John F. Stevens arrived on the Isthmus on July 27, 1905. He found the Panama Railroad almost in a state of collapse. He declared that the only claim heard for it was that there had been no collisions for some time. "A collision has its good points as well as its bad ones," he observed, "for it indicates that there is something moving on the railroad."
Mr. Stevens immediately set to work to build up the road, and to provide the means for housing and feeding the canal army. But like his predecessor he found Government red tape hampering, and in his first annual report begged for "a thorough business administration unhampered by any tendency to technicalities, into which our public work sometimes drifts." He protested against civil-service requirements on the Isthmus, and against the eight-hour working day; and President Roosevelt met his protests by exempting all employees except clerks from the operations of civil-service rules, and by abrogating the eight-hour day.
It was under the régime of Mr. Stevens that the question arose as to whether the canal should be built as a sea-level channel through the Isthmus, or as a lock canal with the water in the middle section 85 feet above the level of the sea. President Roosevelt thereupon appointed a board of consulting engineers, made up of 14 members, to visit the Isthmus and determine what type of canal should be built. Five members of this board of consulting engineers were foreigners appointed by their respective Governments at the request of President Roosevelt. They included the inspector general of Public Works of France, the consulting engineer of the Suez Canal, the chief engineer of the Manchester Canal, the chief engineer of the Kiel Canal, and the chief engineer of the Dutch dike system. Three of the American engineers and all five of the foreign engineers voted in favor of a sea-level canal. Chief Engineer Stevens and all but one member of the Isthmian Canal Commission concurred in the vote of the minority, made up wholly of American engineers in favor of the lock canal. President Roosevelt sustained the minority report, and Congress sustained him in the law of June 29, 1906.
In the fall of 1906 Chairman Shonts came out in advocacy of a plan to build the canal by contract. Here arose a difference between Mr. Shonts and Mr. Stevens, and Chairman Shonts shortly thereafter resigned. A few months later Chief Engineer Stevens also resigned. It is said that his resignation was mainly due to his objection to the appointment of Army engineers as members of the Canal Commission, and to a letter he wrote the President in which he scored the limitations of red tape and Government methods generally. When Mr. Stevens quitted the Isthmus he left behind him the nucleus of the general organization for building of the canal. He saw housing conditions brought up to the required standard, established the necessary commissary where canal employees could supply their needs at reasonable prices, and aided Colonel Gorgas in his fight to make the Isthmus healthful.
At this juncture the organization destined to build the canal was put into effect, with Colonel George W. Goethals at its head. Colonel Gorgas, the chief sanitary officer, was the only important official of the old régime held over. The other members of the commission were Maj. D. D. Gaillard and Maj. William L. Sibert, of the United States Engineer Corps; Civil Engineer H. H. Rousseau, of the United States Navy; and Messrs. J. C. S. Blackburn and Jackson Smith.
MAJ. GEN. GEORGE W. DAVIS REAR ADMIRAL J. G. WALKER
THEODORE P. SHONTS JOHN F. WALLACE
JOHN F. STEVENS CHARLES E. MAGOON
