Photo by Brown Bros.
THE BEGINNING OF A SLIDE
The great crack has opened in the side of a road; note house in the distance about to go
The Pacific coasts both of the United States and of South and Central America will be quickened into new life when the stream of commerce begins to flow through the new channel at Panama. It may be wise to lay emphasis at this point upon the fact that so far as industrial and commercial life on our own Pacific coast is concerned it needs little quickening, as the march to civic greatness of those communities has been unparalleled. But even that magnificent advance has been impeded and harassed by the difficulty of communication with the markets of the Atlantic coast. The struggles of the Pacific coast planters and lumbermen to break the bondage imposed upon them by the railroads have been fairly frantic, and their uniform failure pathetic. Perhaps the railroad managers have demanded no more than a rightful care for the interests of their stockholders warranted. This is no place to argue the railroad rate question. But from the shipper’s point of view the demands have been so intolerable that every expedient for resisting them has been tried and failed. Even now there is profit to a corporation—and to the shippers that patronize it—in carrying goods from San Francisco to Hawaii, thence to Tehuantepec and across that Isthmus to the Gulf and thence again to New York in competition with the direct railroad lines. If freight can be thus handled profitably, with two changes from ship to car and vice versa, it is easy to see how vastly beneath the charges of the railroads will be the all-water route between New York and San Francisco. It is little exaggeration to say that for commercial purposes all the Pacific seaboard will be brought as near New York and European markets as Chicago is today. The forward impetus given by this to the commercial interests of the Pacific baffles computation.
Photo by Brown Bros.
“MAKING THE DIRT FLY”
But it is Latin America that has reason to look forward with the utmost avidity to the results that will follow the opening of the Canal. For the people of that little developed and still mysterious coast line reaching from the United States-Mexico boundary, as far south at least as Valparaiso, the United States has prepared a gift of incalculable richness. Our share in the benefit will come in increased trade, if our merchants seize upon the opportunity offered.
THE HAPPY CHILDREN OF THE ZONE
From Liverpool to Valparaiso today is 8747 miles and from New York 8380. But when the ships go through the Canal the English vessels will save little. For them the run will be reduced to 7207 miles, while from New York the distance will be cut to 4633. With such a handicap in their favor New York shippers should control the commerce of Pacific South America north of Valparaiso. Guayaquil, in Ecuador, will be but 2232 miles from New Orleans; it has been 10,631. Callao, with all Peru at its back, will be 3363 miles from New York, 2784 from New Orleans. In every instance the saving of distance by the Panama route is more to the advantage of the United States than of Great Britain. Today the lion’s share of the commerce of the South American countries goes to England or to Germany.