gineer Harrod, familiar with river
hydraulics and levee construction, and of many others, is emphatically
to the contrary. There is not an American engineer of ability, nor an
American contractor of experience, who would not undertake to build the
proposed dam at Gatun and guarantee its safety and permanency without
any hesitation whatever. The alternative proposal of a dam at Gamboa
would be as objectionable upon much the same ground, and the dam there,
which is indispensable to the sea-level project, has also been
considered unsafe by some of the engineers. In all questions of this
kind the aggregate experience of mankind ought to have greater weight
than the abstract theories of individuals, and I am confident that our
engineers, who have so successfully solved problems of the greatest
magnitude in the reclamation projects of the far West and in the control
and regulation of the floods of the Mississippi River, will solve with
equal success similar problems at Panama.

The committee further says that the sea-level project contemplates the
removal of some 110,000,000 cubic yards of material, while the lock
canal would require the removal of only about half that quantity, or, in
other words, that there is a difference of some 57,000,000 cubic yards,
which, "to omit to take out ... is to confess our impotence, which is
not characteristic of the American people or their engineers or
contractors." By this method of reasoning a nation which can build a
battleship of 16,000 tons displacement is impotent if it can not build
one of twice that tonnage, and if this reason applies to quantity of
material, why not say that a nation which can dig a canal 150 feet wide
through a mountain some seven miles in length admits its impotence if it
can not dig one 300 feet wide, or 600 feet, if it should please to do
so? But why should it be less difficult or a declaration of impotency on
the part of our engineers to build a safe lock canal including a
satisfactory and safe controlling dam at Gatun? As I conceive the
problem, it is one of reasonable compromise, and while I do not question
the ability of American engineers and contractors to build a sea-level
canal, I am convinced by the facts in evidence that they can not do it
within the time and for the money assumed by the advocates of the
sea-level project.

This question of _time_ is of supreme importance. Ten years in a
nation's life is often a long space in national history. Many t