REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


means of a series of locks, each of which must be over 1,000 feet in length by 100 feet in width, which would form steps through which these ponderous ironclads, so difficult to handle under the most favorable circumstances, would be lifted out of one ocean in order that they might be lowered into another. Having regard to this important consideration, having regard to the safety of navigation in the everyday working of the canal, I am going to vote for the sea-level plan.
 Mr. RIPLEY. Mr. Chairman, the considerations governing my choice as to the type of canal are based on the reasons stated by Mr. Noble, and also the further one that, aside from the cost of operating and maintaining the canal, the lock canal which I prefer will provide for a navigation the limit of which will not be reached in a number of years, probably forty to seventy-five years, so that the people of the United States will not soon be called upon to make additional expenditures for improving the canal; whereas for a sea-level canal it is quite probable that within a short time, possibly fifteen to twenty-five years, a widening will be necessary which will cost many millions of dollars.
 Mr. PARSONS. Mr. Chairman, in deciding between the two -types of canal that are before the Board I am going to be governed in my vote by what seems to be proper for the Government of this country to do. If this were a commercial enterprise for a private company I should vote for a lock canal, as I believe a lock canal can be built for less money and probably in less time, consequently giving a better chance for profit on the enterprise, and will also answer the practical requirements of commerce for some years to come.
 But that is not the question, it seems to me, which is before this Board. We are to adopt a project for all time to come, a work of the greatest constructive magnitude that has ever been undertaken, and for at least one of the most powerful governments in the world.
 The plan, therefore, should be of the broadest and largest possible type which we can conceive. The question whether it is to take a few years more or less seems to me to be one of very small consequence. Nor is the question of the additional money required, whether that money be $50,000,000, $75,000,000, or even $100,000,000, one of importance, as there is to be an adequate return.
 We.have heard a good deal in the discussions of the Board as regards the danger with locks. and of the accidents that have occurred in the Manchester and "Soo" canals. Similar accidents have occurred in the Welland and other canals. So far those accidents have, by great good fortune, been limited to accidents and have escaped being disasters. They were all accidents, however, with locks of comparatively small size. With locks of the size now contemplated the results would have been more serious.
 It is not the danger to the ship itself that I have in mind, because the difference in insurance risks that would be charged to a vessel, whether she were going through one type of canal or the other, would probably not be very much, but I have in mind the danger to the canal. If at one of these big locks an accident should happen such as has happened at other locks, and as will happen here, and a ship should go plunging through and carry away the safety gates and guard gates and every other mechanical device of protection, releasing the lake of water that lies behind those locks, the section of the canal between that lock and the ocean terminus would be so destroyed that it would take anywhere from one to five years to put it back in service again. The terminal port itself would be gone, the canal would be out of use, the world's traffic would be deranged, and the difference in cost between the two types would be wiped out in a few seconds of time. That risk a great government can not be justified in taking.
 In building the great railways or other great enterprises of the world there is scarcely a case where the projectors have overshot the mark. They have always regretted afterwards that they did not build to a larger size than that first projected, and I am sure that is going to be true here. The canal should be built at once at sea level.
 Mr. BURR. Mr. Chairman, I shall take this opportunity to make no argument, but simply to state briefly some of the considerations which induce me to cast my vote for the resolution.
 I have passed through much the same progressive conditions of mind as have Mr. Hunter and others who have been brought to regard the sea-level plan as a proper one for a ship waterway


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