reasonable period of time, can be accommodated.

Now, the estimated saving in money alone by adopting the lock plan--that
is, on the original investment, to say nothing of accumulating interest
charges--would be at least $100,000,000. Granting all that is said in
favor of a sea-level canal, it is not apparent by any evidence produced
that such a canal would prove a material advantage over a lock canal.
All its assumed advantages are entirely offset by the vastly greater
cost and longer period of time necessary for construction, and I am
confident that they would not be considered for a moment if the canal
were built as a commercial enterprise. I do not think that they should
hold good where the canal is the work of the nation, because a vast sum
of money otherwise needed will be eventually sunk if the sea-level
project is adopted, and entirely upon the theory that if certain
conditions should arise _then_ it would be better to have a sea-level
than a lock canal. We have never before proceeded in national
undertakings upon such an assumption; we have never before, as far as I
know, deliberately disregarded every principle of economy in money and
time; we have never before in national projects attempted to conform to
merely theoretical ideas, but we have always adhered to practical, hard
common-sense notions of _what is best_ under the circumstances.

The majority of the committee attack the proposition that the proposed
lock canal will have "locks with dimensions far exceeding any that have
ever been made." If this principle were adopted in every other line of
human effort all advancement would come to an end--even the canal
enterprise itself--for, as it stands to-day, it far exceeds in magnitude
any corresponding effort ever made by this or any other nation. They say
that the proposed flight of three locks at Gatun would be objectionable
and unsafe, but we have the evidence of American engineers of the
highest standing, whose reputations are at stake, who are absolutely
confident that these locks can be constructed and operated with entire
safety. The committee say that "the entry through and exit from these
contiguous locks is attended with very great danger to the lock gates
and to the ships as well"; but if mere inherent danger of possible
accidents were an objection there would be no great steamships, no great
battleships, no great bridges and tunnels, no great undertakings of any
kind.

The committee point out t