The Mena weekly star., 1913-11-27
Tbe 0Monoer 5torp of tbr
.A.* Banana Canal .4.&


/ for S40000,0OO in January, 1902. The
Isthmian Canal Commission advised
the purchase and Congress author
lied the president to buy all the
property of the Panama Company
including a majority of the stock
of the Panama Railroad Company
and to obtain from Colombia per-
petual control of strip of land six
miles wide. through which to build
the canal. Colombia refused to grant
this control, but in November, 1908,
ten months later, the state of Pan
anna declared itself Independent.
Within a month a treaty had been
negotiated with the new republic
by which the United States was Civ
en- control of a strip of land ten
miles wide for the purpose of a
canal. The French company's prop
erty was bought and in February,
1904. a commission for the con-
struction of a canal was appointed.
I'm May of that year. work was be-
gun where the French company had
abandoned it. In June, 1905, a board
of consulting engineers was ap-
pointed to consider whether the ca
nal should be at sea level or with
eleNating locks.
The greatest and most difficult
problem which the American build
ers Of the canal had to solve was
not one of engineering, but of
health. Under the French COM
pany's operations more than 60 per
cent of the workmen were continu-
ally incapacitated by disease. in one
year the death rate among them
reached 60 per cent. To Col. w. C..
Gorgas, of the Army Medical Corps,
was intrusted the sanitation of the
Canal Zone. Recent medical re
search had proved that yellow fe-
Yer and malaria alike were trans
mitted only by mosquitoes and Col.
Gorgas organized a sanitary corps
the main object of which was to eX-
terminate every mosquito and every
fly on the isthmus. AS a result the
Canal Zone death rate is lower than
in most American cities.
Having made the Canal Zone a
safe place in which TO work. the
commission went farther and made
it comfortable place in which to
live. Quarters for the working force
were constructed at a number of
convenient points and for the mar
ried men comfortable houses were
provided, and the commissions
cOmmissary department arranged
for regular shipments of food sup
plies. which were sold TO the en-
ployes at cost. Nor was the social
life of the workers overlooked. Club
houses We're built and furnished
along the route of the canal. mostly
operated under the direction of the
Y. NJ. C. A, and little later wOm-
ems clubs were organized in the
principal towns.
The canal itself, from deep water
to deep water, is fifty miles long.
Its general direction from the Allan
tic to the Pacific end is from north
west to southeast, the northern ter
minal being about twenty-five and
one-half miles farther west than
the southern entrance from the Pa
cific. The first seven miles of the
canal, beginning at the Atlantic end,
are at sea level. Five miles of chan
mel 500 feet wide. have been
dredged to a depth of forty-one
feet directly south through Limon
Bay, and two miles of this sea-
level section has been cut through
low-lying land to the entrance of
the Gatun locks. where the ships
are raised. in three steps, TO a
height of eighty-five feet above sea
level, into the great body Of fresh
water called Gatun lake.
These Gatun locks are not only
the largest of their kind, but to-
gether comprise the largest mono
lithic concrete structure ever built,
exceeding in volume the great AS
souan Dam and bulking two-thirds
as large as the Great Pyramid, which
is still the worlds largest masonry
structure These locks, like the
ones at the Pacific end of the canal,
are built in pairs, so that the dan
ger from accident is halved and the
doubled. Since % per
cent of ocean-going ships are less
than 600 feet long, and it would be
a waste of water and of time to use
the entire l,000-foot lock for short
vessels, each lock is provided with
intermediate gates, so that any one
of five different lengths of chamber
may be used. In all there are
forty-siX lock gates at Panama
These are made of steel plates riv-
eted 10 structural steel frames, and
so strongly have they been con-
structed and so carefully braced
that the largest of them weighing
,lS3,1 700 pounds, droops less than
one-eighth of an inch at the ex-
IRENE end. siXty-fve feet from its
pintle or hinge. The total weight
of the gates is 1888, 100 pounds.
and their cost, including the cost of
erection, was S5,37I47i or more than
four cents a pound.
Vessels will be lifted OF lowered
in the locks at the rate of three feet