INVENTIONS AT PANAMA. i6i 



dynamite, we might query whether, if a still stronger explosive were 

 employed, the rock might not be reduced to pebbles or sand. In this 

 state it might be handled by the buckets of excavators, and the slower 

 operation of cranes be avoided. We might speculate further, whether 

 the explosives said to have been recently invented in France and Ger- 

 many, or like substances, might not be of service. If, as is under- 

 stood, the governments which possess them desire to keep the process 

 of manufacture secret, some difficulty might be experienced in procur- 

 ing them. But civilization might be the gainer if such inventions 

 were used to blast a thoroughfare at Panama instead of to enhance 

 the rapidity with which human slaughter is carried on.* 



Of all writers who have interested themselves in the Panama Canal 

 no one has given the amount of attention to inventions bestowed by 

 Mr. Bigelow in his report to the New York Chamber of Commerce. 

 "VYe can not do better than give his views upon this topic. These, 

 again, may serve to introduce further particulars as to the machinery 

 employed. After observing that the wages of unskilled labor when 

 work was begun were ninety cents a day, and have since advanced to 

 a minimum of $1.75, and that even at this price the company does not 

 readily get the labor needed, f he says : 



The question then arises, Must the work be prosecuted under the present 

 conditions ? 



" When the Jews were required to make brick without straw, Moses came. 

 May not the exigency, like child-bearing, work its own cure ? 



In all ages and nations, when manual labor has become too costly to do 

 the work for which there was a universal or even a general need, a substitute 

 for it has been promptly devised. It was to the need of economizing muscular 

 labor that we owe the hoe, the wheelbarrow, and the plow. Had laborers' 

 wages never risen above a shilling a day, we should never have heard of 

 McCormick's reaper, or of Howe's and Singer's sewing-machines. It is equally 

 certain that the portion of our planet which lies under the tropics will never 

 play the part in human history to which its territorial extent and productive 

 power entitle it, until our present assortment of mechanical substitutes for 

 muscular power has been very largely increased. Machines do not mind malaria ; 

 they are not poisoned by marshy water; they thrive on the black- vomit; they 

 have no fear of chills or sunstrokes ; and, what is more, they are never tired, and 

 will work all the days and nights of their natural lives without interruption, if 

 properly fed and cared for. 



That is the class of operatives for out of-door work in the tropics, and it 

 is to them that M. de Lesseps must, and I presume does, look for an early com- 

 pletion of his canal ; for it is in that direction his own remarkable experience 



* No secret seems to attach to the composition of a new explosive, bellite, to which 

 an article is devoted in the " Scientific American," May 14, 1 887. This explosive, it is 

 stated, has been found more effective in quarries than any nitro-glycerine compound. 



f One of the chief difficulties of the company at present is getting an adequate labor- 

 supply. In the "Canal Bulletin," June 16, 1887, the fact is noticed that at several 

 points part of the machinery provided was lying idle, owing to this lack. Several hun- 

 dred Chinese had arrived but recently, and it was hoped that their labor would prove as 

 effective as that of the Chinese employed upon the Panama Railroad forty years since. 



VOL. XXXII. — 11 



