The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-04
THE COST OF PANAMA.

THE COST OF PANAMA.
 The alert Washington correspondent of the New York Sun recently report ed an important fact which apparently escaped the Argus-eyed Associated Press reporter Col Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, though on his direct examination he had put the ultimate cost of the enter prise at $500, 900, oOO, under the cross examination of the chairman of the committee, acknowledged that 1t might cost half billion dollars and said that 1t was almost futile to esti- nate the cost. It will be remembore
 hat in his paper before the Politica
 Science Club of Yale University. last November. which was reported in this paper, MT. George zL. Fox gave this as his estimate of the lowest possible cost. That statement at the time was ridiculed as absurd, and the talk of a man who did not know anything about the subject. After Col Goethals testi- mony, such comment can hardly be made with any show of fairness, and we think MT Fox has good reason to consider himself fully vlndlcated, for he made that estimate at time when no official document indicated any such variation from the original estimate of cost, viz: s1s5, 5,ooO,oOo
 In all probability the actual cost will in the end much exceed five hum dred million of dollars. as the present work, including the expenditures of the French company and the United States, has swallowed up about three hundred million dollars already. sim ply in the process of excavation. Yet not one,half of the excavation has vet been accomplished. To this must be added the immense cost of building the enormous dams. and locks, which the plans of a lock canal require Nothing has yet been done on con lstruction work, yet the United States will spend during this calendar year S40.000.O00 simply for excavation alone. What then is likely to be the annual outgo. when to the work of excavation the work of construction Is added The Gatun dam itself Is to be q mile and half long across the val ley of the Chagres river, 1S5 feet high at its highest point, and one-haif a mile wide. It will contain twenty mil lion cubic yards of rock and earth much Of which will have to be brought 30 miles from the Culebra cut, and then lifted from 50 to 100 feet to put it in place. The engineering difficulties considering tho character of tho Chagres river, are stupendous, and |, the dam is ever built, the cost will be equally stupendous
 Secretary Taft in his Cleveland speech. defending the Roosevelt ad. ministration. frankly acknowledged that the United States were sinking i, this bottomless pit hundreds of million, of dollars that would be unlikely {, be returned to us in money form oi trade for many decades, until most o the adults of the present generation are quite under the sod But he de fended it on the ground that it wa, an altruistic enterprise for the benefi of the world, as it would lower th, cost of transferring freight from tn, Atlantic to the Pacific fifty cents to dollar ton. Altruism or charity be gins at home. The absurdity of spend ing hundreds of millions of money he i longing to the taxpayers of the Unit ed States for the beneht of the paupe shipowners, merchants and manufac turers of Europe, deservedly make Uncle Sam in this matter. the laugh ing stock of the nations of the world