CHAPTER XV
PROWLING INTO THE FUTURE
Many prophets have taken in hand to tell us what the Panama Canal is to bring forth in its commercial, social, political, geographical, and educational results for the world. Probably no world-event has ever had so much advance advertising as this much written-up achievement. Great as is the Canal, it came near being out-*shone in brilliancy by the publicity material sent out by journalists who found the subject to be profitable copy.
In the main, the prophets were right. The world war postponed the arrival of some of the promised results, but it also enlarged the importance of the Canal and assured more extensive and far-reaching effects than could have been prophesied before the war began. It is now certain that we are to have a new and more closely united America than was formerly possible, and that the drawing together of the two Americas has been greatly accelerated by the world vindication of democracy. In this closer brotherhood of all Americans the Canal will play a large and important part.
Just how far the stream of influences will flow cannot be told, but it is within the moderate possibilities to say that every country in the world will be affected by the changes due to the new water-*way. The French originators of the first project saw an opportunity for commercial investment and hoped to make good dividends from the venture. They did not much concern themselves with by-products. The Americans who planned and pushed and persevered until the work was again begun were thinking of commercial and naval results, evident enough, but they could not have foreseen the far consequences to follow, nor could they have known that on the Canal Zone five or six related industries were to spring up under management of the Canal Commission. It is now about as difficult to predict the world-wide effects of the Canal factor as it would have been in 1903 to foresee the related industries of the present situation.
Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvious consideration. Everything else grows out of the elimination of distances by the Canal cut-off. It requires no prophetic gift to take the figures from any good map and ascertain that from New York to San Francisco via Magellan is 13,135 miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262—a saving of 7,873 miles, or a month of steady steaming. Between New York and Honolulu there is a saving of 6,610 miles; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles nearer New York via Panama than by the Suez route. The list of distances saved may be indefinitely extended.
PANAMA PUBLIC WATER WORKS, INTERIOR COUNTRY