Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1894 — THE GREAT CHICAGO DRAINAGE CANAL. [ARTICLE]

THE GREAT CHICAGO DRAINAGE CANAL.

Ancient potentates were accustomed to draft into their service all the laboring men required to carry forward any great undertaking, and their services were demanded without recompense save for the food required to maintain them while thus engaged. The pyramids,.the sphinx, and the ancient temples and palaces of Egypt, the gigantic ruins of which still remain mute witnesses to the despot's power, all were carved and hewn, transported and erected, by servile slaves whose lives and fortunes and comfort and welfare were of no more consequence to their imperial maste»‘ than the herds and flocks —nor, indeed, as much, for flocks and herds brought revenue and wealth,, and divinity was supposed to abide with the sacred bull that might be found in any herd by superstitious priests. Great national undertakings and enterprises requiring vast numbers of men to carry to completion are therefore in our day more difficult to organize and still harder to carry to completion. The-Pacific railroads and the Suez canal are conspicuous examples of success —monuments to the enterprise of mind and capital. Thq Panama canal is quite as conspicuous an example of failure, a gigantic illustration of the couplet, “The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley.” Had De Lesseps possessed the power of a Pharaoh along with his own intellect there would have been no failure on the Isthmus, and the scandal that engulfed so many French statesmen in a sea of disgrace would never have been the sad result of all his plots and plans. In this line, jt will surprise many people to be told that through all these times of financial depression ten thousand men have been constantly employed on the great canal that is building to connect Lake Michigan with the Gulf of Mexico. This enterprise is second in magnitude and importance to no canal in the world. The canal is larger than any other, and when completed will float vessels drawing fourteen feet of water, effectually solve the problem of the drainage of Chicago, and add yet another triumph to Chicago enterprise and another factor that will prove of inestimable value to that city in retaining its present ascendency in the commercial world.