390


4


REPORT OF BOARD OF CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.


 Mr. HUNTER. I understood you did.
 Mr. WALLACE. No; I beg your pardon. What I meant to say was that the simpler the forms that you put the concrete in, the simpler and easier it is to do it.
 Mr. HUNTER. It does not matter much whether the ultimate form is to be simple or complex, it can be mixed by machinery.
 Mr. WALLACE. Yes; but if you have a complex form to put the concrete in you can not put as many yards in that form as you can if you have a more simple form. It is not the mixing. It does not take any more machinery or time to mix one than the other, but it is the working of the material in the mold after it is nixed that I refer to.
 Mr. HUNTER. The great bulk of the labor is in the mixing.
 Mr. WALLACE. Not if you do it by machinery.
 Mir. HUNTER. I mean if you mix it by hand.
 Mr. WALLACE. I would not consider mixing it by hand.
 The CHAIRMAN. What do you estimate as the comparative value of negro labor on the Isthmus with that of Italians, Hungarians, Poles, and negroes in the United States?
 Mr. WALLACE. The labor we used when I was on the work was about one-fourth as efficient as the trained labor I have been accustomed to use north of the Ohio River in the United States, and about one-half as efficient as the negro labor I have been accustomed to use in Louisiana and Mississippi.
 The negro labor on the Isthmus is now, or was last winter when I was there, at what you might call a maximum inefficiency, for this reason: The labor was used by foremen who did not understand how to use it, who were not familiar with their men, who were not familiar with their work. The amount of labor required there was so large that it was at a premium, and the foremen who had men at work for them were so anxious to keep them that they would put up with all sorts of insubordination. There was not the discipline that there will be when the work is properly officered and the men are trained, and when the men are there in sufficient numbers so that if they are discharged from the work they will not be able to get food to eat until they get another position. That is going to make a great deal of difference. It will materially raise the efficiency of that labor.
 I had one batch of 25 foremen sent me from the United States to superintend track work, and none of them had ever laid a rail of track in their lives. They did not know how to tamp a tie, and those men had to teach the negroes, who did not know how to do anything. Of course the result was an inefficient one. You could not expect anything else.
 But those matters will rectify themselves when the work gets under way. You can not expect to have a complete organization of 25,000 or 30,000 efficient men, an army of all classes of labor put into the field, and have it spring out of the earth and be formed in a month, or even in a year. It takes time. You have to have your troops seasoned and they have to be drilled and selected.
 Mr. GUP.RARD.. Up to what point on the Atlantic side do you think it would be advantageous to use dredges?
 Mr. TINCAUZER. From the Atlantic to any point on the canal.
 Mr. WALLACE. Well, at least as far as Bohio, and possibly .beyond.
 Mr. GUERARD. Do you think fuel oil can be used there to advantage in substitution for coal?
 Mr. WALLACE. I would prefer coal at $4 a ton to fuel oil. I do not know how it is in Europe, but in this country we have not yet used fuel oil long enough to determine accurately its effects on boilers, and so on.
 Mr. HUNTER. Nor have we, Mr. Wallace. That is just the difficulty.
 Mr. WALLACE. Another difficulty about fuel oil is that it has to be used with some degree of care, and requires a little higher order of supervision than with ordinary coal.
 Mr. WELCKER. And intelligence?
 Mr. WALLACE. Yes; more intelligence.