The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-12

f- over half million dollars. The wages paid are said to average from forty to seventy percent, higher than in the States. and the coal costs about ss. SO per ton as compared with ss. and ss50 per ton In the States. It takes about zoo locomotives. and other rolling stock Tn proportion. to haul the excayated material from Culebra Cut. The most Of It Is hauled away In twenty-ton Lidgerwood dump cars. Sixteen of these are made up into train. Five shovelsful of the large type of shovel loads a car. eighty shovelsful making ! train load. The train is pushed to the dumps and in ten minutes the en- tire load of 320 cubic yards of dirt is removed by a mechanical unloader When the latest available figures were made out. 1t was costing the government about eighty-tsso and a haif cents cubic yard for excavation in Culebra Cut. But as the output of material has been increased by nearly half. with only a compara- lively small increase of force 1t Is pro- able that they have been able to re- duce these figures to the neighborhood of fifty cents per cubic yard.
 The work that is being done by the dredges is costing very much less. For instance. there are the big sea- going dredges "Ancon" and "C1lebra", the former working at the Atlantic side and the latter at the Pacific end. The cost per cubic yard of dredged material Is about four cents, They operate in
 . section of the enterance channel about 500 feet in width and a mile and quarter in length. Starting at the Inner end and moving seaward slowly, with their big tweny-inch centrifugal pumps in operation and their drags sucking up the mud as they go, by the H4 Eo4~ bins are full and they carry the mud out to sea and dump it. This is done by opening the gates in the bottom of the vessels. They them steam back to the channel. having closed the gates of the bins. and repeat the operation. When the gates are closed, water is shut into the bins up to sea level As the mud is pumped in the water flows out. thus enabling them to always i'll the bins with dredged material. They work day and night. requiring a crew of about sixty.
 Besides the two big sea-going dredges. they have in operation on the Canal three tweny y-inch suction dredges three dipper dredges. five French ladder dredges. and several other. They are also fitting up several more of the old French dredges. and when they are all in commission the dredging plant will have capacity of not far from two million cubic yards of earth a month. As the rainy season makes very little difference with the dredges that part of the work will proceed without much interruption from now henGeforth.
 There are a little more than fifty million cubic yards of material to be moved. so that counting only a million eyards month for ali the dredEe equipment. 1t would take but little more than four years to complete the dredging end of the work There Is now one part of the Canal where they see the finish. That is the big spill way at the Gatun Dam. They have gotten down to the final level on this and by the first of October it will have been completed. and the concrete work there can begin.
 A few studies ip figures will serve to show the immensity of the work they are doing. The excavations of a single month in the dry season would make pile of dirt three hundred feet high, three hundred feet across, and over thousand feet long. The Pyra- mid of Cheops Is 750 feet square at the base and 4b1 feet high. It Is said to have taken 100000 men ten years to build the road from the quarry to the pyramid, and the same number of men twenty years to build the pyramid it. self During the month of March, the canal force removed pile of dirt larger by tenth than the pyramid, and if they realize their ambition of four million yards month, they will be hauling dirt equivalent in bulk to hYe pyramids every TOUT months. The Suze Canal required twenty years Ito build. At the rate of excavation for March the Isthnian Canal force could dig Suez Canal in just about one year. The Manchester Ship Canal. one of the largest in the world. connecting Liver- pool and Manchester, is over thirty five miles long, and required many years to build. The Commission moved enough earth in March to make a rate which. maintained from month to month. would enable them to dig a Manchester Canal in less then fifteen months.