The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-02

canal project at Panama as is human
 heart to the life of man. Unless It
 serves the purpose for which It is
 planned. .two-thirds of the length of the
 canal will be as unavailble for ship
 uavigation as though not dollar had
 been spent. Yet once again the stabil-
 ity and feasibility of the dam is called
 into question. The engineers who have
 gone to the Isthmus with President
 elect Taft will go over the situation
 thoroughly, and 1t Is expected that their
 report will settle for all time this prob
 lem that has refused to stay settled.
 Nothing vindicates the long-sighted-
 ness of Colonel Goethals more than the
 collection of the vast array of informa-
 engineers when they go into an exam
 ination of the matter. Many import ant actions had been based on the in-
 formation at hand about the dam site
 when he arrived on the Isthrnus. The
 question of whether the canal should
 be built on the Nicaraguan route or on
 the Panama route depended upon the
 question whether lock canal could be
 built at Panama, and this problem
 again turned on whether q lock and
 dam could be built at Bohio or Gatun :
 It was decided that they could be, ana
 Panama became the American canal
 route. t
 Then came the problem of determin-
 ing whether the canal at Panama
 should be at sea-Ievel or of the lock
 and dam type. MT. Taft was inclined
 to favor a sea-level canal, but the evid-
 snce they were able to submit in favor
 of Gatun dam changed him into an ad-
 vocate of the present project. Presi- dent Roosevelt was even more strong ly an advocate of the sea-levei type Of canal, and acknowledged the fact in his message to Congress. But the evidence
 made him such strong supporter Of Gatun dam that he WAS willing to take the responsibility of making it a lock canal if Congress failed to assume the
 responsibility--which it did not fall to do. While it is true that Q major lty of the members of the Board of Consulting Engineers voted for a sea- level canal, the record discloses that number of these members expressly stated that the vote was not because of any lack of confidence in the Gatunl dam.
 But evidence that was held strong enough to justify the crossing of the Rubicon of the type-of-canal question was not strong enough to satisfy Colon ei Goethals. He wanted the miliionth doubt removed. He wanted to know the foundations of that dam as a pianist knows his Keyboard. So he secured the services of one of the most famous and successful engineers in the country to study the whole question. This was Caleb M. GAviIle. He has built experi- mental dams under the conditions that will obtain in the construction of the big dam itself. He has dug innunier- able bore holes all over the site, study ing each one with exquisite care and patience. He has used Keystone and dia- mond drills to get material to reveal the different strata. Tn addition to this he has dug two test pits, going down a hundred feet below sea level, and has brought the searchlights of geology and scientific hydraulics to illuminate the mysteries below the surface.
 That he has a very superior lot of in- formation to lay before the engineers who have accompanied MT. Taft, that his investigations have been of unpre- cedented thoroughness, and that this information but ataplines and vindt- cates that which was gathered before. is the confident assertion of those In a position to know. They are congratu- lating themselves upon the wisdom of Colonel Goethals in forefending himself from just such contingency and situa- tion as has come about, and feel that the work of Engineer Saville will anai- ly set at rest the questions at issue.
 The immediate cause of the re-open- ing of the agitation was the sinking of some rock in the upstream toe of the dam. This toe is intended to serve as 6 sort of retaining wall for the earth of the dam proper. and will stretch across the Chagres Valley rising to a height of sixty feet above the surface. This rock wall is expect cd to rest on a solid foundation. yet to excavate down to this foundation would cause much expense and delay. So they piled the rock directly upon the sur face, assured that it would sink to solid foundation of It's own accord dis. placing the soft material upon which 1t was deposited. This Is just what was expected to happen and what did hap pen; also exactly what the engineers wanted to happen. Yet 1t was the basis of all the disquieting attacks that have since been made on the canal.
 without prejudicing the re-opened question as to whether the site of Gatun dam Is stable or not. 1t Is but fair to the reader that he should know some. Tsthmus, as it comes from day to day. There are three papers published there. One is a hoary headed conservative. The other two are so yellow that they make the most lurid sheet in the Unit ed States seem a paragon of journal istic propriety. To read them from day to day one might imagine that every man. on the Isthmus was a grafter of the hold-up variety, that the negroes in the canal employ are half-starved lot. that the beef served to the laborers is dragged through dirt and Is fiy-blown, that every human being on the Canal Zone has a kick against the canal, and ! thousand other evil things.
 The newspaper man who knows for mer Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, knows that when he orders a newspa- per to never publish anything as com Ing from him, there is something more than yellow about It's pages. Yet that Is what he was forced to do with one Df these journals. Colonel Goethals had To take the same action. It was stated h the press dispatches from the 18th mus that the story of the cave-in and the underground lake at Gatun had been taken from one of these papers. The same source was accredited with the report that the fatal explosion at aas Obispo was due to Q shortage of powder men and that lack of a ocmpe- lent foreman. The records show that there never were more powder men on the job. and that the preparation of the blast was In charge of the most com petent powder foreman in the canal ser- vice. With these facts in mind, the average reader will hardly wish to pre- Judge the Gatun dam question before he hears from the engineers.
 It is interesting to note some of the investigations of Engineer SaviIle. and the conclusions he draws therefrom. To begin with, he starts out with the view that lnasmuch as the conditions below the ground can be known only by deduction, 1t is highly important