BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF MIRAFLORES LOCK
At the upper end of the lock the guide wall extends into Miraflores lake; the lower end opens into the tide-water Canal.
More and more the exports of the United States are taking the form of manufactured goods. The old times when we were the granary of the world are passing away and the moment is not far distant when we shall produce barely enough for our rapidly increasing population. British Columbia is taking up the task of feeding the world where we are dropping it. On the other hand, our manufacturing industry is progressing with giant strides and, while a few years ago our manufacturers were content with their rigidly protected home market, they are now reaching out for the markets of foreign lands. Figures just issued show that in 10 years our exports of manufactured goods have increased 70 per cent. The possibilities of the Asiatic market, which the Canal brings so much more closely to our doors, are almost incalculable. For cotton goods alone China and India will afford a market vastly exceeding any which is now open to our cotton mills, and if, as many hold, the Chinese shall themselves take up the manufacture of the fleecy staple they will have to turn to New England and Pennsylvania for their machinery and to our cotton belt of states for the material. The ships from Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and Galveston, which so long steamed eastward with their cargoes of cotton, will in a few years turn their prows toward the setting sun. Indeed these southern ports should be among the first to feel the stimulating effect of the new markets. Southern tobacco, lumber, iron and coal will find a new outlet, and freight which has been going to Atlantic ports will go to the Gulf—the front door to the Canal.
HANDLING BROKEN ROCK
Photo by American Press Association
LOCK CONSTRUCTION SHOWING CONDUITS
How swiftly and efficiently American manufacturers and jobbers will seize upon the new conditions and avail themselves of this opening of new fields is yet to be determined. The enemies of a protective tariff are not the only ones who hold that it has had the result of dulling the keen spirit of adventurous enterprise for which our people were once noted. The absolute possession of a home market ever growing in size and into which no foreigner could enter with any hope of successful competition has naturally engaged at home the attention of our captains of industry. Bold and dashing spirits of the sort that one hundred years ago were covering the seas with Baltimore clippers and the output of the New England shipyards turned their attention half a century ago to the building of railroads and the development of our western frontier. When the middle-aged men of today were boys, the heroes of their story books ran away to sea and after incredible adventures came home in command of clipper ships trading to China. Today the same class of fiction starts the aspiring boy in as a brakeman or a mill hand and he emerges as a railroad president or the head of a great manufacturing industry.
TRAVELING CRANE HANDLING CONCRETE IN LOCK-BUILDING
These cranes are the striking feature of the Canal landscape, handling thousands of tons of concrete daily