The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-05

l pare the per yard cost of digging the | Panama Canal with the cost of simi- lar work elsewhere. An elaborate
 system of cost-keeping has been es- | tablished, and 1t shows to the fraction of cent the cost of doing any given piece of work. The cost of civil ad- ministration, sanitation, and Zone im- provements is left out of the calcula- ton, for the reason that on other con- struction works these = expenses are borne by the public and not by the con structIon Itself. 1t therefore leaves the various items on ( strictly compar- able basis, 60 far as the Items charged are concerned. Of course the eight hour day obtains at Panama. as com pared with the ten-hour day on most contract construction, and many of the expenses at Panama are heavier than those In the States, but on the whole this does not vitiate the comparison. The most significant thing about this cost-kecping system down to date is the showing 1t makea Prior to the beginning of the last fiscal year the s1.A per cubic yard. By the opera tiohs of the fiscal year they were able
 to drive the cost down to s1 cents per cubic yard. Even this record will
 probably be lowered before the present
 fiscal year is done. During the first
 half of the last fiscal year the cost of
 excavations by steam shovel in the Co.,
 lon Division amounted to 75 cents per
 cubic yard. During sthe second half
 of the year they we're able to cut the
 cost down to 6s cents per cubic yard
 In the chagres Division Che cost sank
 from s1.62 to 80 cents. Dredging ct
 Colon was reduced from Is cents per
 cubic yard to 12 cents. It is confident
 ly expected that remarkable as Is this
 sh howing. the operations of the present
 fiscal year VIII make an even greater
 reduction.
 It is exceedingly interesting to note
 the cost of excavation today with the
 estimates upon which the engineers de-
 cided the questions relating to the
 building of the Canal. The dredging
 In Colon and Panama harbors was
 placed at IS cents. and the removal Of
 the material in culebra Cut was esti-
 mated at 80 cents. It will be seen that
 In the one Instance the consulting en.
 gineera set their figures down too low and in the other the figures were too
 high.
 Since this cost-keeping system has
 been established 1t shows that the nar<1 ried man is a rather expensive invest ment to the Tsthmus---lf the dollars and
 cents of the proposition alone are to be considered. The cost of the month- ly allowances to the married men amounts to e12, that of the single men to s2.2s. Assuming a six year service.
 and adding to these allowances the cost of the quarters; each married man
 represents an outlay of es.000, while
 each bachelor shows an expenditure
 of e760. But with all this great dis-
 parity in actual cost to the Commts-
 sion, the married man Is still preferred
 The single man comess stays awhile.
 and then retnrns to the States. Not so
 with the married men. They give sta-
 bility to the force. There is a great demand for married quarters, while the
 supply of bachelor quarters SO far ex-
 ceeds the demand that the Commission
 Is converting many of them into mar
 ried quarters.
 It has always been said that 1t costs
 more to manufacture small parts of
 machinery on the Isthmus than to
 bring them from the States, and 1t has
 been the policy of the Commission to
 order these supplies wherever they
 could be gotten without delay. Re-
 gently the mechanical division manu- factured a number Of side doors for
 twelve yard steel dump cars. Counting all direct and indirect expenses In
 making them, the cost was 33e.91 each
 If they had been ordered from the States in lots of fifty, the cost would have been Se6 each. Of course this is an exceptional showing. but 1t demon- strates that the workmen down there know how to do things.
 The Commission is good housekeep. ST. It Is not willing to rob Peter to pay Paul. On the Tsthmus there are hundreds of tons of old scrap left over from the French regime. If 1t were shipped to the States as ballast in the Panama. Railroad steamships, 1t would snow q handsome proflt--provided there was no charge by the steamship line for transportation. The government owns the steamship line and also the canal. but the steamship line does not want to carry 1t free and the Comnlis- sion does not desire to lose money on the deal by paying for carriage. So there you are. The government insists on-charging itself for carrying its own iron, and as firmly refuses to pay itself | for so doing. So the scrap win re- 1 main on the Isthmus. The last that was sent to the States brought Sl1.se | per ton. Of this 46 per cent had to be | paid to the Panama Railroad. 2s per | cent to the New York customs house | and 1 per cent for handling fin New York. leaving only 80 per cent for the | Commission. Even though all but 1 l per cent of 1t really went into the gov ernments treasure box, 1t could not | reach an agreement with itself about | it.
 Compared with the cost of similar work in the States the steam shovel | men on the Isthmus are giving a won | derful account of themselves Although | they receive much higher wages than | the steam-shovel men in this country. | and work only eight hours, they man. age to handle so much material that | they more than overcome the differ ence these factors would make, and | offer the world the best steam shovel 1t has ever seen. One shovel | has gone above the 55,000 cubic yard | mark. and there Is no certainty that | the limit has been reached As re- gently as December every former daily | steam shovel record was broken. when | fifty steam shovels took out 70,O87 cu- bic yards of material in eight hours.
 The cheapest excavation that Is be. | ing done on the Isthmus is by the big sea going dredges Ancon and culebra. They are sucking mud through their big twenty-inch centri- fugal pumps at a cost of less than i've cents a cubic yard. And in suck Ing up mud they bring up other things Is we'll. Only recently Culebra drew ten fathoms of anchor chain. from the bottom of the sea and passed 1t into he bins That performance has been he mystery of the Isthmus ever since. These pumps revolve with lightning -apidity, and how ten fathoms of ,hain could pass through them with 'ut becoming entangled or doing any damage is a puzzle to the crew. Not ong since the Ancon picked up a can lon ball in the bottom of Limon bay