CHAPTER IV. 



THE NEW TRANSPORTATION 



THE building of the Panama Canal is the making of great 

 history. It is not only that it is a stupendous undertak- 

 ing, requiring the highest engineering skill to construct ; 

 neither does its importance lie in the mastery of its manifold 

 difficulties, nor in its cost in gold. Its significance inheres in 

 the influence which it will exert generally upon the commerce 

 of the world, and particularly upon American life in its total- 

 ity, intellectual, social and economic. 



Tremendous pressure was for years exerted to forestall 

 and- defeat the purpose of constructing this waterway by the 

 powerful interests which are engaged in our trans-continental 

 carrying trade. Daniel Webster called the movement for the 

 liberation of the African slave a "rub-a-dub dub" agitation, 

 but in spite of his or any other man's belittlement of the proj- 

 ect it went forward to a mighty consummation. The presi- 

 dent of a great railroad system, and other eminent gentlemen, 

 have sought with sneers to discredit the Panama project, but 

 it is being constructed and it will be completed, because the 

 tongue of the Nation has spoken it. What the effect of this 

 short all-water route from our eastern seaboard to the Pa- 

 cific and Trans-Pacific coast means is, in outline, plainly ap- 

 parent not only to our manufacturers, importers and ex- 

 porters, but to every farmer from Maine to the Mexican bor- 

 der, and from the Carolinas to California. It is to be doubted, 

 however, if any man at present fully foresees the breadth and 



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