of the minority for a lock canal at a level of eighty-five feet is, in round figures, $140,000,000, or about $110,000,000 less than for a sea-level canal, which would represent a difference of $2,200,000 per annum in interest charges at the lowest possible rate of two per cent. The majority of the Senate committee attempt to meet this difference by capitalizing the estimated higher maintenance charge, which they fix at $800,000 per annum, and they thus increase the total cost of a lock canal by $40,000,000; but this, I hold, involves a serious financial error, unless a corresponding allowance is made for the ultimate cost of the sea-level project. There is, however, no serious disagreement upon the point that a sea-level canal in any event would cost a very much larger sum as an original outlay, certainly not less than $120,000,000 more, and, in all probability, in the opinion of qualified engineers, including Mr. Stevens, the chief engineer, twice that sum.

Reference is made in the report to the probable value of the land which will be inundated under the lock-canal project with a dam at Gatun, the value of which has been placed at approximately $300,000. The majority of the Senate committee estimate that this amount might reach $10,000,000, or as much as was paid for the entire Canal Zone. The estimate is based upon the price of certain lands required by the government near the city of Panama, but one might as well estimate the worth of land in the Adirondacks by the prices paid for real estate in lower New York. The item, no doubt, requires to be properly taken into account, but two independent estimates fix the probable sum at $300,000 for lands which are otherwise practically valueless and which would only acquire value the moment the United States should need them. In my opinion, the value of these lands will not form a serious item in the total cost of the canal, and I have every reason to believe that independent estimates of the minority engineers of the Consulting Board, and of Mr. Stevens, may be relied upon as conservative.

The majority of the Senate committee further say that--

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 Pelée 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.