Part 3
While the work of sanitization was under way, the President of the United States was taking counsel with a board of engineers as to the type of canal that should be constructed. As usual in all such matters, the authorities were about equally divided, half of the engineers being strongly in favor of a sea-level canal, and the other half advocating what was called a lock canal.
The Two Types of Canal
The difference between the two types of canal is this: A sea-level canal contemplated an excavation from shore to shore at the level of the sea; a lock canal contemplated the construction of a great dam across the valley of the Chagres and the course of the Chagres river, which dam would have the effect of holding the waters of the Chagres river. The accumulation of those waters in time would form a lake, the surface of which lake, of course, would be considerably above the level of the sea on either side. The dam would necessarily have to be surmounted through the agency of locks.
After much controversy and bickering, and a great deal of muck-raking by the newspapers and magazines of the United States and Europe, the plan of a lock canal was finally adopted. This plan contemplated the impoundment of the waters of the Chagres river by a dam constructed at Gatun, a little village about three and one-half miles inland from the shore of Limon bay. This dam when finished would be 7700 feet in length, half a mile in width at the base, and 135 feet in height. It was designed that this dam should hold the waters of the lake at a height of 85 feet above sea-level, but it was constructed 50 feet higher so that all danger might be obviated in case of excessive floods.
[Illustrations: AT WORK IN THE CULEBRA CUT.]
The plan of the canal contemplated that this dam should be surmounted by three locks constructed in pairs, so that in case one series of locks became impaired the other could be used, or ships might pass up one side and down the other at the same time. Each of the locks was to be 1000 feet long, 110 feet wide, and have a lifting capacity of 28½ feet. Therefore, when completed, this series of locks constructed of concrete would be more than 3000 feet in length and about 250 feet in width, without doubt the largest concrete formation ever constructed.
The engineers of the Panama Commission give four reasons for the adoption of the lock system instead of the sea-level type. In the first place, it would take twice as long to construct a sea-level canal as it would a lock canal. Secondly, it would cost twice as much money, and as the lock canal system is costing nearly four hundred millions of dollars, the difference in cost would be a great obstacle to the construction to the other type of canal. The third reason was that in case a sea-level canal was constructed it would be necessary to place locks somewhere along its course because of the fact of the variation of tides between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
The tide rises and falls at Colon, on the Atlantic side, about 3½ feet, at the time of extreme high tide; while on the Pacific side the tides rise and fall 27½ feet, and this great variation would cause a current to rush through the course of the canal so great that locks would be required for its control.
But the fourth was the most potent reason of all why the lock system was adopted. On the Isthmus of Panama the rainfall amounts to 130 to 150 inches annually. Sometimes the precipitation will amount to 10 or 12 inches in twenty-four hours. The Chagres river is the only agency for the drainage of a vast area of water-shed in the Caribbean sea. Therefore, at times the Chagres river might be a small, inconsequential stream that a boy could wade across, and yet before twenty-four hours had elapsed, because of a heavy rainfall, it might have swelled into a raging torrent that would wreck the strongest battleship of the American navy. The large volume of water discharged by the Chagres river could not be turned into the canal proper, as the currents and the rush of flood waters would soon impair the banks of the canal.
The Lock System Adopted
Therefore it would be necessary, under the sea-level type of canal, to construct a series of embankments and dams that would be far more expensive to build and keep in repair than would be one great dam over the course of the Chagres river. Besides, the safety of the lock system would be much greater than that of the sea-level type. These were the reasons which finally controlled the determination of the engineers to construct a lock system of canal.
After the type of canal was decided upon, the next step was the assemblage of the force of laborers and the mechanical appliances necessary for the physical operations. In order to carry out this scheme, a commission was originally appointed, composed half of civilians and half of military officers. The first engineers were selected as being the most eminent of their profession, and taken from civil employment.
