The Panama Canal

by Frederic J. Haskin

The fact is that he is a man with a very unusual gift in the dispatch of work. System has been the key-note of his success. With thousands of details every day to look after, he has always kept his work so well in hand that to the casual observer he seemed to be the most leisurely man on the Isthmus. He maintained a well-established routine all through his career on the canal. His mornings usually were spent going over the work. When the morning trains passed Culebra at 7 o'clock they found him up, breakfasted, and at the station.

Although these trains carried parlor cars, one would seldom see the chairman and chief engineer riding in them. Rather, he consistently chose to ride in the ordinary day coaches with his sub-engineers, with the steam-shovel men, and with the rank and file of the Americans who made possible the success of the work at Panama. There were few of these Americans whom he did not know by name, and with whom he did not pass a pleasant word whenever he chanced to meet them.

A morning trip over the work with this presiding genius of the big ditch reveals perhaps better than anything else the makeup of the man and the secret of his success.

"Meet me on the early train to-morrow morning at Miraflores," said he to one of his visitors in the early summer of 1913, "and we will go over the Pacific end of the work."

This meant that both the chief engineer and the visitor had to leave comfortable beds at 5 o'clock in the morning to keep the appointment. At 7 o'clock they met at Miraflores. "We will walk through the tunnel if you don't mind," said he, "as I don't want to hold up a dirt train if it can be avoided."

At the other end of the railroad tunnel, the only one on the Isthmus, a railway motor car stood on the siding ready to pick up the distinguished engineer and carry him to the Miraflores Locks. This motor car is something like a limousine on railroad trucks, and was affectionately known by the people on the Isthmus, as "the yellow peril" and "the brain wagon." The first stop was at the concrete work on the spillway dam at Miraflores.

"How soon do you expect to have this dam up to its full height?" he asked of the division engineer who joined him there. "Can't you find room to operate another temporary concrete mixer down there?" he queried further. "Is there anything else you need to keep the work moving forward so as to be certain to complete the dam by the time you promised?"

Going a little farther he came to a place where one division was doing some work for another division. "Don't you think it would be more satisfactory to keep both parts of that work under one division? Why don't you allow it all to be done by the other people?"

Walking across the locks on the temporary bridge the chief engineer and his assistant came to a point where the concrete lamp posts for lighting the locks were being set up. "Don't you think that it would better avoid any settling if you were to place beams of railroad iron across those spaces and rest the posts on them?" he queried.

A little farther on he met the engineer in charge of the work of the company erecting the gates. "When do you think you will have the gates in the west chambers completed so that we can put the dredge through?" he inquired of Mr. Wright.