Meanwhile great activity characterized all departments of the national government along lines of military preparedness, supported by unprecedented appropriations by Congress.

The supreme national industrial event of the Wilson administration, however, was the opening of the Panama Canal for navigation on August 14, 1914, and its use since that time as an instrumentality of world traffic.

Panama Canal.—This gigantic engineering project was designated by Count de Lesseps, of France, in 1879, and actual work began by the French Panama Canal Company, in 1881. Negotiations extending from 1901 to 1904 resulted in the taking over of the holdings of the French company by the United States, and work was started by United States government engineers in May of the latter year. Since that time the project has been steadily carried forward to completion.

The Canal is about fifty miles in length from deep water in the Caribbean Sea to deep water in the Pacific Ocean. The channel ranges in width from three hundred to one thousand feet. The average bottom width of the channel in this project is six hundred and forty-nine feet, and the minimum width is three hundred feet. The Canal has a minimum depth of forty-one feet. The time required for the passage of a ship of medium size through the entire length of the Canal is estimated at from nine and one-half to ten hours, and for larger vessels from ten and one-half to eleven hours.

The actual construction cost at present estimated for completing the Canal is $325,201,000, which includes $20,053,000 for sanitation and $7,382,000 for civil administration. These figures do not include the $50,000,000 paid to the New French Canal Company and to the Republic of Panama for property and franchises. Hence it is estimated that the total construction cost of the Canal to the United States will approximate $375,000,000.

CONTOUR MAP OF THE PANAMA CANAL AND CONNECTIONS

This map shows the general direction of the canal to be north and south; how it is brought into direct communication with the ports of the United States; and how it facilitates shipping to all parts of the world.

[Large map] (535 kB)