Читать книгу The Panama Canal - Frederic J. Haskin - Страница 11

George Goethals Chairman and Chief Engineer

A STREET IN THE CITY OF PANAMA

The journey of the U. S. S. Oregon around the Horn from Pacific waters to the theater of the War with Spain in the Caribbean, in 1898, impressed upon the American public the necessity of building the canal as a measure of national defense. Commercial interests long had been convinced of its necessity as a factor in both national and international trade, and, when it was realized that the Oregon would have saved 8,000 miles if there had been a canal at Panama, the American mind was made up. It determined that the canal should be built, whatever the cost.

From the very first there was never any question that the necessary money would be forthcoming. It is a fact unprecedented in all parliamentary history that all of the appropriations necessary for the construction and completion of the Isthmian waterway were made by Congress without a word of serious protest.

During the same War with Spain that convinced the United States that the canal must be built, a long forward step was taken in the science of medicine as concerned with the prevention and control of tropical diseases. The theory that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes had been proved by a Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finley, a score of years earlier. An Englishman, Sir Patrick Manson, had first shown that disease might be transmitted by the bites of insects, and another Englishman, Maj. Roland Ross, had shown that malaria was conveyed by mosquitoes. It remained, however, for American army surgeons to demonstrate, as they did in Cuba, that yellow fever was transmissible only by mosquitoes of the stegomyia variety and by no other means whatsoever.

With this knowledge in their possession the Americans were able to do what the French were not—to control the chief enemy of mankind in torrid climes. In the first years of the work the public, and Congress, reflecting its views, were not sufficiently convinced of the efficacy of the new scientific discoveries to afford the means for putting them into effect. The Isthmian Canal Commission refused to honor requisitions for wire screens, believing that they were demanded to add to the comfort and luxury of quarters on the Zone, rather than for protection against disease. But the outbreak of yellow fever in 1905 was the occasion for furnishing the Sanitary Department, under Col. W. C. Gorgas, with the necessary funds, and thus provided, he speedily and completely stamped out the epidemic. From that time on, no one questioned the part that sanitation played in the success of the project. The cities of Panama and Colon were cleaned up as never were tropical cities cleaned before. All the time, every day, men fought mosquitoes that the workers in the ditch might not be struck down at their labors.

The Americans, too, made mistakes. In the beginning they attempted to build the canal under the direction of a commission with headquarters in Washington. This commission, at long distance and by methods hopelessly involved in red tape, sought to direct the activities of the engineer in charge on the Isthmus. The public also was impatient with the long time required for preparation and insistently demanded that "the dirt begin to fly."

The work was begun in 1904. It proceeded so slowly that two years later the chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission asserted that it must be let out to a private contractor, this being, in his opinion, the only way possible to escape the toils of governmental red tape. The then chief engineer, the second man who had held that position while fretting under these methods, was opposed to the contract system. Bids were asked for, however, but all of them were rejected.

Fortunately, Congress from the beginning had left the President a practically free hand in directing the course of the project. Mr. Roosevelt reorganized the commission, made Col. George W. Goethals, an Army engineer, chairman of the commission and chief engineer of the canal. The constitution of the commission was so changed as to leave all the power in the hands of the chairman and to lay all of the responsibility upon his shoulders.

It was a master stroke of policy, and the event proved the choice of the man to be admirable in every way. From the day the Army engineers took charge there was never any more delay, never any halt in progress, and the only difficulties encountered were those of resistant Nature (such as the slides in Culebra Cut) and those of misinformed public opinion (such as the absurd criticism of the Gatun Dam).

The Americans, too, in the early stages of the work were hampered by reason of the fact that the final decision as to whether to build a sea-level canal or a lock canal was so long delayed by the conflicting views of the partisans of each type in Congress, in the executive branches of the Government, and among the engineers. This problem, too, was solved by Mr. Roosevelt. He boldly set aside the opinion of the majority of the engineers who had been called in consultation on the problem, and directed the construction of a lock canal. The wisdom of this decision has been so overwhelmingly demonstrated that the controversy that once raged so furiously now seems to have been but a tiny tempest in an insignificant teapot.

One other feature of the course of events under the American régime at Panama must be considered. Graft and corruption had ruined the French; the Americans were determined that whether they succeeded or not, there should be no scandal. This, indeed, in part explains why there was so much apparently useless circumlocution in the early stages of the project. Congress, the President, the engineers, all who were in responsible position, were determined that there should be no graft. There was none.

Not only were the Americans determined that the money voted for the canal should be honestly and economically expended, but they were determined, also, that the workers on the canal should be well paid and well cared for. To this end they paid not only higher wages than were current at home for the same work, but they effectively shielded the workers from the exactions and extortions of Latin and Oriental merchants by establishing a commissary through which the employees were furnished wholesome food at reasonable prices—prices lower, indeed, than those prevailing at home.

As a result of these things the spirit of the Americans on the Canal Zone, from the chairman and chief engineer down to the actual diggers, was that of a determination to lay the barrier low, and to complete the job well within the limit of time and at the lowest possible cost. In this spirit all Americans should rejoice, for it is the highest expression of the nearest approach we have made to the ideals upon which the Fathers founded our Republic.

It is impossible to leave out of the reckoning, in telling the story of the canal, the checkered history of the diplomatic engagements on the part of the United States, that have served both to help and to hinder the undertaking. What is now the Republic of Panama has been, for the greater part of the time since continental Latin America threw off the yoke of Spain, a part of that Republic having its capital at Bogota, now under the name of Colombia, sometimes under the name of New Granada, sometimes a part of a federation including Venezuela and Ecuador. The United States, by virtue of the Monroe doctrine, always asserted a vague and undefined interest in the local affairs of the Isthmus. This was translated into a concrete interest when, in 1846, a treaty was made, covering the construction of the railroad across the Isthmus, the United States engaging always to keep the transit free and open. Great Britain, by virtue of small territorial holdings in Central America and of larger claims there, also had a concrete interest, which was acknowledged by the United States, in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, under which a projected canal should be neutral under the guarantee of the Governments of the United States and Great Britain.

For years the United States was inclined to favor a canal cut through Nicaragua, rather than one at Panama, and, after 1898, when the American nation had made up its mind to build a canal somewhere, the partisans of the Panama and Nicaragua routes waged a bitter controversy.

Congress finally decided the issue by giving the President authority to construct a canal at Panama, with the proviso that should he be unable to negotiate a satisfactory treaty with Colombia, which then owned the Isthmus, he should proceed to construct the canal through Nicaragua. Under this threat of having the scepter of commercial power depart forever from Panama, Colombia negotiated a treaty, known as the Hay-Herran treaty, giving the United States the right to construct the canal. This treaty, however, failed of ratification by the Colombian Congress, with the connivance of the very Colombian President who had negotiated it.

But President Roosevelt was most unwilling to accept the alternative given him by Congress—that of undertaking the canal at Nicaragua—and this unwillingness, to say the least, encouraged a revolution in Panama. This revolution separated the Isthmus from the Republic of Colombia, and set up the new Republic of Panama. As a matter of fact, Panama had had but the slenderest relations with the Bogota Government, had been for years in the past an independent State, had never ceased to assert its own sovereignty, and had been, indeed, the theater of innumerable revolutions.

The part the United States played in encouraging this revolution, the fact that the United States authorities prevented the transit of Colombian troops over the Panama Railway, and that American marines were landed at the time, has led to no end of hostile criticism, not to speak of the still pending and unsettled claims made by Colombia against the United States. Mr. Roosevelt himself, years after the event and in a moment of frankness, declared: "I took Panama, and left Congress to debate it later."

Whatever may be the final outcome of our controversy with Colombia, it may be confidently predicted that history will justify the coup d'état on the theory that Panama was the best possible site for the interoceanic canal, and that the rupture of relations between the territory of the Isthmus and the Colombian Republic was the best possible solution of a confused and tangled problem.

These diplomatic entanglements, however, as the canal is completed, leave two international disputes unsettled—the one with Colombia about the genesis of the canal undertaking, and the other with Great Britain about the terms of its operation.

Congress, in its wisdom, saw fit to exempt American vessels engaged exclusively in coastwise trade—that is to say, in trade solely between ports of the United States—from payment of tolls in transit through the canal. This exemption was protested by Great Britain on the ground that the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, which took the place of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, provided that the canal should be open to all nations on exact and equal terms. The future holds the termination of both these disputes.

Congress, that never begrudged an appropriation, indulged in many disputes concerning the building and operation of the canal. First, there was the controversy as to site, between Nicaragua and Panama. Next, came the question as to whether the canal should be at sea level or of a lock type. Then there was the question of tolls, and the exemption of American coastwise traffic. But, perhaps the most acrimonious debates were on the question as to whether or not the canal should be fortified. Those who favored fortification won their victory, and the canal was made, from a military standpoint, a very Gibraltar for the American defense of, and control over, the Caribbean. That this was inevitable was assured by two facts: One that the trip of the Oregon in 1898 crystallized public sentiment in favor of constructing the canal; and the other that the canal itself was wrought by Army engineers under the direction of Colonel Goethals. Colonel Goethals never for a moment considered the possibility that Congress would vote against fortifications, and the whole undertaking was carried forward on that basis.