But great difficulties were encountered in perfecting the proper kind of an organization to successfully complete this stupendous project. The engineers taken from private life and entrusted with the work, after a little experience on the Isthmus, would be offered greater inducements to abandon their Governmental employment and take some other position, generally far more lucrative, in the United States. And so, either through accident or design, the Canal Commission lost the services of such men as Wallace, Stevens, Shonts, Grunsky, and other noted engineers, and again it seemed as if canal operations would be badly crippled for want of the right kind of men to direct the work.
Army Engineers Installed
This tendency of the civil engineers to leave their employment caused much concern to the President and Congress, and finally President Roosevelt, with his characteristic acumen, decided that he would place the work of canal construction under the army engineers entirely. So, at his suggestion, Congress reframed the law of the Canal Commission, and President Roosevelt remarked that under the new law he would put army engineers on the job, and that they would either stay there until it was done or get out of the army.
Experience has proved that President Roosevelt’s judgment was correct, for the work has gone on since the reorganization of the commission with the regularity of a machine. There has hardly been a stop or a break at any point along the line of operations. Colonel G. W. Goethals, one of the most successful of the army engineers, was placed at the head of the Canal Commission and given full charge, and his work has been so successful that he has demonstrated his ability to command and to control the operations placed in his charge to the satisfaction of the great powers that gave him his commission.
His first step upon being placed in control was to provide the means of feeding and caring for an army of from 25,000 to 40,000 men. A bake shop was built at Crystobal, out of which 30,000 loaves of bread are turned twice a day if necessary, and a batch of pies and cakes in proportion. Storage warehouses have been built for the storage of meats and vegetables and various other supplies, that are brought from the north by shiploads. Ice plants have been constructed so that ice may be distributed up and down the line of operations. Every morning at 3 o’clock a supply train leaves Colon, and furnishes every camp along the line of the canal with fresh supplies for the day’s consumption.
Thus, under army supervision the employees of the Canal Zone are as well supplied with rations and materials as they would be on an army reservation.
Following these necessary preparations for handling the big force of men, came the assemblage of the machinery and the mechanical implements necessary to perform the work. Without going into exhaustive details, it is only necessary to say that the very best materials, implements and machinery that money could supply, brought from all parts of the world, were sent to Panama.
Old French Machinery
One of the most interesting things the traveler upon the Isthmus will see is the mass of discarded French machinery piled all along the line of operations. No doubt the French used the best machinery that could be obtained at that time, but that was thirty years ago, and the progress of the world, particularly in the use of labor-saving machinery, is nowhere more thoroughly demonstrated than on the Isthmus of Panama by a comparison of the old French machinery with that assembled by the American engineers. There are piles of French locomotives that today are absolutely worthless, not because the machinery itself is defective, but because of their feeble power. At the town of Empire there are forty-five French engines piled in one heap that cannot be used by the Canal Commission. In fact, they are of such little power that they would hardly be used by a street contractor on a city job in the United States.
In direct contrast to these are the splendid engines sent to the Isthmus by the commission--200 locomotives, not of the largest, but about of the medium size one sees on the American railways; 2000 splendidly constructed steel dump cars for the hauling of rock and debris; 300 air-compressed drills for boring into the rocks in blasting operations; 125 steam shovels of 75, 90 and 125 tons capacity; apparatus and machinery for the moving of railroad tracks, so effective that a railroad track can be slung 10 or 12 feet to one side or the other, laid down and spiked almost as fast as a man can walk; great steel plows that are pulled across strings of gravel cars, plowing the gravel or debris off the cars on one side so rapidly that a long train of 25 or 30 cars can be unloaded in a few minutes. The stationary machinery is of the best quality that genius and money can construct, and so effective have been these means of labor saving that the work has been accelerated from time to time until it is now a realized fact that the canal will be actually constructed a year and a half ahead of time.
When the Canal Commission first began their work after the completion and the adoption of their plans, it was estimated that 110,000,000 cubic yards of debris must be excavated from the canal prism. This debris must be taken and deposited at some place so remote that it could never wash back into the canal by the rains and floods. The debris taken from the cuts on the high lands could not be used in the structure of the Gatun dam, as it would be too liable to percolation.
