The estimate of the minority for a lock canal at a level of eighty-five feet is, in round figures, $140,000,000, or about $110,000,000 less than for a sea-level canal, which would represent a difference of $2,200,000 per annum in interest charges at the lowest possible rate of two per cent. The majority of the Senate committee attempt to meet this difference by capitalizing the estimated higher maintenance charge, which they fix at $800,000 per annum, and they thus increase the total cost of a lock canal by $40,000,000; but this, I hold, involves a serious financial error, unless a corresponding allowance is made for the ultimate cost of the sea-level project. There is, however, no serious disagreement upon the point that a sea-level canal in any event would cost a very much larger sum as an original outlay, certainly not less than $120,000,000 more, and, in all probability, in the opinion of qualified engineers, including Mr. Stevens, the chief engineer, twice that sum.
Reference is made in the report to the probable value of the land which will be inundated under the lock-canal project with a dam at Gatun, the value of which has been placed at approximately $300,000. The majority of the Senate committee estimate that this amount might reach $10,000,000, or as much as was paid for the entire Canal Zone. The estimate is based upon the price of certain lands required by the government near the city of Panama, but one might as well estimate the worth of land in the Adirondacks by the prices paid for real estate in lower New York. The item, no doubt, requires to be properly taken into account, but two independent estimates fix the probable sum at $300,000 for lands which are otherwise practically valueless and which would only acquire value the moment the United States should need them. In my opinion, the value of these lands will not form a serious item in the total cost of the canal, and I have every reason to believe that independent estimates of the minority engineers of the Consulting Board, and of Mr. Stevens, may be relied upon as conservative.
The majority of the Senate committee further say that—
It is not necessary to dwell upon the fact that all naval commanders and commercial masters of the great national and private vessels of the world are almost to a man opposed unalterably to the introduction of any lock to lift vessels over the low summit that nature has left for us to remove.
I am not aware that any material evidence of this character has come before the Senate Committee on Isthmian Affairs, investigating conditions at Panama. I do know this, however, that until very recently it has been the American project to construct a lock canal. All the former advocates of an American canal by way of Panama or Nicaragua, or by any other route, contemplated a lock canal of a much more complex character than the present Panama project. All the advocates of a canal across the Isthmus, including many distinguished engineers in the army and navy, have been in favor of a lock canal, and almost without exception have reported upon the feasibility of a lock canal across the Isthmus and upon its advantages to commerce and navigation, and in military and naval operations in case of war. The Nicaragua Canal, as recommended to Congress and as favored by the first Walker Commission, provided for a lock project far more complex than the proposition now under consideration.
Colonel Totten, who built the Panama railroad, recommended as early as 1857 the construction of a lock canal; Naval Commissioner Lull, who made a careful survey of the Isthmus in 1874, recommended a lock canal with a summit level of 124 feet and with 24 locks. Admiral Ammen, who, by authority of the Secretary of War, attended the Isthmian Congress of 1879, favored a lock project, in strong opposition to the visionary plan of De Lesseps. Admiral Selfridge and many other naval officers who have been connected with Isthmian surveying and exploration have never, to my knowledge, by as much as a word expressed their apprehensions regarding the feasibility or practicability of a lock canal.
As a matter of fact and canal history, the lock project has very properly been considered "an American conception of the proper treatment of the Panama canal problem." Mr. C.D. Ward, an American engineer of great ability, as early as 1879 suggested a plan almost identical with the one now recommended by the minority of the Consulting Board, including a dam at Gatun, instead of Bohio or Gamboa; and, in the words of a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Mr. Welsh, "The first thought of an American engineer on looking at M. De Lesseps' raised map is to convert the valley of the lower Chagres into an artificial lake some twenty miles long by a dam across the valley at or near a point where the proposed canal strikes it, a few miles from Colon, such as was advocated by C.D. Ward in 1879." The site referred to was Gatun, and this was written in 1880, when the sea-level project had full sway.
So that it is going entirely too far to say that all naval commanders and commercial masters are in favor of the sea-level project. Admiral Walker himself, as president of the former Isthmian Commission, and as president of the Nicaraguan Board, favored a lock canal. Eminent army engineers, like Abbot, Hains, Ernst, and others, favor the lock project. It requires no very extensive knowledge of navigation to make it clear that passing through a waterway which for 35 miles, or 71 per cent. of its distance, will have a width of 500 feet or more, compared with one which, for the larger part, or for some forty-one miles, will have a width of only 200 feet or less, must appeal to the sense of security of the skipper while taking his vessel through the canal.
But it is a question of general principles, and not of personal preference. Our concern is with a matter of fact, and not with a theory. No ship-owner on the Great Lakes considers it a serious hindrance to navigation for vessels to pass through the lock of the "Soo" Canal; no shipper running 1,000-ton barges through the future Erie Canal will have the least apprehension of danger or destruction; no captain navigating a vessel or boat through the proposed deep waterway from the ocean to the Lakes will hesitate to pass through locks with a proposed lift of over forty feet. These apprehensions are imaginary and not real. They are not derived from experience or from a summary statement of shipmasters and naval officers, but from the individual expressions and prejudice of a few who are opposed to the lock project. I am confident that if the matter is left to the practical navigator, to the ship-owner, and to the self-reliant naval officer, there will be no serious disagreement with the opinion that a lock canal, which can be built within a reasonable period of time, is preferable to any sea-level canal which may be built and opened to navigation twenty years hence or later.
There are two objections made by the majority of the Senate committee against a lock canal which require more extended consideration. These are, the protection of the canal in case of war and the danger of serious injury or total destruction by possible earth movements or so-called "earthquakes." Regarding the military aspects of the canal problem, the majority of the Senate committee say: