The Panama Canal

A canal which was built primarily for drainage purposes, but which seems destined to fill an important place as a traffic-carrying waterway, is the Chicago Drainage Canal connecting Lake Michigan at Chicago with the Illinois River at Lockport—a distance of 34 miles. It was built for the purpose of reversing the movement of water in the Chicago River and preventing the pollution of Lake Michigan. The sewage of the city now goes to the faraway Mississippi instead of the Lakes. The minimum depth of the canal is 22 feet, and its bottom width 160 feet. To complete the project the excavation of nearly 44,000,000 yards of material was required—enough, if deposited in Lake Michigan in 40 feet of water, to form an island a mile square with a surface 12 feet above the water. The city of Chicago and the State of Illinois have agreed to turn this canal over to the United States Government, if it will deepen the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to 14 feet between Lockport and St. Louis. This would give a complete water connection from upper Mississippi River points to Lake Michigan, and open up a highway to the Gulf of Mexico. The estimated cost of this project is $25,000,000.

The completion of the Panama Canal will probably result in an unprecedented activity in the development of inland waterways in the United States. The new markets which it will open up to American products and the old markets it will stimulate and extend, will demand large additional facilities for getting the products of the American farm and factory to the seaboard. Already preparations for capitalizing the commercial opportunities which the opening of the canal will afford, are being made in various parts of the country.

The Erie Canal, connecting Buffalo and Albany and giving the Great Lakes a water outlet at New York, is being widened and deepened at an expense of $101,000,000. The propaganda of the American Rivers and Harbors Congress, looking to the appropriation of $500,000,000 to be spent in a systematic program of inland waterway development, is meeting with encouragement in every part of the country, and it is the expectation of those who believe that the Government should commit itself to such a program, that within 25 years the stimulus to waterway development given by the opening of the Panama Canal, will give to the United States one of the finest systems of inland waterways in the world.

CHAPTER XXX

Of course, the United States will be the first to realize the great benefits of the canal. It will double the efficiency of the American Navy by permitting it to concentrate its forces on either ocean in shorter time, by weeks, than can be done by any other nation; consequently, it will add to American military prestige throughout the world. The benefits immediately accruing to the people of the United States will be as great in a commercial way as in military advantage. As the capture of Constantinople caused the up-building of many notable regions through the transformation of international trade routes, so will the completion of the Panama Canal open up new markets and new opportunities to the Mississippi Valley, the world's greatest granary. Its grain and meat products, loading by way of Gulf ports, can go to the ends of the earth with but little outlay for expensive rail transportation. It is even probable that the great awakening incident to the opening of the canal, may hasten the day when the Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway will be an accomplished fact and when ships may load in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Paul, and Minneapolis and sail directly to the ports of the world, thus beginning an era of commercial development surpassing even the wonderful growth of the half century just closed.

Pittsburgh may then be able to send its tremendous output of manufactures to all parts of the world without transhipment; Kansas City will feel the stimulus of the new waterway; and the Pacific coast, long cut off from the eastern section of the United States by high mountain barriers that have been only partially overcome by railroads, will find its great resources within marketable distance of the Eastern States.

Canada, too, will feel the stimulus of the canal. No longer will its great crops have to find their slow outlet over railroads that must cross the backbone of a continent, but, pursuing the avenues of least resistance, they may move to all parts of the world by way of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

South America will greatly benefit by the completion of the canal. Already its west coast countries and cities are getting ready for the boom of business that is to follow. Brought thousands of miles nearer to all western trade centers—so close that their raw products and American manufactured products can be exchanged to advantage—there will be a growth of trade whose prospect already has awakened the lethargic South American to the possibilities ahead.

These possibilities well may be considered by the business men of the United States. To-day North America buys a large percentage of the products of South America; but, when the South Americans have money to spare, they spend only $1 out of $8 in North America—the other $7 goes to Europe. The American exporter will find himself quickened by the history-making change the canal will produce and, if he goes at it in earnest, he will be in a position to reverse the present situation and get $7 of South American trade where Europe gets only $1.

