Photo by Brown Bros.
GIANT CEMENT CARRIERS AT WORK
Placed in pairs on either side of a piece of work requiring concrete, these frames support cables in which swing cars carrying concrete and controlled by a workman in the elevated house shown
Indeed one of the pathetic things in the history of commerce is the persistence with which enterprising Chicagoans, and other mid-westerners, have tried to establish all-water routes to the European markets. All such endeavors have failed, costing their projectors heavily. It will aid, however, if the success of the Panama Canal shall not reanimate the effort to secure deep-water channels from the Lakes to the Gulf and from the Lakes to the Atlantic. After Panama the nation is unlikely to be daunted by any canal-digging project. Having improved the ocean highway, the people will demand easier access to it. Already there is discussion of whether the railroads will help or hamstring the Canal. Cargoes for the ships have to be gathered in the interior. When delivered at the seaport of their destination they have to be distributed to interior markets. It is in the power of the railroads to make such charges for this service as would seriously impede the economic use of the Canal.
Among the great canals of the world that at Panama ranks easily first in point of cost, though in length it is outdone by many, and its place as a carrier of traffic is yet to be determined. There are now in operation nine artificial waterways which may properly be called ship canals, namely:
1.—The Suez Canal, begun in 1859 and completed in 1869.
2.—The Cronstadt and St. Petersburg Canal, begun in 1877 and completed in 1890.
3.—The Corinth Canal, begun in 1884 and completed in 1893.
4.—The Manchester Ship Canal, completed in 1893.
5.—The Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, connecting the Baltic and North Seas, completed in 1895.