item. The banks can be revetted by being pitched, as engineers use the phrase, with rock laid loosely-not as solid masonry-as the Suez Canal has been throughout, perhaps, three-quarters of its length. They speak of it as pitching the banks, so that the waves made by the passing steamers, instead of striking back into that sand and carrying out a lot and spilling it out into the canal again, will expend their force against this rock revetment, which is made out of common loose rock. Senator MORGAN. A good deal of the rock is manufactured on the ground, is it not? General DAVIS. No; at Suez they have plenty of rock. General DAVIS. Yes; there are plenty of specimens here in the city. Mr. Quellennec had a lot sent here. Nearly all the rock is near the Red Sea south of Ismailia; it is quite hard, quite dense sandstone. For the first ten years after the canal is put into commission the expense for transit should not exceed $500,000 annually. The Commission and the minority say that the maintenance of turn-out places would be a considerable expense, but no definite figure is assigned. There are 23 turn-out places or sidings at Suez, 10 of them being equipped with telegraph as signal stations. The cost of all is found to be about $60,000 annually. Allowing for seven such stations at Panama, as suggested by the minority, and for higher unit charges than at Suez, these turn-outs, about which so much has been said, might cost $15.000 a year. There is a further expense at Suez for buildings and their repair, wharves, storehouses, quarters for employees, telegraph and light keepers' residences, light-houses, and waterworks. This is a matter of considerable importance, as the expenses for water supply alone reaches $170,000 annually on an average. The cities of Port Said, Ismailia, and Suez have to be supplied with water brought from the Nile, and it must be pumped to requisite elevations, permitting a head adequate for distribution. At Panama there is a surplus of water, and the cost of supplying the operating staff and steamers will be very small, for it will be a gravity supply. The total expense at Suez for buildings of all kinds and water supply reaches $470,000 a year. At Panama it should not exceed $250,000, for at the time the canal is opened to traffic there will be many times as many buildings available as there is any use for. The general administrative expenses, including legal and financial, on the Isthmus of Suez reaches $98.000 yearly. I am supposing that at Panama it will be about the same. At Suez they spend annually $36.000 for sanitary service and hospitals. This cost at Panama should not exceed $100,000. The Suez general offices in Paris cost annually for salaries of all kinds, legal advice, financial management, etc., the large sum of $226,000, but it should, be remembered that the Suez Company is a rich corporation, with some 40 members composing the board of directors, and all receive salaries or allowances that reach a large total. As the central office for the Panama Canal should be a branch or part of the general fiscal administration of our Government there should be no charge at all under this head. The CHAIRMAN. Is Paris the headquarters of the Suez Canal? General DAVIS. Yes; I was in the office a few months ago when I was there in Paris. Summarizing these remarks respecting expenses, we have the following for a canal of sea level: Maintenance of the canal channel, including dredging and mainte nance of slopes-- Maintenance and operation of one lock--. Transit service of all kinds___ Buildings of all kinds and water supply. General expense on the Isthmus . Sanitation and hospitals on the Isthmus__. Total $500,000 100, 000 500,000 250,000 100,000 100, 000 1,550,000 The maintenance of channels for a lock canal would probably cost less than for one at sea level, but the transit and other services would be about the same, but the expense for maintaining and operating the locks would be very much greater. If this expense were in proportion to the total lockage, then the addition for locks would probably reach $800,000, but if it should reach the sum of $159,000 for the tide lock, as suggested as possible by the minority, then the corresponding item for their six locks, each with 8 feet greater average lift, would mount up to $1,382,000 yearly. Applying one of the minority methods of calculating lock charges, based on a percentage of their cost, the total of the sea-level maintenance would reach $1,609,000 and the lock estimate would reach $2,732.000 yearly, a difference of over a million dollars a year. For the lock canal the estimate of expense of operation and maintenance by same method of computation would stand about as follows: Maintenance of channels, including dredging. Transit service. Buildings of all kinds, including water supply. Sanitation and quarantine on the Isthmus__ Total $400,000 800,000 500,000 250,000 100, 000 100, 000 2,150,000 It will be observed that nothing is included for the government of the Canal Zone in either estimate, as this is considered as one of the general expenses of the government. Its cost over and above local revenues may reach $100,000 a year after the canal is opened and will be the same for either type. It should