Even in so great an affair as the building of railroads, chance or good fortune plays a considerable part. So it was the hurricane which first drove two ships bearing the California gold seekers from the mouth of the Chagres down to Colon that gave the railroad company just the stimulus necessary to carry it past the lowest ebb in its fortunes. Before that it had no income and could no longer borrow money. Thereafter it had a certain income and its credit was at the very best. Every additional mile finished added to its earnings, for every mile was used since it lessened the river trip to the Pacific. In January, 1855, the last rail was laid, and on the 28th of that month the first train crossed from ocean to ocean. The road had then cost almost $7,000,000 or more than $150,000 a mile, but owing to the peculiar conditions of the time and place it had while building earned $2,125,000 or almost one-third its cost. Its length was 47 miles, its highest point was 263 feet above sea-level, it crossed streams at 170 points—most of the crossings being of the Chagres River. As newly located by the American engineers a great number of these crossings are avoided.
CHILDISH BEAUTY WITHOUT ART
A CORNER OF MOUNT HOPE CEMETERY
Names of forgotten French martyrs are carved in the stones
Traffic for the road grew faster than the road itself and when it was completed it was quite apparent that it was not equipped to handle the business that awaited it. Accordingly the managers determined to charge more than the traffic would bear—to fix such rates as would be prohibitive until they could get the road suitably equipped. Mr. Tracy Robinson says that a few of the lesser officials at Panama got up a sort of burlesque rate card and sent it on to the general offices in New York. It charged $25 for one fare across the Isthmus one way, or $10 second class. Personal baggage was charged five cents a pound, express $1.80 a cubic foot, second class freight fifty cents a cubic foot, coal $5 a ton,—all for a haul of forty-seven miles. To the amazement of the Panama jokers the rates were adopted and, what was more amazing, they remained unchanged for twenty years. During that time the company paid dividends of 24%, with an occasional stock dividend and liberal additions to the surplus. Its stock at one time went up to 335 and as in its darkest days it could have been bought for a song. Those who had bought it were more lucky than most of the prospectors who crowded its coaches on the journey to the gold fields.
Too much prosperity brought indifference and lax management and the finances of the road were showing a decided deterioration when the French took up the Canal problem. One of the chief values of the franchise granted by New Granada and afterward renewed by Colombia was the stipulation that no canal should be built in the territory without the consent of the railroad corporation. With this club the directors forced the French to buy them out, and when the rights of the French Canal company passed to the United States we acquired the railroad as well.
THE SOULFUL EYES OF THE TROPICS
It is now Uncle Sam’s first essay in the government ownership and operation of railroads. Extremists declare that his success as a manager is shown by the fact that he takes a passenger from the Atlantic to the Pacific in three hours for $2.40, while the privately owned Pacific railroads take several days and charge about $75 to accomplish the same result. There is a fallacy in this argument somewhere, but there is none in the assertion that by government officials the Panama Railroad is run successfully both from the point of service and of profits. Its net earnings for the fiscal year of 1912 were $1,762,000, of which about five-sixths was from commercial business. But it must be remembered that in that year the road was conducted primarily for the purpose of Canal building—everything was subordinated to the Big Job. That brought it abnormal revenue, and laid upon it abnormal burdens. The record shows however that it was directed with a singular attention to detail and phenomenal success. When passenger trains must be run so as never to interfere with dirt trains, and when dirt trains must be so run that a few score steam-shovels dipping up five cubic yards of broken rock at a mouthful shall never lack for a flat car on which to dump the load, it means some fine work for the traffic manager. The superintendent of schools remarked to me that the question whether a passenger train should stop at a certain station to pick up school children depended on the convenience of certain steam-shovels and that the matter had to be decided by Col. Goethals. Which goes to show that the Colonel’s responsibilities are varied—but of that more anon, as the story-tellers say.