The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-12
THE PANAMA CANAL E--MAkLNC THE DIRT FLY
By Fredric J. Haskin.

.snnMuMUWuMmH uH " mHM MamhlnlaA -onvright. 1908. by Frederic J. Haskin.
 Cubera, Canal Zone.--The construction of the Panama Canal Is the biggest enterprise ever undertaken by man, ana the United States is rapidly bringing ft to a successful consummation- When ft is done it will be the greatest material accomplishment of this greatest of nations. As an engineering money. no one yet knows how much 1t win take. but it will be between xss0. .00O. 900 and $500. .000, ,000. 0.--much more than any other single work ever undertaken. It will be the most re- markable artificial change in geography ever accomplished. The American canal diggers of Panama, working at the rate they are going now. could dig the Suez Canal in one year. The Panama Canal will have a greater effect on world commerce and world politics than any other one work oi man. And above and beyond all these great things. 1t will give and assure to the Emitted States of America the first place among nations.
 An army of 25.00o men Is constantly at work constructing this giant water way that will lift the biggest battle ship over an eight-five foot stairway and drop 1t again on the other side. Another army keeps the zone healthy. In one year alone they cleaned a million linear feet of ditches inPanama. digging l3.00Q feet more and fumi- eating 6.000. .000 cubic feet of house space as a precaution against disease. To care for the mighty army of workers Uncle Sam is spending $2.000,0O0 a month for supplies
 With -Four millions a month" for their slogan, the workers are making nearly that many cubic yards of dirt fly. But the problem of digging the Canal is not so much one of getting the dirt out, as 1t is of making away with the dirt after they have gotten it out. In the United States when a contractor encounters "a piece of con- struction work with a haul of more than 500 yards. he figures 1t on the basis of that distance hauled free, and the remainder he charges for at what ever the cost is found to be. On the Canal the average haul of the exca- vated material is more than ten miles And as the work hears completion the problem of getting the debris out of the way will grow more serious. the hauls becoming longer as the days go by.
 But notwfthstanding the increasing difi1culties that are besetting the Canal builders, they are continually setting a new standard. At the '. M c. A. and elsewhere on public occasions you hear the cry, or see projected upon a screen. -Four millions month" A cheer greets 1t every time. And there- in one sees the spirit of the men who are digging the Canal. There was rejoicing on the Canal a year ago last March when 1t was announced that more than a million cubic yards of dirt had been excavated. At home 1t was said that 1t was just a spurt at making the dirt fly. On the Zone how ever, they did not view 1t that way. Steam shovel men. dredge men. dirt train men--everybody began to set their pegs at the two million mark
 Through the dificulties of the rainy season they kept crowding the notch closer and closer, until in December of last year they were able to offer Uncle Sam Christmas gift of a two million yard record. But even then they did not rest on the oars of achievement. 'aThre million a month" became the both of which they made new advances toward their three-milIion mark, in March of the present year they wrote down the highest excavating record ever made anywhere--nearly three and a half million cubic yards in a single month. In April they most duplicated the record. Then the dry season ended
 
 along with something over two million cubic yards a month. But everybody is squaring himself for a dash at that four million mark next December. Those who know the temper of the men believe they will touch 1t.
 cubebra Cut has long been regarded as the great task of the undertakfng. 1t was here that the French made their first assaults on the great barrier be- tween the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. It Is the only place along the Canal where work has never been sus- pended from the time the first French operations began. It was thought untiIl recently that the length of time 1t would take to dig the Cubebra Cut take to complete the Canal. But re- developments point to the Gatun Dam as the determining factor in the com pletion of the undertaking. Culebra finds herself being eaten away by the greedy mouths of a half hundred steam shovels at the rate of more than a million cubic yards a month. At that rate Cubebra would yield up her last yard of material in less than three and half years. But as the cut grows deeper 1t will of course grow narrower and the fewer steam shovels they can operate and the fewer dirt train tracks they can lay, the smaller the amountGof excavated material there will be per mnth as the years come and go.
 The most interesting feature of the work Is that under the present manage ment each month they manage to make q higher record than they made during the corresponding month of the pre- Nious year. For instance, during the month of May in the Culebra Cut the amount of material removed was thirty- nine percent greater than the amount removed during the correspondfng month of 1907, although the rainfall In May 1907 was less than seven inches
 as compared with nearly thirteen inches during May of the current wear.
 They do things on a big scale on this Culebra Cut Go through 1t and you will see some two dozen team shovels in sight at a time. and as many dirt trains attending them. You will see some twenty-five or more big well drills operated by compressed air from an air compressor plant, perhaps the largest Tn the world. Each of them is boring a well of fair diameter In the course of a year these wells, end on end, would make one hole in the ground about 1A0 miles deep. Into these wells they sink tons of dynamite. At noon, or after the force has stopped work, one hears a roar from these blasts that makes him think of a great artillery duel few months ago they set off a blast of nineteen and a half tons of dynamite, distributed in twenty-five holes whose depths varied from thirty five to ninety feet It broke up over 10000 cubic yards of earth.
 It costs something to keep things going in the big cut. It takes about S0.0o0 tons of coal year. which costs