The Failure of the Century

Southland Times, Issue 15186, 17 March 1902, Page 4

The Failure of the Century

The curtain recently fell, we may be humanly certain, over one of the greatest catastrophes of industry that the world has | ever seen. We have heard tbe last, no doubt, of the Panama Canal, the great dream which was one day to come true, and do for the West what the Suez Canal has done for the East. Surely there is net on earth a more lively place than the Republic of Colombia, where revolutions come like clock ticks, and Presidents ore locked up in boxes and carried away. Yet it is here in an environment of wild life such as can hardly be eclipsed, that a great industry lies stagnant, the most amazing example of wasted wealth and labour of genius to be found in the modern world. Fifty millions of money lie in the bed of the unfinished Panama Canal, and hardly a penny of it, it is safe to say, can come back. In all the world, says Mr Froude, there is not concentrated in any single spot "so much swindling and villainy, co much foul disease, such a hideous dung-heap of moral and physical abomination" as in Panama. He might' have added, had he lived to-day, that in all the world there is no place which conjures up such a picture of hopes shattered, of fortunes lost, of lives wasted, of plans wrecked — such a pictare of dazzling prospects and dismal realities — as Panama. The world bad some excuse for believing in tbe Panama Canal. It was the dream of the man who built the Suez Canal, and Ferdinand Be Lesseps believed that for twenty millions sterling he could lay a waterway for the biggest Bhips to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Twenty yeara ■have passed since the first man put his spade in the earth to dig out the canal bed, and every movement of a muscle since then has added {^disaster and failure. 15,000 men have been at work at once,and the wealth of 50 millionaires has been squandered : but there are still a hundred million cubic yards of material to remove before the sea can rush from ocean to ocean, and according to one authority the fifty millions already spent would have to be doubled before the work could be finished. Fire, earthquake, flood, and revolution checked the progress of the canal in the early years of the undertaking, but the promoters of the scheme were not to be discouraged. A mushroom town for workmen sprang up, the director-general built himself two houses at a coat of £50,000, drew his salary of £10,000 a year, and travelled in an £8000 Pullman car. It was -evident that the canalmakers had gone to Panama to stay. One of them spent £3000 of the company's money on a pigeon house, another £8000 on a bath house. £100,000 went in stables, £40,000 in carriages and horses, a million and a-half in hospitals, and rather more in encampments ; a million in buildings and houses ; a million on the pharmaceutical staff; nearly two millions on offices in New York, Paris, and Panama ; £400,000 on a commission to report progress ; and half a million on police. The cost of the work itself was appalling. The excavation of the first fourteen million cubic feet absorbed eleven millions, inclusive of the cost of material, and the purchase of the Panama railway involved nearly four | millions. So the treasure was heaped up, i the treasure which to-day lies in rusty piles, half buried in mud, too worthless to pay to take it away as old metal. But all is not gold that gUtters, and all the treasure in the world could not save the Panama Canal. The hand of the great engineer had lost its mapiA Xn I»iq original plan 3^- De Xiesseps made no provision for a tidal basin, yet without it tho canal could not have been built, and the basin would have cost six millions sterling. The foundations of the canal bed, too, were found to be unsafe after three years' work, a long ledge of volcanic rock being discovered by chance under an apparently peaceful swamp. Seven different estimates were given of the cost, varying from 500 million francs to 1654 millions ; and seven different dates were fixed for its completion, varying from the autnmn of 1887 to the summer of 1890. But the dates came and went, and still tbe canal was unfinished. The company dissolved and rose again, new capital was called up. Parliaments discussed the works, the great engineer revived the waning faith of his supporters, but to no purpose. From first to last Panama spelt failure. How the end came all the world knows. The Panama trial followed the Panama failure, and Ferdinand De Lesseps, an old man, broken, cousin of an Empress who had shared the Thome of France, died in disgrace. Condemned to a year's imprisonment, his glory passed from nun at the last. His crime was the crime of a man who gave to the world an idea too vast for one man to work out alone, and trusted too implicitly in others. Ten thousand men shared bis work with him, and posterity will charge him with no more heinous crime than that of an enthusiasm which knew no bounds, and bred a recklessness from which a less ardent man would have been free. He lived for two ideas — the Suez and the Panama Canals — and he balanced success with failure. But who does not? At least he gave the world two ideas, and saved, by one of them, three thousand miles on the voyage to India. It is no mean legacy to mankind, and the glory of Ferdinand De .Lesseps will live when his fall has been forgotten.—" A.M,'\ in St. James's Gazette.