Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood.

LOOKING DOWN CANAL FROM MIRAFLORES LOCK TO THE PACIFIC

If the system and conditions of employment that have existed in Panama could be applied to public service in all other parts of the United States, the condition of all labor, all industry, all professional service would be correspondingly improved. For with the most extensive employer setting the pace all others would have to keep step with it.

When the long account comes to be balanced we may find that the United States will owe quite as much to the Panama enterprise on the moral as on the material side. Of course it is going to increase our trade both foreign and domestic—that, as the French say, goes without saying. It will cheapen the cost of building cottages in New York suburbs, because lumber will be brought from the forests of Oregon and Washington for half the freight cost now exacted. It will stimulate every manufacturing interest on the Pacific coast for coal from West Virginia will be laid down there at dollars per ton less than now. The men who catch and can salmon in the rushing waters of the Columbia, the men who raise and pack the luscious oranges of southern California will have a new and cheaper way of carrying their products to the eager markets of the great cities along the Atlantic coast. At the same time the output of our eastern steel mills and New England cotton and woolen factories will find a more expeditious and cheaper route to the builders and workers of the Pacific coast.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood.

CULEBRA CUT PARTIALLY FILLED WITH WATER

Incidentally the labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission are likely to be multiplied almost incalculably. For it must be accepted as a fact that free competition is no longer a complete regulator of freight rates whether by rail or by water. Any one can charter a ship and send it through the Canal with the same rights and privileges that a long established line will enjoy. But not every independent ship can find dockage facilities at both ends of its voyage, although it is true that the enterprising cities of the Pacific coast are warding off monopoly by building municipal docks. Moreover, the owner of the independent ship will have his troubles in getting the railroads at either end to handle his cargoes and distribute them at such charges as will leave him any profit. Indeed the independent ship will be but little of a factor in fixing rates. That will be done by the regular lines. Normally there should be keen competition between the railroads and the steamships with a very marked drop in rates. But it will not be well to base too great hopes on this possibility. Transportation rates, even where there is nominally free competition, are not often based wholly on the cost of the service. What the traffic will bear is more often the chief factor in rate making. Because ships can carry freight from New York to San Francisco for three dollars a traffic-ton less than the railroads does not imply that they will do so. Nor does it ensure that railroad rates will drop spasmodically in a vain effort to keep all the business away from the ships. Rather is it probable that certain classes of freight like lumber, coal and ore will be left wholly to the ships, and some form of agreement as to the essentials of the general rate card will be arrived at. It is this agreement, which in some form or other is sure to come, that will engage the attention of the Interstate Commerce Commission, arouse its ceaseless vigilance and probably necessitate a material extension of its authority.

In other than material ways the nation will largely profit. I think that the fact of the Canal’s having been built by army engineers will go far toward correcting a certain hostility toward the army which is common in American thought. The Canal proves that the organization of the army, the education of its officers, is worth something in peace as well as in war. Of course this has been shown before in countless public works scattered over the land, but never hitherto in a fashion to command such attention and to compel such plaudits. There were five Colonels, besides “The Colonel,” on the Commission which put the big job through, and I do not believe that the most shrinking civilian who visited the Isthmus on either business or pleasure found any ground to complain of militarism, or was overawed by any display of “fuss and feathers.”