War Cuts Canal Income.
John Bucklin Bishop, former secretary to the Isthmian Canal commission, who returned recently from Panama on the United Fruit steamship Tenadores, said that the income of the canal for October amounted to $376,000, which, if continued, would mean $4,500,000 a year.
“Governor Goethals has said,” Mr. Bishop asserted, “that the operating expenses of the Panama Canal amount to four million dollars, so that the canal will clear five hundred thousand dollars. The war in Europe has made a big difference in the traffic through the new waterway,[Pg 58] and the increase when peace is proclaimed will be considerable.”
“What about the slides in Culebra Cut?” he was asked.
“Colonel Goethals is not worrying over the slides in the canal,” he said. “The big dredges were ready for just such an emergency, and made short work of the two slides on the other side of Culebra Hill.”
Mr. Bishop said that ships could be passed through the canal in ten hours now, instead of twelve hours, as previously estimated.