PRACTICALLY ALL THE FAMOUS CUCURACHA SLIDE THE SLOPE ON THE RIGHT, ABOVE THE UPPER TRACKS AND FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED YARDS BACK, IS IN MOTION a matter two thousand miles away, under the influence of a desire to be sensational and startling, was founded purely on imagination. The only foundation for the statement was that in a comparatively small stretch on the site of the dam, perhaps two hundred feet across, some rough material had been piled up on the upward side of the dam, and there had been excavated immediately back of this pile or dump a lot of material from an old French diversion channel; that the water accumulated above this dump in the very heavy rains; that the water behind the dump and the material there had been taken out; and that there was a slide down into the cavity that had been made just back of the dump. The slide could not have been more than one hundred feet. The whole mass was not more than two hundred feet across, and on a personal examination, for I was there, it was evidently nothing more than an ordinary slide, such as frequently occurs in the construction of railroad banks and other fills when they are not properly balanced, and are without the proper slope. The material on the inside of the dam, that which is to be impermeable and puddled, has not yet been deposited at all. This was a mere deposit on the edge of the bottom of the dam upstream. The dam at that point, when constructed, would be nearly half a mile wide. The insignificance of the circumstance when one takes into consideration the whole size of the dam, and the relation of this particular material to the entire dam, is apparent. It appears that there is clay in the material taken out of the excavation at Culebra which is slippery and upon which other material will slide if the pressure is unequal and the usual precautions against sliding are not taken. But this has always been known, and is true of most clays. It is not a danger that cannot be provided against, and, indeed, the shape and form and exact method of building the dam are for the very purpose of producing the stability needed, and of avoiding any danger of a slide due to a lack of proper balance and weight in the material put into the dam. President Roosevelt Orders an Investigation President Roosevelt, in view of the widespread report as to the failure of the dam, concluded to send a competent board of engineers to find out whether anything had occurred on the WILLIAM HOWARD Isthmus that should lead to a change from that type of canal which had the Gatun-Dam as its chief feature. The board was made up of Mr. Stearns of Boston, and Mr. Randolph, the chief engineer of the Chicago Drainage Canal, both of whom had been on the original minority board; Mr. Freeman, who had visited the canal two years before with a view to ascertaining whether there was a proper foundation for the locks at the Gatun Dam; and four other engineers, who had not given their opinion before as to the proper type of canal. These were the chief engineer of the Reclamation Service, Mr. Davis, who has had wide experience in the construction of dams and locks; Mr. Schuyler, one of the two or three great engineers of the West Coast, who has written a text-book on the subject of earthen dams and their proper construction; Mr. Hazen, perhaps the greatest authority on filtration in the country; and Captain Allen, a hydraulic engineer of high standing in Chicago. Their report was unanimous. They decided that the dam as projected was heavier and more expensive than it need be. They reduced the cost and the amount of material in it. They reported that the lock type of canal was entirely feasible, and safe as projected; and they pointed out and emphasized the difficulties of the proposed sea-level canal. TAFT 9 The report of this board has been attacked on the ground that it was a packed jury, and that two of its members had already expressed their opinion in recommending the lock type of canal as part of the minority board. This is utterly unjust. It is quite true that the two gentlemen named had expressed their opinion in favor of a lock type of canal and had recommended the plan that was adopted, but it is also true that five of the board had not so committed themselves, and there was not the slightest reason why, if they differed from the other two, they should not express their opinion. Two of the old board were taken for the reason that they were as competent engineers as the country afforded and knew well the grounds on which the lock type had been originally adopted. It is entirely proper, when it is claimed that a judgment should be set aside on the ground of newly discovered evidence, that at least part of the same court should sit to hear what that new evidence is and pass upon its weight with reference to the previous judgment. The truth is that the judgment of this new board of engineers ought to remove all doubt as to the safety of the Gatun Dam from the minds of the interested public. But engineers are like members pect from time to time, as the construction of of other professions, and I presume we may ex the canal goes on, further attacks