THE ANCON BASEBALL PARK
CALEB M. SAVILLE
GATUN SPILLWAY FROM ABOVE AND BELOW
It has been stated that a proper system of finances would provide for the repayment of the cost of constructing the canal in a hundred years. This would mean an annual charge of $3,750,000, and would bring the total annual outlay, exclusive of the cost of protection, up to $19,250,000. From this viewpoint the canal will not be self-sustaining until the total traffic approximates 17,000,000 tons a year, which it will reach about 1925.
It has been estimated by Prof. Emory R. Johnson, the Government expert on canal traffic, that the total tonnage which will pass through the canal during the first year of its operation will approximate 10,500,000 net registered tons. Since the shipping of the United States is permitted to pass through without paying tolls, the tonnage upon which toll will be collected will yield a gross revenue of approximately $10,000,000. This will afford the United States an income of a little less than 2 per cent on the money invested, after paying the actual cost of operation. On this basis it probably will be four or five years from the opening of the canal before the returns will yield 3 per cent on the investment.
The ships of the world use approximately 75,000,000 tons of coal annually. The opening of the Panama Canal will save several million tons a year and the money thus saved will, in part, fall into the coffers of Uncle Sam. A vessel en route from Chile to Europe can save nearly enough in the cost of coal alone to pay the tolls that will be exacted at Panama.
When the United States came to frame its system of toll charges and collections, it was found that there was a wide difference of opinion as to the right of the United States Government to exempt coastwise shipping from the payment of tolls. Under the Hay-Pauncefote treaty with Great Britain there was also a wide variance of opinion as to the question of whether the United States, as a matter of national policy, ought to exempt from the payment of tolls, ships trading between its own ports on the two coasts. These questions were argued pro and con, and Congress finally decided by a very close vote that the United States ought to allow ships trading between its own ports to use the canal free of charge. No foreign ships are permitted under any circumstances to engage in such traffic.