The Panama Canal

by Frederic J. Haskin

When President Roosevelt undertook to carry out the provisions of the Spooner Act, and to have the canal dug by a board of seven commissioners, each independent of the other, he soon found that it would not work. After repeated trials he came to the conclusion that the control of affairs on the Isthmus should be concentrated largely under the chairman and chief engineer. He therefore issued an executive order requiring that all officials on the Isthmus should report to the chairman and chief engineer, giving him practically all control over the entire project. This brought both the Canal Zone Government and the sanitary department under the supervision of the chairman and chief engineer. The result was a coordination of the work and a satisfactory organization for its prosecution.

When Congress came to make the permanent canal law it profited by the unsatisfactory results that would have grown out of a rigid adherence to the principles of the Spooner Act, and concentrated all authority under the governor of the Canal Zone. There were those who thought the sanitary department should not be under the control of the governor, and still others who felt that the operation of the canal probably should be under one man and the civil government under another. But these suggestions were not followed, and the act as finally adopted makes the President practically a czar of the Isthmus, and under him the governor need give account to no one but the President.

It has been the ambition of the present chief engineer of the canal to see the operating force fully installed and things moving along on a satisfactory working basis before leaving the Isthmus. He thinks arrangements should be made whereby acute changes of policy should be prevented. This he would do by having a principal assistant who would succeed the governor at the end of his four-year term. This would permit a continuous policy and an unbroken line of action which, according to his view, would make for the efficiency of the operating force. In speaking of this phase of the matter, he stated that were a new man chosen at the end of the four-year term of his predecessor—a man who had had no previous experience on the Isthmus—there would always be a tendency to make radical changes.

He would have on the governor's staff a doctor from the Army to have charge of the work of sanitation on the Canal Zone, who would report directly to the governor. The quarantine officer, in his opinion, should be under the Public Health Service of the United States. Under the plan as adopted in the permanent canal law, any officer of the Army or of the Navy chosen to fill a position in the canal operating force will be paid the same salary as a civilian, with the exception that he would get only the difference between his regular Army or Navy pay and the salary his position carried.

It is estimated that the expense of operating the canal will amount to about $3,500,000 a year. This includes the cost of operating a number of dredges which will have to be maintained in connection with the canal work. The estimate was made upon the amount of business handled at the Sault Ste. Marie Canal which has the largest traffic of any canal in the world.

There will be five departments for the operation of the canal outside of the work of maintaining the civil government and sanitation. The operating department will have charge of the operation of docks and wharves at the terminals, pilotage, lockage, and the lighting of the canal. It is estimated that it will cost $400,000 a year to maintain the terminals, $150,000 a year to light the canal, and that it will require 60 pilots, at $1,800 each a year, to take ships through. During the first years of operation it is believed that a single shift can handle all the business that comes, but, as the years go by, it may require two shifts and eventually three to keep the work going.

The engineering department will require about 500 men and will have charge of all the construction and repair work pertaining to the canal property, and of all excavation and dredging in the canal. It will cost approximately a million dollars a year to maintain this department, of which three-fourths will be required for the operation of the dredges and other equipment for keeping the canal open.

The quartermaster's department will have charge of the construction, repair, and maintenance of all buildings, roads, and municipal improvements in the Zone settlements and of the receipt, care, and issue of all property and material. This department will require nearly a thousand men and the total expense will be in the neighborhood of $600,000.

The electrical and mechanical department will have charge of the mechanical and electrical apparatus belonging to the canal, and of the permanent works at its two ends.

The accounting department will require some 60 men with annual salaries amounting to approximately a hundred thousand dollars. It is estimated that the cost of materials for the operation of the canal will range around three-fourths of a million dollars a year.