upon the feasibility, safety, and usefulness of the type adopted after so much care. The Gatun Dam Pronounced as Safe Not only has this board determined on the entire safety and practicability of the Gatun Dam, but the army engineers, Colonel Goethals and his assistants, who are in charge of the actual work, are perfectly certain that the Gatun Dam can be and will be made as safe as the adjoining hills in resisting the pressure of the water of the lake against it and in maintaining it there for purposes of navigation. These army engineers are not responsible for the type of the canal. They did not take hold of the work until after the type had been settled by act of Congress, and they had no preconceived notions in respect to the matter when they took charge and assumed that intimate relation to the whole project which makes their judgment of great value. Mr. Frederic P. Stearns is one of the greatest authorities in the world on the construction of dams. He has built a dam at the Wachusetts Reservoir of the Metropolitan Board of Public Works in Massachusetts, upon foundations much less favorable for stability than those of the Gatun Dam, and the water is now standing at 65 feet in the reservoir. The dam has been tested, and his judgment has the benefit, therefore, of actual test and verification. The judgment of the engineers in 1906 as to the sufficiency of the foundation upon which to construct the Gatun Dam was based on borings made with wash drills into the material underneath the proposed dam site, and material was washed from depths varying from 20 to 250 feet below the surface. The wash of the water affected the material to such an extent as to give a wrong impression regarding some of it. The borings seemed to show that at considerable depth, that is, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet down, there was loose sand and gravel such as to permit the free flow of an underground stream. Since these borings were taken, pits have been sunk that make possible the removal of the material in place so that it can be seen just exactly what the foundation consists of, and it turns out that instead of there being loose sand and gravel at the bottom, there appears to be a conglomerate of sand, clay, and gravel so united as to require a pick to separate it, and entirely impervious to water. In other words, a full examination of the foundations of the Gatun Dam strengthens greatly the opinion of those who held that there was a foundation of a blanket 200 feet in depth entirely impervi ous to water, below the surface, and substantially incompressible. A most interesting exhibit can be seen at the headquarters of the commission at Culebra, of the various layers of material which form the foundations under the Gatun Dam, and when they are examined, the truth of the assertion that this makes an excellent foundation can be readily understood. Why the Cost was Underestimated The second circumstance is with reference to the cost of the work. The estimate of the cost of the canal, exclusive of the interest during construction, sanitation, and expense of Zone government, and the $50,000,000 paid Panama and the French company, was $139,705,200. The present estimate of the cost of the canal as now projected, exclusive of the same items, is $297,766,000, or a grand total of $375,000,000. The increase arises, first, from the fact that the yardage or excavation to be made was fifty per cent. underestimated. This was due, first, to insufficient surveys, and second to changes of plan. These changes of plan involved a widening of the canal, for a distance of four thousand feet, from 500 feet to 1000 feet in width, just below the Gatun locks on the north side, in order to furnish a wider and more commodious place for vessels anchoring before entering the locks. The canal has also been widened for five miles from 200 feet to 300 feet across the bottom; this in the Culebra cut. Again, the material supposed to be easy of dredging turns out to be in many places more of rock than was supposed, and the average cost of excavation has been increased generally about twenty per cent. In addition to that, the locks as originally projected were 900 feet usable length and 95 feet in width. They have been increased now, in response to a request from our Navy Department, from 900 feet to 1000 feet usable length and from 95 feet to 110 feet in width. This greatly increases the amount of concrete, greatly widens the gates, and greatly increases the whole cost of the locks at both ends of the canal. Then, too, it was thought wise not to follow the minority report which contemplated dams immediately on the shore of the Pacific at La Boca, in Sosa Hill, but to move them back to Miraflores and San Pedro Miguel, some four miles or more from the shore. This was chiefly done for military reasons, in order to take the lock construction out of sight of an enemy approaching the canal on the Bay of Panama. All these changes were substantial increases in the amount of work to be done, which, taken with the increased unit price, explains the discrepancy between the estimate and the actual expenditure. Much money was expended in the