Australia and New Zealand will experience, perhaps, a greater change in the trade routes than any other countries outside of the Americas. The Australian commerce now is largely carried by way of Suez. The opening of the Panama Canal will place New Zealand 1,200 miles nearer to London than it is by way of Suez, and the eastern ports of Australia will be as near to England by way of Panama as by Suez. All Australasian ports will be brought several thousand miles closer to the Atlantic ports of the United States than they are to-day. No one who has heard an Australasian complain of the long delays and the excessive freight rates that intervene between him and his American shoes, can doubt that the closer proximity of American markets will be welcomed in that faraway land under the southern cross. Sydney will be 4,000 miles nearer to New York through the Panama Canal, and 5,500 miles nearer to New Orleans and Galveston.

The transcontinental tonnage now handled by the railroads, which ultimately will go by the canal, aggregates 3,000,000 tons a year. The seaboard sections of the United States, of course, will benefit more largely than interior points, for the reason that interior points will have to take a combined rail-and-water route. This will involve railroad transportation and transhipment of cargo, also rehandling charges. After the canal is opened it is probable that the railroads will prefer to supply the intermountain States directly from eastern sources, instead of maintaining the existing policy of giving low rates to Pacific coast cities, so as to give them dominance over the shipping business of the intermountain region. The total coast-to-coast traffic of the railroads is said to approximate one-fifth of the entire traffic carried across the Rocky Mountains. Only one-third of the through traffic of the transcontinental lines from the East to the West originates east of a line drawn through Buffalo and Pittsburgh. It is this third of the westward business that will be affected mainly by the operation of the canal.

The principal effect the Panama Canal will have in the readjustment of the trade map of the world is not, perhaps, as much in changing existing routes as in creating new avenues of business. In every region where there is promise of unusual benefit by reason of the opening of the Panama Canal, an effort is being made to capitalize the advantages to be derived therefrom. The west coast of South America feels the stimulus of suddenly being brought thousands of miles closer to the best markets of the world, and anyone who travels down the coast from Panama may see at every port signs of a determination to reap full advantage of the new opportunities.

Even Guayaquil, a city that for years has been a hissing and a byword to the masters of all ships plying up and down the west coast because of its absolute indifference to all requirements of sanitation, has prepared for a campaign of cleaning-up, in order that it may become a port of call for all the ships passing that way. Heretofore, masters of ships, in order to comply with quarantine regulations elsewhere, have given it a wide berth whenever possible.

Chile, Peru, and Ecuador—all three have caught the spirit of the new era which a completed canal proclaims, and are striving to set their houses in order for the quickened times they see ahead. With the Central American Republics it is the same. Handicapped as they are by revolutions that sap their life-blood, or dominated by rulers who have no other object in governing the people than to exploit them, these countries still hope for much from the canal, and new activities are beginning to spring up in every one of them.

It is not improbable that the canal will play an important part in transforming the economic situation of the world during the generations immediately ahead of us. One needs only to study the distribution of humanity over the countries of the earth to find how unevenly the population is scattered, and to learn what great tides of immigration will have to flow westward to establish the equilibrium of population, which some day is bound to come. When Asia has a population of 50 per square mile and Europe a population of 100 a square mile, while North America has 15 and South America has 7, it is apparent that the future holds great changes in store. The potential development of the two Americas challenges the imagination. South America, with its virgin soil all but untouched, can support a population half as dense as that of Europe. This means that it can make room for 300,000,000 immigrants. Likewise, it is fair to assume that North America, with its up-to-date methods of agriculture, industry, and commerce, can support a population as dense as that of Asia with its primitive methods of manufacture and agriculture. This means that North America has room to accommodate 300,000,000 souls. In other words, room still remains for 600,000,000 persons on the continents which the Panama Canal divides. When the day comes, as it seems certain that it will, that the Americas reach their full growth, even the Panama Canal, larger by far than any other artificial waterway in the world, will be much too small to accommodate the traffic which naturally would pass its way.

The foreign trade of the United States with its 90,000,000 of population, aggregates 60,000,000 tons a year. Assuming that foreign trade would grow in the same proportion as population, it will be seen that the foreign trade of the two Americas at a time when the population of South America becomes half as dense as that of Europe, and that of North America half as dense as that of Asia, will approximate 500,000,000 tons. Assuming further that only one-fifth of this would pass through the canal, the American commerce alone would exceed its capacity, leaving all the trade between the Orient and eastern Europe to be taken care of by future enlargements.