The Gatun Dam
The Gatun dam is being constructed by hydraulic process through the instrumentality of suction pumps, which suck up the slime and the debris from the course of the Chagres river and the swamps and morass through which the canal is being constructed. This debris and this water are sucked up and allowed to run along the center of the dam, the water running off and the solid matter congealing there, and by this hydraulic process that great structure will be formed.
The traveler upon the Isthmus today, if standing upon an eminence overlooking the cut through Culebra hill, would imagine himself on a height overlooking an industrial city like Pittsburg. There are scenes of such immense activity on every side that he forgets he is in a remote part of the world far from his home, and that he is actually standing upon an eminence in the tropics.
The development of labor-saving machinery has been so marked since the construction of the canal was actually commenced that each month’s work has marked an increase in the amount of debris excavated from the canal prism. When the Government began operations in 1906, the engineers had before them the task of excavating 110,000,000 cubic yards. Their first month’s operations were very successful, and they reported at the end of the month an excavation of about 250,000 cubic yards. They estimated that if they could keep up this amount of work through each month they could finish the canal at a certain time; but the carping yellow newspapers and magazines of the United States and Europe were extremely skeptical of the ability of the Canal Commission to continue to turn out 250,000 cubic yards per month. The critics foretold that when the rainy season came more debris would be carried into the canal prism by floods than could be taken out by machinery in the dry season. At times this criticism grew very irksome and disagreeable to the commissioners. However, they kept their temper, and continued improving their machinery, and month by month the output grew greatly. It grew to such an enormous extent that the estimated time has been shortened to the extent that I have formerly indicated.
The Work of Excavation
To give a comparison by the use of figures of the remarkable progress made, I will say that about six months ago I took up the report of the Canal Commission and I found that in the previous month the amount of debris excavated for that one month exceeded 4,000,000 of cubic yards, this tremendous output being a complete answer to the criticisms of the opponents of canal construction.
In order to give a mental picture of the type of canal, let us take an imaginary trip through the canal proper. It will be forty-two miles from shore to shore. In addition to this there will be an excavation out in Limon bay on the eastern side, and in Panama bay on the western side, of about four miles on either side, in order to reach deep water.
Supposing that we are sailing down through Limon bay, which is a small bay at the bottom of the Caribbean sea, on one of our American battleships. We first enter the canal which leads from the bay up into the shore toward Gatun dam, and this section of the canal will be 500 feet wide and 40 feet deep at low water level. This channel penetrates through the mud banks and land about four miles, when it encounters Gatun dam. Gatun dam must be surmounted through the agency of locks, which have been previously described.
Operation of the Locks
Our vessel then sails into the first, or the lower, of the locks. The steel doors are closed and locked, and water from the chamber above is let down by means of pipes and valves which discharge underneath the vessel. This water flowing into the lower chamber, raises our vessel 28½ feet to the level of the second lock. Our ship sails into the second lock, the doors are closed behind and locked, the water let down from above, and again our vessel is raised 28½ feet. And so the process is repeated the third time, until our ship sails out upon the lake which is formed by the impounding of the waters of Gatun dam.
This lake, when filled to its capacity, will be thirty-three miles long between extreme points, and eight miles wide at the widest part. The course of a vessel from this lake will be twenty-three miles to a place called Bas Obispo. This is the point at which the canal begins to run through the hill called Culebra, and therefore the cut is called the Culebra cut, and is nine miles long. The canal through this portion of its course will be 250 feet wide at the bottom, and the sides of the canal will slope so gradually that at the highest point of Culebra hill, which is 325 feet above sea level, the width will be about one-half mile.