not exceed this figure. The cost last year for Zone government, not including sanitation and hospitals, was After the construction work stops, the population diminishes, and the conditions become normal the Zone government will become a small item of expense. The Secretary goes on to say that either type of canal is vulnerable, the higher level the more so. Considerations of safety and protection, fixedness and stability should have weight almost paramount with the determination of type. All agree that the ideal canal is a wide and deep passage navigable at all times, day or night, at all seasons, and in all weathers by all sorts and sizes of vessels. The underwriters now ask no increased premium for insurance of vessels and cargoes traversing the Suez Canal over those customarily paid on ordinary marine risks by same vessels navigating the oceans. I think that is a very important consideration, gentlemen. If there is anything certain with respect to underwriting and insurance it is that the property or the life must pay the risk. If, carrying a policy in an insurance company, I go to the Tropics for a trip or to live there I have to pay an increased premium, because they consider it as an increased risk. If a vessel proposes to navigate dangerous seas, specially dangerous ones, where there are few light-houses and not much known about the hydrography, where there are uncharted rocks and that sort of thing, those vessels have to pay an increased premium. Now, here is this Suez Canal, asserted to be tortuous, dangerous, contracted. Should we not find an expression of that in the underwriters' risks? It seems to me as palpable as anything can be. But it is not there. There is no charge over and above the usual charge for vessels for general navigation for traversing the Suez Canal. I think there is no extra charge at the Soo; there is none at Manchester; there is none at the Kiel Canal. According to the underwriters, canal navigation is counted to be attended with the same risks-no greater, no less. Senator KNOX. How do you undertake to say, if a vessel is insured from Liverpool to Calcutta, that the risk in passing through the Suez Canal is not taken into consideration in charging for the insurance? General DAVIS. Because the underwriters' charge is the same- General DAVIS. By going around by the Cape of Good Hope or through the canal; yes. Ships of all sizes up to 560 feet long, 78 feet beam, and 27 feet draft are now passing regularly and uninterruptedly between the Mediterranean and the Red seas, and please take notice always that there are but 15 commercial vessels in existence and but some 20 or 30 war vessels existing with greater dimensions than the largest which has already passed Suez, and they have passed Suez in seventeen and one-half hours-that is to say, at the rate of 10 kilometers an hour, or 63 miles. There are now but seven commercial vessels under the American flag, and no naval vessels, unless built within a year, that can not now easily make the 161 miles transit at Suez in a maximum of eighteen hours. Yet the minimum width is but 108 feet and the depth but 31 feet, and it has six curves of less radius than the smallest proposed by the majority of the Board, for Panama. When the widening and deepening now in progress at Suez are completed that canal will be twice as long, somewhat narrower, and much shallower than the proposed sea-level American canal which is realizable in ten or twelve years at a cost of $250,000,000. It will afford convenient passage to the largest existing ship in a maximum of ten hours. Can a canal possessing such characteristics of capacity, stability, and safety be justly compared with one whose very existence depends upon questionable earth dams, and these to permit the impounding of water to feed probably inadequate and actually obstructive locks wherein the world's commerce and navies are to be lifted and lowered 170 feet, and all justified on the plea that the money cost will be a hundred millions or so less and the time of construction a very few years less than for the other which, for the present generation, will be a broad, open channel 150 to 200 feet wide, and for the next generation will be 300 feet wide, this increase to be attained at an added cost of perhaps $50,000,000 to $90,000,000? We may well concede that if we could have a sea-level canal 300 or 400 feet wide it would be preferable, but the time and cost of constructing it are in effect prohibitory. The Secretary says this in effect and explains that it is the arguments of the minority, showing the results of the use of locks, the greater cost in time and money if these devices be excluded, and the dangers of the narrow and contracted canal prism that have caused him to change his opinion and to abandon the idea of the sea-level type as the best form. It has been shown that the plans of the majority will insure to us a canal that is not dangerous, narrow, or contracted, for that remark does not apply to existing Suez, which is much longer, narrower, and shallower, and has more abrupt bends than the one proposed by the Board. It is the opinion of very able engineers that the cost in time, which the Secretary puts before money, will be but slightly more for