Financial Position at Panama.

Progress, Volume III, Issue 5, 1 March 1908, Page 178

Financial Position at Panama.

Up to March, 1907, the sum appropriated by Congress was sixteen millions sterling, including one million loaned to the Panama Railway Company. The sum expended up to June, 1907 (excluding eight millions paid to the French company and two to the Republic of Panama) was nine and threequarter millions, so that a third of the total estimate of twenty-eight millions sterling has already been reached. Of the amount expended, about six millions went on actual canal construction, two millions on auxiliary engineering works, one million one hundred

thousand on sanitation, and nearly half a million on civil administration. A nonofficial estimate of the expenditure of the year, July, 1907, is not far short of seven millions, but even putting it at six millions per annum it will not take long to exhaust the eighteen millions left out of the original estimate sanctioned by Congress. Moreover, no adeaaate provision has ever been made for compensation for the immense area to be flooded by the great lake which forms part of the present scheme or for the increased size of the locks. The financial aspect of the case is not, however, a serious consideration for a country as wealthy as the United States,

but there is even at this stage, abundant evidence that the estimate for the present scheme was much too sanguine."

The chemical engine, as we call it, is merely a tank filled with soda water, into which sulphuric acid is injected when it is needed for use. It seldom carries over 100 gallons of the liquid, but its action on a fire is so pronounced that it has become a part of every modern fire department, and in many villages is the only piece of fire apparatus in service.