The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-13
THE PANAMA COMMISSION Body Holds First Meeting
 at Capital.
 - ORGANIZATION DETAILS Either Tide Level or Lock
 Canal Feasible. original Plans Submitted by Buneau- :. varilla and Bates, Former Be- lieving Work Can Be Done
 in Four Years.


 Shonts, Governor Magoen and Chief l Engineer Wallace met in Secretary Tafts office today. It was the first meeting of the executive commission of the Isthmian Canal Commission and the details of the organization were considered. Secretary Taft communi- l cated to the three commissioners his views regarding the work of the Com mission, supplementing the instruc- tions issued by the President. On the whole the committee had a long and satisfactory discussion with Secretary Taft and reached some con- clusions as to the organization of the Panama Railroad directory at the meet ing which is to take place next Mon- day in New York.
 Chairman Shonts of the Canal Com- mission, will be the next President of the Panama Railroad Company and ev-. cry member of the Commission will be made director of the company. That will leave four members of the direc-s torate to be named and they will be civilians.
 Another important conclusion related to the assignment to duty of the four engineer officers of the Canal Commis- sion who are not members of the Ex- ecutive Committed. namely. Admiral Endicott, Colonel Ernst General Hayes and Mir. Harrod. It was decided to make these four men a special engi-. neering commission quite apart from the Board of Consulting Engineers pro- vided for in the Presidents order.
 Engineering Problems.
 To this engineering commission will be assigned the various engineering problems arising in the course of the construction of the canal. To them are to be submitted all plans of an engi- neering character of capital import ance. and on these they will ask the opinion of the Board of Consulting En- gineers. which body Is so far incoTn- p1ete. The consulting board will rec port on the projects to the full Canal Commission and this body in turn wilt make recommendations thereon to the President of the United States. The labor problem was discussed at length and it was resolved that con- tracts should be made for the ens- ploymeut of 1000 Japanese and 5000 Chinese coolies in the canal construc- ton. This is merely a preliminary and experimental move but if it succeeds the engineers will have an almost un- limited force of labor to draw on. No opinion has yet been had from the At- torney General as to the right of the Commission to employ it's labor more than eight hours daily, but it has snt- isfied itself that there is no legal ob- stacle to the employment of this coolie labor under contract. This conclusion Is based on the theory that while the United States exercises control over the canal zone for administrative pur- poses, yet the titular sovereignty over the strip remains in Panama, over which no American labor law can be held to extend.
 An interesting feature of the ses- sion was a statement by Engineering Commissioner Wallace to the effect that it is entirely feasible to con struct either a tide-leveI or lack ca- nal across the isthmus. though he himself strongly favored the tide- level project
 It siso developed that MT. Bunsau- Varilla. who recently visited Wash ington and 1t was supposed was to be a member of the board of consulting engineers, did not desire any such connection with the project but came principally to submit to the President and Secretary Taft an original plan of his own under which he thought the great canal could be constructed within the term of four years. This project, together with one submitted by MT. Lipder W. Bates, a Chicago and New York engineer, will be re- ferred to the newly created engineer ing commission for examination and report
 The reorganization of the force of employees by the present commission also received some attention and 1t z was decided that all of the adminis- trat!ve work. which heretofore has been done directly under the super vision of the commission in it's own offices, should be placed in charge of Colonel Clarence Edwards. the present head of the Bureau of Insula< Affairs. and the officers themselves probably will be removed to the annex of Hse Mills Building.
 During the conference the delega- ton of ministers of the west coast. South and Central American reuub- lies. who saw Secretary Taft Saturday in connection with Panama railroad rates. called at the Department and were introduced personally to the members of the Executive Committee. They formally submitted the memo- rial. of which an abstract was pub Iished yesterday. defining their com plaints at great length and this was taken under consideration with the promise from the Secretary that there should be greater liberality of+treat- lines than now existed in their rela- tions with the Panama Railroad.
 Commissioner Wallace said that the and supplied with an entirely new and modern equipment of rolling stock; there would be flat rates for all traffic but trans-continentaf rates would not be much affected.