More immediate, however, will be the realization of the prophecy of William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, that the Pacific is destined to become the chief theater of the world's events. As the population of the earth stands to-day, more than half of all the people who inhabit the globe dwell on lands which drain into this greatest of oceans. Yet, in spite of that fact, the trade that sweeps over the Pacific is but small in comparison with that which traverses the Atlantic. Where a thousand funnels darken the trade routes of the Atlantic, a few hundred are seen on the Pacific.

But in Japan one may find an example of the possibilities of the Pacific in the years to come. When China, with its 400,000,000 people, awakens as Japan has awakened, and builds up an international trade in proportion to that of Japan, it will send a commerce across the seas unprecedented in volume. When it buys and sells as Japan buys and sells, the waters of the Orient will vie with those of the Occident in the size of their fleets of commerce.

The opening of the Panama Canal promises to be one of the factors in hastening the day when the Orient will become as progressive as the Occident, and when sleeping nations will arise from their lethargy and contribute uncounted millions of tons of traffic to the Pacific Ocean, making it a chief theater of commerce as well as of world events.

In our own country the course of empire has been sweeping toward the Pacific. Where once the center of most things lay east of the Mississippi River, now we find its agriculture, its mining industries, and its commercial activities gradually moving westward. The center of cotton production, once in those States celebrated in the melodies of the Southern plantation, has moved westward and to-day in Texas, Oklahoma, and even Southern California, cotton is grown in a way which shows that King Cotton has caught the spirit of the age and is extending his territories westward toward the Pacific. And all of this means a growing business and an expanding traffic through the Panama Canal.

On the Atlantic side there are signs without number that many nations will be up and doing in the reformation of the commercial map of the world. The islands of the Caribbean form a screen around the Atlantic end of the canal, and the majority of them are British possessions. Many of their cities will be situated upon the new international trade routes that will be called into being by the opening of the Panama Canal. At Kingston, Jamaica, great improvements are projected, coaling stations are planned, and other steps are being taken which will enable the British Government to reap what advantage it can from the construction of the canal. With its splendid diversity of climate, brought about by the wide range of elevated land, the fruits of the temperate zones may be grown, as well as those of the Tropics, and, as John Foster Fraser expresses it, Jamaica may become the orchard of Great Britain.

Denmark is planning extensive shipping facilities in its beautiful harbor of Charlotte Amalia on the Island of St. Thomas. This island, which commands one of the principal passages from the Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea, might to-day be a possession of the United States had this Government been willing to buy it when Denmark was anxious to sell. It was here that the bold pirates of the Spanish Main hid their crews in the all but landlocked harbor, and waited for the shipping which passed through Mona passage. Here Bluebeard's castle still stands a mute reminder of the romantic days when buccaneers dominated the Spanish Main.

The north coast of South America also expects to figure largely in the new commercial map. The northern cities of Venezuela are on the route from eastern South America through the canal, and on one of the natural routes from Pacific ports to Europe. Nowhere else in the world will one find a more delightful climate or a more picturesque city or scenery than in northern Venezuela. Caracas, the capital, is but two hours' ride from the port of La Guaira, and less than a day's journey from Puerto Cabello, and, while the commerce which may be developed in Venezuela will, for the most part, find its outlet to the sea through the Orinoco River, La Guaira and Puerto Cabello will always prove attractive ports of call for passenger-carrying ships.

The changes in the commercial situation of Asia and the Americas, brought about by the opening of the canal, will be many. There will be a sudden readjustment of existing trade routes and this will be followed by a long era of development of new conditions, which will be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible, and yet so immense as to excite the wonder of humanity when it stops to reckon its full effect and meaning.

CHAPTER XXXI

The expansion of internal business has kept pace with the growth of external commerce. In seven years taxable values increased from less than $90,000,000 to more than $160,000,000. In a single year the amount of life insurance written in the island nearly doubled, and fire insurance increased nearly half. The exportation of sugar increased fivefold in 10 years, and the exportation of cigars 14 times. The population of the island has increased by half under the beneficient policies of the United States, going up from 800,000 in 1898 to 1,200,000 in 1912. During a single year Porto Rico buys about $35,000,000 worth of goods from the United States, and ships practically the same amount to this country.

Should all Latin America prove as good a customer in proportion to area as Porto Rico, our trade with Latin America alone would be many fold greater than the entire foreign trade of the United States to-day. Should all Latin America, even with its present population, buy as liberally from the United States as Porto Rico does, we would sell annually to it nearly $2,000,000,000 worth of products.