the channel at ocean level than for the one upheld 85 feet above the oceans by structures that have been pronounced to be questionable, vulnerable, and obstructive by many of the world's ablest engineers. It is certain that the cost in money of the simple low-level channel, in which every existing and projected vessel would find convenient passage, will cost some tens of millions more than the complicated high-level structure, but the former will closely approach and ultimately result in the ideal, simple, natural waterway that the Secretary desires, while the latter will stand for the opposite until heroic measures are resorted to and the objectionable structures are removed, for the idea of transformability is eliminated by the minority. They have said that if a sea-level canal is demanded let it be built at once; if the lock canal is built, let it be built to serve for a very long time. Senator KITTREDGE. What have you in mind in the use of the words "heroic measures? General DAVIS. Cutting out these locks that will cost $35,000,000, and putting them on the scrap heap. Senator KITTREDGE. Would that involve delay or interference with traffic? General DAVIS. Possibly not. I think it would be possible to do it without any great delay-possibly. That word, however, has a very far-reaching signification. I think the minority say somewhere-or some of the gentlemen of the minority say somewhere-about constructing a third lock while the other two are being enlarged or being changed. I think I have read that somewhere in the testimony. The Spooner Act contemplates the use of borrowed money in meeting the cost of this great work, which is to serve the present and future generations. Our posterity will, as they should, redeem the obligations incurred, and they will be glad to do so if we show as the proceeds of the expenditure a monumental and complete work re quiring only moderate charges for maintenance, but if instead we should leave as the proceeds of our outlay, their inheritance, a structure that could only be transformed by its obliteration, then the financial aspect of the case to posterity would have a different meaning. We now know and all agree that the best isthmian canal should have certain physical features. Nature has interposed no obstacles to their attainment which are insuperable if measured by the capacity of our engineers and contractors and national resources. If the interest charge on the cost of the canal should reach six or seven millions and the tonnage and revenue should equal what Suez has, every canal bond could be redeemed in twenty-five years from the date of opening. Can a programme that involves the making of this canal in ten or twelve years at a cost of $250,000,000 be considered as justifying the observation that such conditions "are in effect prohibitory?" Of course the Secretary, in saying that in substance, was speaking of a canal three or four hundred feet wide. I haven't any idea at all that that three or four hundred foot wide channel will be demanded at first. The canal will serve its purpose for many years with the dimensions proposed. It will enable our commercial vessels and our navies to pass and repass with perfect facility, a naval fleet of battle ships and cruisers half a mile apart can go through that canal in constant procession and average six or seven hours in the canal. Of course we will clear the canal for such a thing as that and have nothing to obstruct it. If we had at Panama to-day the present Suez Canal, you gentlemen would not be in session to-day or this Board of Engineers would not have been appointed. The American nation would be delighted to have even that channel-a channel 108 feet wide at its narrowest place. Senator KNOX. What is the average width of the Suez Canal? General DAVIS. Its minimum width is 108 feet and a fraction. The canal has been widened throughout a considerable part of its extent to 118 feet. The management is now at work enlarging it throughout its whole extent to make it nearly the same width as it now is in the turning out places. The width in those places is 147.6 feet. When all those turning out places shall be connected together, as they will be in a few years, then the canal will be 147.6 feet wide througout, and it will be 31.4 feet deep. That is the ultimate depth to which they are looking at present. That will apply throughout the canal, except in two cases, and those are the two lakes. One 's Timsah, where the canal, coming up from the Mediterranean enters the lake and then turns a right angle almost immediately on a curve with a radius of about 4,000 feet; it turns over 90° at that ene spot, but the lake is deep, it is nearly deep enough to accommodate this proposed depth. They have dredged Lake Timsah, however, to get the full depth, and will have to dredge still more to get the 34 feet. That will not be difficult. There is a wide place-I suppose three or four thousand feet and the next place is Bitter Lake, which is 9.38 miles long, and it has two changes of direction in it, but it is lake navigation. It has resulted from the filling up of this ancient basin by the salt water from the Mediterranean or Red Sea. I think that answers your question. Senator KNOX. Yes; very fully. |