Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1904-01-29
HOW IT WILL BE DONE
DIGGING OF THE GREAT 18TH
MAN CANAL.

Wonderful Excavatins Machines Devised fol
Cutting Chicago Drainage Channel to Ea
Their Way Through the Isthmus-Immenss
"Gradsrs," Huge Steam ShoveIs. Pneumatic
Dumps. Channelins Machines. Etc.
Machinery, not men, will dig the
isthmisn canal. There will be some
skilled engineers and mechanics, and
several thousand muckers, hoboes and
laborers, but they will simply be the
attendants upon the huge excavating
and handling mechanisms, which will
fairly eat their way through rock, clay
muck, sand or whatever material
makes up the isthmus which connects
the two Americas.
There probably was never a greater
variety of solid matter tackled by ca.
nal builders than confronted the con.
tractors who built Chicago's great
combination ship and drainage canal.
The engineers punched the several
kinds of material into two general
classes; solid rock and glacial drift,
But if there was any kind of mean,
obdurate, elusive, hard to manage,
money dosing, disappointing. obstin-
ate, machinery-breaking. impossible
material which failed to get into the
glacial drift between Chicago and the
Lockport end of the canal the con-
tractors couldn't find it.
But there were a number of wide
awake, pushing contractors on the
work. They were not afraid to
"plunge" on expense if there was any
likelihood that the money spent for
special machinery to handle the het.
erogeneous aggregation OF solid ma
terial would give them a device which
would handle the material at a profit.
making cost. The result was num-
ber of excavating and material han
ding equipments of such novel con-
struction that engineers came from all
parts of the world to study the mod
ern methods of excavation developed
by the contractors on the Chicago
drainage canal.
These methods and devices will cut
the channel which will make islands
OF the American continents, for there
is no material in Panama or Nicar-
aqua, solid or fluid, between the two
oceans which cannot be handled for
the minimum OF cost with maximum
OF attainment by the steam shovels,
dry excavators, conveyors, huge plows,
air drills, channelers, cable ways, can.
tilever conveyors, high power and re-
volving derricks, inclined ways, granu'
lators, pneumatic dumps, hydraulic
dredges and other forms OF rock-cut-
ting, earth digging, sand sucking ma.
chinery which cut through the divide
that kept Lake Michigan from rum
ming dry into the Mississippi valley.
American engineers who viewed the
Panama cut when the French com.
pany was excavating it commented on
the inadequate machinery employed.
One of them remarked: "They sim
ply skinned the face of the work" "
What he meant was that the machin.
cry did not handle large masses in q
large way.
In the last ten years American in.
genuity brought into play on the Chi
cago drainage canal has 80 developed
the excavating machinery which was
modern in every sense OF the word a
decade ago that it is probable the Pan.
anna or Nicaragua canal will be built
we'll within the present estimates oi
cost.
The first machines used on the Chi
cago canal we're the plows. slushers
and wheelscrapers which railroad
contractors use on earth work. Then
came . grader which was a combina.
ton of an immense breaking plow At.
tached to a wheeled running gear. A
revolving apron, driven by the run
ming gear, carried the plowed cart
upward and dumped it into . wagon
which followed the machine. When
this wagon was full an empty wagon
was driven under the apron and filed
Sixteen horses hauled the grader ant
some of the machines excavated ant
lifted 100 cubic yards OF earth an hour
Then came the steam shovels-hug'
dippers that bit out two and one.hal
cubic yards of dirt every time the pom
derous beam crowded the gigantic dip
per into the earth. There was moth
ing particularly novel about thes'
shovels, except their size, and some o
them were the largest aud most power
full on the face of the earth. Thes'
shovels dipped up sand, earth, tn
great boulders which the glacier lef
behind, blasted rock, cemented grave
and boulder clay. Anything and ev
erything which happened to be in tn
way was gouged out and lifted into tn
dump cars or spilled out on the side O
the cut. Some OF the steam shovel
weighed seventy-two tons each. Owe
fifty OF these pondorous machines wer
at work at one time in the channel.
An original device which attracts
much attention was conveyor, whicl
J worked in connection with one of tn
; largest plows ever made. 1t was mad
in the form Of . bridge, which spanne