d govern in private affairs
if the canal construction were a business enterprise and involved the
risk of private capital. When we find a man like Mr. Harrod, who for
many years has been in charge of levee construction in Louisiana,
thoroughly familiar with the theory and practice of river and flood
control, express himself in favor of the lock project and in opposition
to the sea-level canal, I hold that we may with entire confidence accept
his judgment as a governing principle in arriving at a final decision
respecting the type of the canal to be finally fixed by the Congress.

And, going back to the minority report of the Board of Consulting
Engineers, we find that Mr. Joseph Ripley, the general superintendent at
present in charge of the "Soo" Canal, and Mr. Isham Randolph, chief
engineer of the sanitary district of Chicago, and thoroughly familiar
with canal construction and management, both American engineers of much
experience and high standing, pronounce themselves in favor of a lock
canal. When confronted by these facts, I for one would rely upon
American engineers, American conviction and American experience, and
accept the lock-canal proposition.

In this matter, as in all other practical problems, we may safely take
the business point of view, and calculate without bias or prejudice the
respective advantages and disadvantages; and the more thorough the
method of reasoning and logic applied to the canal problem the more
emphatic and incontrovertible the conclusion that the Congress should
decide in favor of a plan which will give us a navigable waterway across
the Isthmus within a measurable distance of time and with a reasonable
expenditure of money, as opposed to a visionary theory of an ideal canal
which may ultimately be constructed, possibly for the exclusive benefit
of future generations, but at an enormous waste of money, time, and
opportunity. I do not think we want to repeat at this late stage of the
canal problem the fatal error of De Lesseps, who, when he had the
opportunity in 1879 to make a choice of a practical waterway, being
influenced by his great success at Suez, upon the most fragmentary
evidence and in the absence of definite knowledge of actual conditions,
decided beforehand in favor of a sea-level canal. It was largely his
bias and prejudice which proved fatal to the enterprise and to himself.

I may recall that the so-called "international congress of 1879" was a
mere subterfuge; that