the sum of all which must be considered in estimating the cost of the work. The second item is the cost of maintenance. The third is the cost of operation. The fourth is the cost of transit, determined by the value of a ship's time consumed in passing through. That canal will be cheapest which costs the least not for any one of these items, but for all four of them added together. Now, the first item is a temporary one. It must be paid once for all. But the others are continuing and perpetual. They will be charges against the canal as long as it exists. If we were going to build a canal for temporary use or for a few years only, we might do well to select the plan that would cost least for original construction. But this is to be a canal for all time, and we must have regard for the fixed charges against it, which will continue for all time. It would be poor economy to build a canal for $200,000,000 which would cost $5,000,000 a year for maintenance and operation, when we could build one for $300,000,000 which would cost only $1,000,000 a year. The canal which at the beginning cost $100,000,000 the less would at the end of fifty years have cost $100,000,000 the more. (Of course, I do not mention these sums as even approximate estimates of yearly cost, but merely as illus trations.) We must, as Cartier said, "regard the future.” We and the world have already waited long for this canal, but that is no reason why we should now hurry ourselves into adopting an inferior and unsatisfactory plan. Better take a little more time and have the best possible plan for all time to come.

CHAPTER XVII

REORGANISATION

THE work thus begun was not destined long to continue under the same direction. As early as the summer of 1904, complaints arose of delay on the part of the Canal Commission in supplying urgent needs of the men on the Isthmus, of an excess of red tape, and of a general lack of flexibility, adaptiveness, and responsiveness. The members of the Com. mission spent little time at Panama. Their office was in Washington, and there they transacted their business. Requisitions for supplies, even for things urgently needed in the hospitals and by the sanitary squad, in cases where every hour was precious, had to be sent to Washington, deliberated upon by the Commissioners, approved or rejected with little or no knowledge of the circumstances, and then, if approved, advertised, awarded, and finally filled weeks or months after date. In such fashion it took several months to get an X-ray apparatus for the Ancon hospital. It took many weeks to get mosquito-netting for the windows of the canal office building, and then not enough was supplied; and in the mean time some of the most valuable men of the staff were prostrated by the bites of malarial mosquitoes. The chief sanitary officer wanted netting for all the official buildings in the Canal Zone. This request was refused as extravagant and unnecessary. Then he asked for at least enough to inclose the verandas of the hospitals. This, too, was refused, and he was told that there was no need of inclosing more than half the verandas, and that even then a part of the space should be solidly boarded up instead of screened! In June, 1904, Colonel Gorgas, Mr. Wallace, and others urged the immediate assumption of sanitary control over the cities of Panama and Colon, in order to prevent an out

break of yellow fever, but the Commission would not permit this until some months thereafter, when the dreaded disease had appeared and was threatening to become epidemic. The need of a proper water supply for Panama was urgent. Mr. Wallace pushed the work of constructing a reservoir and digging ditches for the iron conduit pipe, and expected and promised to have the water turned on in the city by the end of 1904. This promise he could and would have fulfilled had his requisition for iron piping been promptly granted. But it was not. Months passed, and no pipe came. Mr. Wallace cabled to Washington, urging that it be sent, and the only answer was a reminder that "cabling cost money" -practically a reprimand for wasting money on cable tolls! Finally, in February, 1905, small quantities of pipe began to reach the Isthmus, and the water was turned on in Panama on July 4, six months later than it should have been. It was also complained, and truly, that the workmen on the canal were ill-housed, and ill-fed, at extortionate prices.

The effect of such a policy, partly exasperating and partly discouraging upon the men at the front, who were waging a life-and-death war with pestilences, may be imagined. There was, no doubt, an explanation of it, if not an excuse or a justification. The Commissioners were mindful of the profligacy and corruption which had run riot in De Lesseps's time, and they were determined to avoid all possibility of a repetition of it. But in fulfilling that praiseworthy resolution they ran into the opposite extreme. It became evident, therefore, that a radical reorganisation of affairs must be made. The Commissioners must either spend most of their time on the Isthmus, where they would be constantly in touch with the work and would appreciate its needs, or they must give place to others who would do so. The President became convinced of this necessity soon after Secretary Taft's return to Washington from Panama in December, 1904, and asked Congress to enact legislation to that end. In a message on January 13, transmitting to Congress a letter of Secretary Taft's upon the subject, he suggested that

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authority should be given to him to form a new Commission of five, or, better still, of only three members. The desirability of such a change was widely recognised. There was no disposition to condemn the existing Commission, or to belittle its achievements. It had done a most valuable and important work. But now its work was done. The whole enterprise was entering a new stage. Diplomacy, and the preliminary negotiations and tentative explorations, were to be laid aside for the most intense and active execution. The Commissioners had been well adapted to the former tasks. They were, most of them, not suited to the latter. The old system of organisation and procedure had served the old purposes well-with such exceptions as I have noted. They would not and could not serve the new purposes. There must be a less complicated, more flexible, and more direct administration.

Already, indeed, a week before this message of the President's, acting upon knowledge of what the President and the Secretary of War had in mind, proposals of reorganisation had been made in Congress. One was for the abolition of the existing Commission and the substitution of a new one consisting of only three members, all engineers-not a desirable thing, for some other than purely engineering ability was needed. Another was for the simple abolition of the Commission; and the bestowal upon the President of power to replace it in any manner he saw fit. These proposals were made in the House of Representatives, and after some debate that body enacted a bill in accord with the President's views. The Senate, however, failed to pass it. Then the President decided to take matters into his own hands. He could not change the Commission from one of seven members to one of only three, as he wished, but he could practically compel the existing Commissioners to resign, and he could fill their places with new men, and organise the new Commission on a new plan. This was what he did.

Already one of the Commissioners, Colonel Hecker, had resigned, on November 18, 1904. In March, 1905, the other

Commissioners also resigned, and on April 1 a new Com mission was appointed, consisting of Theodore P. Shonts, of Illinois, a civil engineer and railroad president; Charles E. Magoon, of Nebraska, a distinguished jurist, who had been general legal counsel to the old Commission and, before that, law officer of the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department; John F. Wallace, a civil engineer, who had been Chief Engineer under the old Commission, and who had had much experience in railroad and canal work; Mordecai T. Endicott, a Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy on the retired list, who had been Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks in the Navy Department, and had been a civil engineer before entering the Navy; Peter C. Hains, a BrigadierGeneral of the United States Army on the retired list, who had been educated at West Point, had served with distinction in the Civil War, and had been identified with many impor tant harbour works and other engineering undertakings of the Government; Oswald H. Ernst, a Colonel in the United States Army, who had been educated at West Point and had served with distinction in the Engineering Corps; and Benjamin M. Harrod, of Louisiana, an accomplished civil engineer, who had been a member of the former Canal Commission. Thus all the members of the new Commission were engineers save one, Judge Magoon, and he was meant for administrative and diplomatic work as Governor of the Canal Zone and also as United States Minister to Panama. Mr. Shonts was made Chairman of the Commission, with headquarters in Washington, and Mr. Magoon was made Governor of the Zone, and Mr. Wallace was made Chief Engineer, with their offices at Panama. These three formed an Executive Committee, with general charge of the work; the other members of the Commission acting chiefly in an advisory capacity. The President embodied the suggestions of Secretary Taft in a detailed bill of instructions and rules for the guidance of the Commission, and the new Commissioners promptly entered upon their duties.

The President ordered that the Commission should meet at