rinciple of a sound national economy and commit
ourselves to an enormous waste of funds and to the imposition of
needless burdens upon the taxpayers of this nation and upon the commerce
of the world? At least $2,000,000 more per annum will be required in
additional interest charges, at least $100,000,000 more will be
necessary as an original investment. Do we fully realize what that
amount of money would do if applied to other national purposes and
projects?

I want to place on record my convictions and the reasons governing my
vote in favor of the minority report for a lock canal across the Isthmus
at Panama. I entered upon an investigation of the subject without
prejudice or bias and have examined the facts as they have been
presented and as they are a matter of record and of history. I have
heard or read with care the evidence as it has been presented by the
Board of Consulting Engineers and the vast amount of oral testimony
before the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Affairs. I am confident that
the minority judgment is the better and that it can be more relied upon,
because it is strictly in conformity with the entire history of the
Isthmian canal project. I am confident that the objections which have
been raised against the lock plan are an undue exaggeration of
difficulties such as are inherent in every great engineering project,
and which, I have not the slightest doubt, will be successfully solved
by American engineers, in the light of American experience, exactly as
similar difficulties have been solved in many other enterprises of great
magnitude.

I am not impressed with the reasons and arguments advanced by those who
favor the sea-level project, for they do not appeal to me as being
sound, and in some instances they come perilously near to being
engineering guesswork characteristic of the earlier enterprises of De
Lesseps. I cannot but think that bias and prejudice are largely
responsible for the judgment of foreign engineers so pronounced in favor
of a sea-level project. Furthermore, I am entirely convinced that the
judgment and experience of American engineers in favor of a lock canal
may be relied upon with entire confidence, and that such an enterprise
will be brought to a successful termination. I believe that in a
national undertaking of this kind, fraught with the gravest possible
political and commercial consequences, only the judgment of our own
people should govern, for the protection of our own