The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-20
..o.oo.s.o.e.o.e.o.


it was just about 10 years later that
 the waters of the Mediterranean were a- ] lowed to flow through Into the Red sea. 1 The canal was opened in November. 1869, I and in the following year about 500000
 tons of shipping went through it. In ] less than five years this had increased to 1 more than 2.WO0H0 tons, and the gross in- 1 come to almost S 0000 GOO per annum. | The British then saw that 1t was a 1 good thing and cast about to find some method of getting control. They sue l ceeded through lsmail Pasha, who was 1 then on the throne of Egypt old ls 1 mail was one of the most extraVa gaut 1 tYrants who has eyer squeezed money ! out of an oppressed peoule.' He had | alded the French in building the canal
 and had spent something like $20 0G0, GOO on tie ceremonies by which it was s opened He had borrowed money at 30
 and i0 per cent interest, and was head
 over heels in debt In the allotment
 of shares 176,00O out of the 100000
 had gone to the Egyptian governments | and when the khedive became hard up
 he concluded to put them on the mar I ket The English cabinet got wind of the matter and at the same time the French minister of Cairo telegraphed ed l Paris that unless France bought the Egyptian shares tomorrow they~,would be purchased by England
 4A session, but Lord Beaconsneld and one or two others took the responsibility | of making the trade. They borrowed | S200000O0 from the Roth schilds, and before the world outside had any idea 1 that the bargain was pending they had l the whole of Ismail's stock in the Brit
 ish treasury and John Bull had the 1 control. He had not. it is true 51 per
 cent of the entire capital stock. but . the other holdings were so scattered . that the -siXteenths which he l owned gave him the whip hand, and that he has held ever since.
 As it is now. no large block of the | common stock appears to be held by | any individual, corpora tion or other i. government. Indeed, at a meeting of some years ago, the largest sharehold- ] CT. outside of Great Britain, was a l Frenchman, who had a little more than 1 15D0 shares.
 That $2O.0O00 900 was one of the best . investments John Bull has eyer made. l A it's present market value his stock 1 is worth S155.000 000. and il has gone ID more than S1,000.0O0 during the past year. He has already received l from it more than $6O,000.000 in diVi- l dends and by his control of the canal | has enormously increased his power
 and prestige among the nations of the ] world. His money gain, however, IS ' not quite as great as that or the O1lg- l inal stockholders. They paid only about 1 s1O0 per share, while lie paid a little I more than SIS. If the Panama canal l turns out anything like as well, Uncle l Sam will have money to burn.
 Panama Versus Suez.
 I know the Panama canal we'll l
 visited it m 1898 when it was in the i hands of the French and l have spent ] several weeks there since the Ameri- , cans have been in control. have gone oyer it from end to end with our
 engineers; have watched the new steam ] shovels gouging the earth out or the 1 Culebra cut and have traVeled Tn
 canoe down that part of 1t which is to
 run through the bed of the Chagres
 river. I have also gone through the l Suez canal at three different times and l ha4e made notes of it's construction,
 The two undertakings are vitally dif- ferent. The Suez canal is little more
 than a great ditch through the desert,
 and although it is just about twice as
 long as that planned for Panama it does 1 not compare with the latter in its me- l chanlcal difficulties. The ground here IS 1 comparatively level. That of the Panama 1 route is up hill and down; 1t goes right l across the backbone of the Andes, and we shall have to take out of the eight 1 or 10 miles of the Culebra cut as much l earth and rock as the Egyptians lifted m | their whole 100 miles at SueZ. The amount l exeavated here was 1000, ,000 cubic yards, l or inst about 100 600 GOO tons of dead l weight. While 1 was at Panama MT Wal 1 lace who was then the chief engineer, fold me that the rock taken out of Cule-