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.
Upper Picture—Gatun Lower Locks.