construction and repair of buildings in which the employees of the canal lived. Much money, not included in the estimate, was expended for the purpose of making their lives more enjoyable while on the Isthmus. The wages per day are higher than those which were estimated. Colonel Goethals has submitted a detailed statement showing exactly where the difference is between the original estimate and the actual cost. This has been examined by the present board of engineers, who report that in their judgment the estimate presented by Colonel Goethals is an outside figure, and that the cost will probably be less for the present type of canal than $297,000,000, as estimated. The advocates of the sea-level canal point to the fact that the estimate by the Consulting Board in 1906 of the cost of the sea-level canal was $247,000,000, plus cost of sanitation, government, and the $50,000,000 paid Panama and the French company, or fifty millions less than the admitted cost of the lock type. They assume, therefore, that the difference in cost originally advanced as an argument against a sea-level canal has now been refuted. The defect of this argument is that the same circumstances that have increased the cost of the lock type of canal would increase the actual cost of a sea-level canal. Much of the work that has been done indeed, a very large part of it is work that would have had to be done for a sea-level canal, and we are furnished now by Colonel Goethals with an estimate of what the sea-level canal would cost, in the light of the actual cost of the work and unit prices on the Isthmus. This would be $477,601,000 without cost of sanitation or government and exclusive of the original $50,000,000 payment. When the loss of interest and loss of revenue by delay is taken into consideration, the cost is easily increased $200,000,000 beyond the cost of the lock type of canal, so that the difference between the cost of the lock type and the sea-level canal is shown by actual construction on the Isthmus to be greater than was estimated when the lock type of canal was selected as the proper one. The Question of Time Third, the date of completion for the lock type of canal has been fixed as the 1st of January, 1915. I hope that it may be considerably before that. At the rate of excavation now going on in the Culebra cut, it could probably be completed in less than three years, but the difficulty is that as the cut grows deeper, the number of shovels that can be worked must necessarily be decreased. Therefore, the exca grow less. Hence it is not safe to base the estimate of time on a division of the total amount to be excavated by the yearly excavation at present. Then, too, the Gatun Dam and locks and the manufacture and adjustment of the gates may take a longer time than the excavation itself, so that it is wiser to count on the date set. The enthusiastic supporters of the sea-level canal, basing their calculation on the amount of material now being excavated, and upon the total amount to be excavated for a sea-level canal, reach the conclusion that the sea-level canal could be constructed in a comparatively short time as compared with the estimate of twelve or fifteen years made at the time of the decision in favor of the lock type. They have fallen into the error, already pointed out, of assuming that the present rate of excavation could continue as the work of building the sea-level canal went on, which in the case of the sea-level canal is even more erroneous and misleading than in the case of the lock canal, for the reason that the construction, below the fortyfoot level above the sea down to the level of forty feet below the sea, is work of the most difficult character, more than half of it always under water, and necessitating either pumping or dredging in rock and working in a narrow space, which greatly reduces the possible rate of excavation. It is said that new methods of removing rock under water are available so as greatly to reduce the price and the time. I shall take up this statement a little later, but it is sufficient now to say that these methods are in use on the Isthmus, and that the actual employment of them in the character of material that exists on the line of the canal completely refutes the claim that they can accomplish anything more than, or as much as, the excavation in the dry. Then, too, in this calculation of time, a third great error of the sea-level enthusiasts is the failure to take into consideration the time actually needed to construct the Gamboa Dam to retain the waters of the Chagres River and the other dams and the great diversion channels that would absolutely have to be built before the sea-level excavation could be carried on. The Gamboa Dam as projected is a masonry dam, 180 feet above sea level, with a level of the water 170 feet against the dam and above the bed rock of the stream, and of a length 4500 feet along the top. It would be the highest dam known in the world and its construction would have to be of the most careful character, and would take an indeterminate time. It has never been definitely settled that there is at the only available site a foundation suitable |