STEAM SHOVELS REMOVING CUCARACHA SLIDE 



This particular slide, one of the many, completely filled the canal. The flat cars are standing 

 on the west bank of the canal, 70 feet above the bottom of the cut 



We would either have been forced to 

 acknowledge a humiliating defeat or to 

 have started at this late date to trans- 

 form the sea-level canal that was to have 

 been into a lock canal such as we have 

 now. It is very easy to. imagine that, 

 with a sea-level canal fiasco staring them 

 in the face, the American people might 

 not have been willing to accept the lock 

 canal, with its Gatum Dam and its great 

 locks, and there would have been no 

 canal in the end. 



WHY A SEA-EEVEE CANAE WAS IMPOSSIBLE 



Let us consider for a moment, in view 

 of what actual work has proven, how 

 much more excavation would be required 

 to bring the present cut to sea-level. We 

 have seen that the slides have grown 

 vastly more serious as the cut has deep- 

 ened. 



During my last trip to the Isthmus 

 I asked every engineer I met, from Colo- 

 nel Goethals down, to estimate for me, 



roughly, how much more material would 

 have to be removed from the cut to bring 

 it to sea-level. Not one of them would 

 risk a prediction, but all agreed that it 

 would be more than cross-section meas- 

 urements plus the slide experience of 

 the fiscal year 191 3 would indicate. 



Such a cross-section measurement, 

 would involve about 50 million cubic 

 yards. Even if the slides were no worse 

 than they were in 19 13, the extra exca- 

 vation which would be required to con- 

 vert the present cut into a sea-level cut 

 would amount to approximately 75 mil- 

 lion cubic yards. 



The probabilities, therefore, are, in the 

 light of experience, that it would require 

 the removal of as much more material 

 as has been taken out to make a sea-level 

 cut; in other words, that from the van- 

 tage point at which we stand today we 

 might fairly conclude that a sea-level 

 Culebra Cut would have required the ex- 

 cavation of 210 million cubic yards of 



151 