Our vessel passes through this nine-mile course to Pedro Miguel. At Pedro Miguel there will be a pair of locks 1000 feet long, 110 feet wide, and with a drop or lifting area of 35 feet, instead of 28 feet. Through this lock our vessel will be lowered to a small lake formed by the damming of two small streams in the vicinity of the City of Panama. This lake will be a couple of miles across, and on the farther point, called Miraflores, two pairs of locks will lower our vessel to the level of the Pacific Ocean. From the Miraflores locks a channel will be constructed out into Panama bay--500 feet wide and 40 feet deep at low tide, the same as on the Caribbean side.
The engineering features of the Panama Canal are not intricate, and not in any sense difficult from an engineering standpoint, save for the great magnitude. It is the size of the enterprise that has appalled, and discouraged the canal’s construction, and not the technical difficulties of the work required.
The Future of the Canal
When the Panama Canal is completed the commerce and trade of the world will be revolutionized. San Francisco will be brought nearly 9000 miles closer to New York than it is today and European ports nearly 6000 miles closer. It is estimated by statisticians skilled in transportation and in carrier service, that the cost of transporting the great mass of bulky products from the Pacific Coast to Eastern seaboards of the United States and to European points will be reduced nearly two-thirds. In other words, freights that now cost approximately $1.00 per 100 pounds over the transcontinental railroads from Pacific Coast ports to Eastern markets, may be carried through the canal for about 33 1/3 cents.
It is estimated that this saving of freight on timber alone, which is still standing in California, would pay the cost of the canal, great as it is, three times over. We can hardly estimate the effect that this shortening of water rates will have on all the countries fronting the Pacific Ocean.
It would seem as if the Western hemisphere was at last coming into its own in dignity and progress, in its relation to all the world. Certainly the tides of people of enterprise and of business have been steadily pressing westward since long before Bishop Berkeley declared that “Westward the star of empire takes its way,” and that Western wave is rushing onward today more strongly and steadily than ever before in the world’s history. Men of even middle age today probably will live to see the fulfillment of the dreams and prophecies of the olden time in the opening up of our coasts and land to ship commerce with every country on the globe.
In ancient days it was the fact that seas divided nations, because of the difficulty of ocean travel. In those days the only safe routes were those over the land, but in this modern time of gigantic ocean vessels, capable of carrying thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of tons of freight, water travel and transportation is the cheapest and most agreeable of all forms. And therefore, today it is a fact that seas unite the countries of the world instead of dividing them.
The completion of the Panama Canal will be only the completion of one link of the chain of three great improvements that are in contemplation by the statesmen of America.
On the eastern side of the continent all the States bordering on, or tributary to, the Mississippi river are engaged in the propaganda for the deepening of that river to a depth of 14 feet from New Orleans to St. Louis, and 12 feet from St. Louis to St. Paul, as well as the improvement of the tributaries thereof, so that ocean-going vessels may penetrate to the very heart of the American continent and discharge their cargoes there.
The up-to-date and progressive city of Chicago, the mighty metropolis of the center of the continent, is alive to the possibilities of the near future, and has made provision for the issuance and sale of bonds to the amount of $24,000,000, the proceeds of which are to be used in the deepening and widening of the Chicago drainage canal and the Illinois river, so that ocean-going vessels may not only penetrate as far as St. Louis, but may also proceed to Chicago, and place that great city in direct water communication with any part of the world.
The improvement of the Mississippi and its tributaries, then, is one of the links of the chain. The Panama Canal is the central link. The third link must be and will be, if the projects of the most eminent and patriotic American statesmen are carried out, the re-establishment of the American merchant marine, so that American ships may be used as the agency for the distribution of the products of our great industrial country to all the lands fronting the Pacific Ocean, as well as to all other parts of the earth.
I believe that it has been a well recognized policy of all the Presidents and statesmen of our country for the last twenty years to urge the accomplishment of these improvements. They come slowly, of course, but all large projects take time in their development, and those of us who today are so fortunate as to live in California, or anywhere upon the Pacific Coast, may easily look forward to the time, not far distant, when California will be at least the second State of the American Republic in wealth, and industrial and commercial power, and San Francisco the second city in importance under the American flag.
Transcriber’s Note:
--Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.