Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1907 — WORK AT PANAMA. [ARTICLE]

WORK AT PANAMA.

Great Ditch May Be Finished Before The Stipulated Time. There Is getting to be a certain monotony, which, however, is quite walcome, In news of work on the isthmian canal. Every month we may expect to get statistics of the work done in the month before, and It is practically a foregone conclusion that it will exceed the record of the month before that Thus last July a new record was made, with 1,068,776 cubic yards excavated. That, as some persons rashly assumed, was the high water mark, which never could be exceeded and which we could scarcely hope permanently to maintain. But in August that record was surpassed, with 1,247,404 yards, and people said that surely was the climax of efficiency. When another month came around, however, September bobbed up sererenly with the new record of 1,481,307 yards, capping the climax In fine style. And now here comes the October record of 1,844,471 yards, which puts, as Kipling says, the gilded dome on the cap of the climax. And October is the rainiest month of all the year! Just how much further this climax capping business Is to go it would be rash to estimate. Scarcely any degree of progress seems impossible or even Improbable under the present efficient and inspiring administration. Last month there was excavated about twice as much as in the whole year 1905, and more than half as much as In the whole year 1006. Moreover, this achievement has been made in the rainiest part of the year, in cuttings where the proportion of rock is increasing—there Is now 70 per cent of rock and only SO of earth—and without any commensurate Increase in the number of workmen employed. Thus this October record was made with a force of only 23,607 men on the canal all told, so that there was excavated an amount of rock and earth equal to more than 78 cubic yards for each employe, or a small fraction less than three cubic yards a day for each person employed in any capacity. That is efficiency such as was not dreamed of a year or two ago. When Mr. Wallace was chief engineer and was doing what seemed, and indeed was, fine work, there was talk about the necessity of employing from 60,000 to 75,000 men. One-third of that number is now doing the work tar more rapidly than it was supposed the whole great army could do It In the presence of such performances criticism Is disarmed and doubt Is put to shame. We may have to revise our forecasts of canal completion, but it will probably- ba In the direction of shortening the time required and of declaring the most optimistic estimates cl a few years ago to have been unduly cautious and diffident.