Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-03-18

! chimes which can be employed at one time
| and 1t forms a big element in estimating
| the length of the Job. Figured out by the
former commission, II would require twenty
| years to complete 1t; but with the best OF
modern machinery and American business
methods two three shifts a day will be
had and by means of electricity the work
Will go on night and day all the year
through. At this early period the chief
engineer does not pretend to give an opin-
I Ion as to the cost of the canal nor to the
time 1t will take to finish 1t. He does not
say and has not said whether he thought a
lock canal would be preferable to a sea-
| level canal He only says that he is here
| as the servant Of the canal commission,
| or the President and the American people,
| ready to do to the best of his ability what
| they shall decide they want done. He il
now gathering the information by prac-
tical work which will enable him to figure
out what each kind of canal will cost and
how long 1t will take to build It,
To show you how such things are calcu-
lated let me give you an estimate of the
handling Of this 10OOOOO00 cubic yards at
eant a 49,, me cars they are using here will
cars can be hauled in one train making
Zoo cubic yards to a train. Therefore, II
THIS whole mass is loaded upon cars 1t will
take 5OooO0 trains to haul II away
Now. suppose you can load 200 trains in a
day. This. according to the ten-hour rate
now prevailing. means the loading and car
or train every three minutes all the work.
ing day through. But there are 800 900
trains to be taken out, and, dividing this
by zoo, the daily rate, we get $500 days az
the time required to haul out this earth at
three minutes to the train. But $500 DAYS
at twenty-five working days to the month
| equals 100 months. which, divided by
| twelve, gives us eight and one-half wears
| as the time needed to haul out the material
| at that rate of speed. But three minutes
Is very short time to load a train The
| time must be doubled and quadrupled by
additional tracks and sections of work SO
| that twelve minutes, or twenty-four min
| utes. may be allotted to each train.
This means great railroad organization
1t means four systems of double-track rail-
ways. one on each side OF the center line
OF the cut and one at each end leading
from the excavation to the spoil banks 1t
means a vast number of steam shovels, so
worked by a continuous stream OF cars
that they will be never idle. 1t means In
short, the most thorough organization under
the chief engineer that the human mind
can conceive or the human will can ex-
ecute, and this / believe is possible under
Mr.. Wallace.
Labor and Machinery.
Indeed, the chief engineer will soon know
Just what he can do with each kind of la
Dor and every kind of machinery. He is
testing the Isthmian labor to see how much
a man is worth per hour and whether he
can be depended upon. So far as he finds
that one-third Of the native labor lays of
all the time and he has to have 100 men
employed to be sure of seventy turning
up. He is testing the old French machinery
to see whether 1T will pay to use 1t and
also the new machinery getting every ele-
| ment of cost in a cubic yard of excavation.
He now knows to cent, every day, just
what each cubic yard which is taken out
costs in fuel, labor. in transportation to
dumps, in mining and blasting, in main
tenance of tracks and in general expense.
so that he can see at a glance which items
are high and how they can be cut down
This is being done with several thousand
men at work actually excavating enormous
amounts of material. The product, how
value of the knowledge gained for esti-
mating the work of the future. Nothing OF
this kind was ever done by the French.
The Steam Shovels.
Just now the advance guard of the
great army of American machinery is at
work in the cut I wish 1 could show you
these big steam shovels which are working
away under my eye. The word shovel
gives no idea of them. Each is a gigantic
machine worked by steam engine with q
steel dipper as big around as a hogshead
and great steel teeth at its end half as
long your arm This dipper Is raised
and lowered by the touch of button. It
grinds its way into the rock and gouges
out five two-horse wagon loads OF stuff at
bite and lifts 1t up and drops 1t down on
the car. Two bites are load for a car
and, indeed, sometimes one bite means
almost that much. l saw one shovel pick
up a rock weighing ten tons and lift II to
the car trucks as though 1t were feathers.
Each of these shoves working steadily at
ten hours a day can handle 5000 cubic
yards in a MONTH which, taking our ditch
Illustration. means an excavation three
feet wide, three feet deep and fifteen miles
long. If 1t works day and night IL can
gouge out a ditch thirty miles long In one
month. This means that one shovel work.
ing night and day will dig moro than a
mile of ditch In that time. In a year IL
would make ditch from Washington city
to Albany.
Something less than score of these ma
chimes have been ordered, and four are
already at work. 1t is the intention OF the
chief engineer, when the excavation is IN
full blast, to have 100 such shovels plug
ging away and thousands of cars keeping
them busy day in and night out.
AS to the question of labor. the French
at one tine had several thousand men at
work, but they never had a force equal to
these machines. Each shovel can do the
work of 500 men, and when we have 100 OF
them stationed here we shall have 5000
men bottled UP in steel, men who will not
for malaria, who will never grow tired and
never strike. We may have trouble with
the 10000 or 1900 human beings who will
be hewers of wood and drawers of water
but this great machine force of 80 600 men
Is what under good business direction will
give Uncle Sam his canal at a lower cost
and in a shorter time than the ordinary
FRANK G. CARPENTER.
Struck the Boss.