The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-07

l we read of what this reviewer has been i told is an account of a real experience
 of maiden lady in her search for hap
 piness with a capital III"
 Peggy had good time too. She tells
 about it. How it ended, that experiment
 and the results thereunto, the book is 1 well worth reading to find out.
 The book is handsomely illustrated from 1 photographs of the real spnster farm
 You cant help, though, but feel very
 sorry for the poor professor or any man
 who worked, up to the point of telling his love, has handed out to him in re-
 turn a dissertation on beefsteak-now,
 can you?
 1 Lock Plan for the Panama Canal" Dis
 cussion and Report in the Engineering News of New York.
 In it's issue of February 20 the "Engi- ! neering News" the leading technical pub l lication in the United States devoted to l the engineering profession, reviews at i length the Panama canal situation and
 tells why in it's opinion the lock plan is l preferable for the canal rather than the sea level idea. The article is written for l the general public as well as for the
 engineers and gives in clear, simple lan- guage the essential facts in the contro-
 versy and the main points o1 the tech- nical questions involved.
 That the decision in favor of a lock canal three years ago was made 'in con- formity with the weight of the best en- gineering opinion" is the assurance given at the opening of the review which goes on to say:
 No question of the correctness of the
 decision in favor of the lock canal was
 raised until some three months ago when a newspaper reporter happened to visit the Gatun dam site and noticed a place where some of the waste rock from the lock pits, dumped along one side of the dam location had settled consideraoi~
 where it crossed the old river channel.
 We can state from actual personal eX
 animation that this incident had abso-
 lutely no engineering significance. It made
 however an excellent sensational story. ] Photographed all over the United States i and Europe, it was magnifled into a
 catastrophe pretending danger to the
 completed dam. Other stories followed
 on the heels of the first. Inc public was
 regaled with fanciful accounts of an un-
 derground lake beneath the Gatun dam
 site. The very precautions in testing the
 underground strata which the engineers
 were taking were construed as evidence
 that doubt existed as to the dams
 safety.'
 Following these attacks came an as-
 sault on the lock plan of construction
 but the Engineering News asserts that
 mo American engineer of high profes-
 sional standing has lent his name to this
 campaign" The discussion proceeds to
 review of the report of the board of en-
 gineers which has just made an exami-
 nation of conditions on the isthmus and
 then takes up one by one the arguments against the lock type of canal
 Concerning the Gatun lake and dam
 proposition the discussion says We can testify from actual personal observation and study of the dam site
 and of the borings and pits that the Ga- tun dam will be as safe and permanent as any structure ever reared by man. Yet it is needless for us to say this in view
 of the emphatic approval of the dam by
 the board of engineers which has just
 visited the isthmus and which includes
 the highest authorities on dam construc-
 ton that could be found anywhere. We
 may assure our readers further that the
 criticisms of the Gatun dam have ema-
 mated almost wholly from Irresponsible
 newspapers. We have not seen a single
 criticism of the safety of the dam since
 its foundations have been explored ema-
 hating from any hydraulic engineer of standing; nor has there been ,any crit icism from any source containing mat
 ter worth any serious attention from en- gineers.'
 Turning to a consideration of the locks themselves the Engineering News writer points out that the ''sea level agitation is a fallacy," in assuming that there is something objectionable or dangerous to a vessel passing through a canal lock.
 "The delay" it is stated, of a couple of hours or so required to pass through
 the lock is no argument against the lock system, for this delay-in itself a mere trifie in the course of voyage lasting itself two weeks or more-wlll be more than made up by the faster time which ships can make when sailing through the i broad channels of Lake Gatun. as com pared with the necessarily slow rate of
 sailing through a sea level canal" AS for the danger in a lock canal the i review points out that the Manchester canal has four locks and the Sault Ste.
 Marie canal passes through the greatest lock in the world the greatest canal traf- fic known. Elaborate provision has been
 made in the designs of the Panama locks
 against accident and the locks indeed will be in duplicate, so as to make one available in case of danger to the other.
 Concerning the possibility of the lock canal being damaged py earthquake the ! Engineering News points to the fact that some pieces of masonry in Panama city have been standing since the eighteenth
 century unharmed by quakes It is ad-
 mitted that earthquake shocks are pos sble in the canal zone. but it is shown also that any shock severe enough to damage the locks would probably dam age also the great Gamboa dam an es-
 sential feature of sea level canal The possibility of an evil disposed per
 son wrecking canal lock with dynamite in time of war or threatened war is ad-
 mitted but this assumes, the Engineering News argues. that the locks will not be guarded which is hardly admissible. Fur ther, a possibility of such danger exists equally with the sea ievel project inas-
 much as sea level canal could, theo- retically, be blocked easily by the ex- plosion of torpedo against the hull of the first large vessel happening along. Many other arguments are brought for ward to show that the lock canal will
 not only pass all traffic for which it ! is designed but that there will be actual | gains in carrying out the lock project Everybody is interested in the Panama canal Particularly should the people in the south be interested in the project. The authoritative review in the Engineering 1 News is interesting and most instructive | The report of the board of engineers | which accompanied Mir Taft to Panama recently is also printed in the issue of 1 February 25.
 1 "The Dark Corner" By Zach McGhee ] (The Grafton Press).
 l MT. McGhee, who is the Washington 1 correspondent for a number of newspa-