If the military idea, the notion of its necessity as a feature of the national defense, was the determining factor in initiating the canal project, it remains a fact that its chief use will be commercial, and that its money return, whether small or large, nearly all will be derived from tolls assessed upon merchant vessels passing through it.

THE THREE PRESIDENTS UNDER WHOSE DIRECTION THE CANAL WAS BUILT

VENDERS IN THE STREETS OF PANAMA

A NATIVE BOY MARKETING

The question of the probable traffic the canal will be called upon to handle was studied as perhaps no other world-wide problem of transportation ever was. Prof. Emory R. Johnson was the student of this phase of the question from the beginning to the end. He estimates that the canal in the first few years of its operation will have a traffic of 10,000,000 tons of shipping each year, and that by 1975 this will have increased to 80,000,000 tons, the full capacity of the canal in its present form. Provision has been made against this contingency by the engineers who have so constructed the canal that a third set of locks at each end may be constructed at a cost of about $25,000,000, and these will be sufficient almost to double the present ultimate capacity, and to take care of a larger volume of traffic than now can be foreseen.

Americans are interested, first of all, in what the canal will do for their own domestic trade. It brings Seattle 7,800 miles nearer to New York; San Francisco, 8,800 miles nearer to New Orleans; Honolulu 6,600 miles nearer to New York than by the Strait of Magellan. Such saving in distance for water-borne freight works a great economy, and inevitably must have a tremendous effect upon transcontinental American commerce.

In foreign commerce, also, some of the distances saved are tremendous. For instance, Guayaquil, in Ecuador, is 7,400 miles nearer to New York by the canal than by the Strait of Magellan; Yokohama is nearly 4,000 miles nearer to New York by Panama than by Suez; and Melbourne is 1,300 miles closer to Liverpool by Panama than by either Suez or the Cape of Good Hope. Curiously enough, the distance from Manila to New York, by way of Suez and Panama, is almost the same, the difference in favor of Panama being only 41 miles out of a total of 11,548 miles. The difference in distance from Hongkong to New York by the two canals is even less, being only 18 miles, this slight advantage favoring Suez.

But it is not by measure of distances that the effect of the canal on international commerce may be measured. It spells the development of the all but untouched western coast of South America and Mexico. It means a tremendous up-building of foreign commerce in our own Mississippi Valley and Gulf States. It means an unprecedented commercial and industrial awakening in the States of our Pacific coast and the Provinces of Western Canada.

While it was not projected as a money-making proposition, it will pay for its maintenance and a slight return upon the money invested from the beginning, and in a score of years will be not only self-supporting, but will yield a sufficient income to provide for the amortization of its capital in a hundred years.

The story of how this titanic work was undertaken, of how it progressed, and of how it was crowned with success, is a story without a parallel in the annals of man. The canal itself, as Ambassador Bryce has said, is the greatest liberty man has ever taken with nature.

Its digging was a steady and progressive victory over sullen and resistant nature. The ditch through Culebra Mountain was eaten out by huge steam shovels of such mechanical perfection that they seemed almost to be alive, almost to know what they were doing. The rocks and earth they bit out of the mountain side were carried away by trains operating in a system of such skill that it is the admiration of all the transportation world, for the problem of disposing of the excavated material was even greater than that of taking it out.

The control of the torrential Chagres River by the Gatun Dam, changing the river from the chief menace of the canal to its essential and salient feature, was no less an undertaking. And, long after Gatun Dam and Culebra Cut cease to be marvels, long after the Panama Canal becomes as much a matter of course as the Suez Canal, men still will be thrilled and impressed by the wonderful machinery of the locks—those great water stairways, operated by machinery as ingenious as gigantic, and holding in check with their mighty gates such floods as never elsewhere have been impounded.

It is a wonderful story that this book is undertaking to tell. There will be much in it of engineering feats and accomplishments, because its subject is the greatest of all engineering accomplishments. There will be much in it of the things that were done at Panama during the period of construction, for never were such things done before. There will be much in it of the history of how and why the American Government came to undertake the work, for nothing is of greater importance. There will be something in it of the future, looking with conservatism and care as far ahead as may be, to outline what the completion of this canal will mean not only for the people of the United States, but for the people of all the world.

Much that might be written of the romantic history of the Isthmian territory—tales of discoverers and conquistadores, wild tales of pirates and buccaneers, serio-comic narratives of intrigue and revolution—is left out of this book, because, while it is interesting, it now belongs to that antiquity which boasts of many, many books; and this volume is to tell not of Panama, but of the Panama Canal—on the threshold of its story, fitted by a noble birth for a noble destiny.