PANAMA CANAL.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1819, 10 January 1913, Page 7

PANAMA CANAL.

EFFECT ON WESTERN STATES. SAN FRANCISCO'S PROSPECTS. (From A Correspondent). San Francisco, Dec. 11. The people of San Francisco and other Pacific Coast cities are just beginning to realise what a tremendous change in their circumstances and in their relationship to the rest of the world will be wrought by the opening of the Panama Canal, in little more than a year. Steamship rates from Europe, it is promised, will be but a fraction more to San Francisco than to New York. This fact alone will mean the diverting to this coast of a great proportion of the flood of European immigrants that pours into the United States every year. San Francisco expects to double its population in live years, making the confident prediction it will contain 1,000,000 people in 1920. Steamship interests from all the leading nations of Europe have been negotiating for the acquisition of docking facilities here. It is expected that all the companies operating from Great Britain, Germany, and the Mediterranean ports will extend their services to the Pacific Coast, and some of them have already definitely arranged to do so. At least one steamship company has announced the purpose of building a fleet of 20knot steamers for the Panama Canal service. This would bring San Francisco within 14 to lfi days of Northern Europe and Mediterranean ports, or only three or four days longer than it now takes by combined rail and steamship. The fares, of course, wouldj t« infinitely cheaper than those now necessitated by the long trans-continental railway journey. The lower charges will undoubtedly appeal to tourists and travellers for business or pleasure, but the great bulk of the travel of this coast via the new waterway will consist of immigrants.