The most necessary step in developing the potentialities of Latin America is to provide good and stable government. Commercial statistics show how prosperity flourishes where good government reigns, and of how poverty dwells where misgovernment exists. One may go to Porto Rico, to Jamaica, to Curacao, or to St. Thomas, and in each of these countries may behold the wholesome rule of northern Europeans and their descendants. The people have at least those substantial rights which are necessary to the peace, happiness, and well-being of humanity; and equally without exception trade statistics show a greater foreign trade, in proportion to area and population, than is enjoyed in any country where misrule prevails. Porto Rico could be buried in a single lake of Nicaragua; it is only one-fifty-seventh as large as Central America; and yet Porto Rico has a foreign trade greater than all the territory from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the Isthmus of Panama.

How to improve governmental conditions in those countries where misrule prevails is a most serious problem. Had it not been for the Monroe doctrine it is safe to say that not one of the Republics of tropical America would be in existence today. Instead, their territory would be colonial possessions of the several powerful nations, and their people would be living under the comparatively wholesome rule of those nations. As it is, in a majority of the Republics south of the Rio Grande there is a state of affairs which makes against the development of resources and the best interests of the people. The whole theory under which these countries are governed is that primitive one: "Let him take who has the power, and let him keep who can." The result is that they are Republics only in name, and that the only way to change administrations is to have a revolution. Revolutions mean poverty; poverty means undeveloped resources, and so in some of these countries conditions were as bad in 1913, after nearly a century of so-called republican rule, as they were when the yoke of Spain was thrown off in 1821. How to bring about those conditions of peace and amity essential to national growth and development in these countries is the problem that has vexed more than one administration in Washington.

Some have answered that the best way to do it is to abrogate the Monroe doctrine and to let every Latin American tub stand on its own bottom, a proposal that might benefit these countries vastly, but which contains many possibilities of evil to the United States. Others have suggested that our experiment in Porto Rico offers the solution of the problem, at least so far as tropical North America is concerned. They assert that the end would justify the means, and that the planning of the same character of government in this territory that exists in Porto Rico today, would be the greatest godsend that the masses of the people of these countries could have. Still others have advocated a "hands-off" policy so far as the rule of these countries is concerned, allowing them to fight whenever, and in whatever way, they wish, but at the same time adhering rigidly to the Monroe doctrine against European interference.

Whatever the ultimate conclusion, it seems useless to hope for prosperity and expansion in countries whose industries constantly suffer from the galling blight of ever-recurring revolution. The great problem that lies before the American people, if the Latin America of the future is to become like the Anglo-Saxon America of today, is that of devising a policy which will insure conditions of peace and good will in the several sword-ruled countries south of the Rio Grande.

As matters stand today in the majority of the countries of Latin America, although their Governments owe their very existence to the United States, there is a feeling of antipathy against Americans, which places the American exporter on an unequal footing with his European rival. There is a prejudice against Americans, partly the result of a widespread feeling that the United States is the great land-grabber of the Western world, but mostly the result of the attitude of a large number of Americans who go into these regions. For instance, for years one could not go about the streets of Mexico City without hearing some American berating the "blankety blank greasers," and asserting that the United States could take 5,000 men and capture Mexico City in a two-month campaign. It happens that the Mexican is a proud individual and naturally he bitterly resents such asseverations.

The same is true elsewhere, and by personal contact prejudice rather than a feeling of friendship has been aroused. The European usually goes into these countries because there are few opportunities at home. He is usually representative of the best citizenship of his homeland, and quite as much the gentleman in Latin America as at home. While there are a great many splendid types of American citizenship scattered throughout Latin America, a greater number of people have gone there because they could not get along in the United States, and their hostile attitude toward the natives excites by far more prejudice than the better class of Americans can counteract by sympathy and good feeling. Americans who visit these countries expressing contempt for everything they see, and everything the people do, are the greatest hindrances to the realization of the commercial opportunities which the United States possesses in Latin America.

If the manufacturers of the United States are to realize to the full the benefits which may be derived from the opening of the Panama Canal they will have to reform their methods of dealing with the Latin Americans. It is just as effective to send to buyers at home catalogs written in Greek or Sanscrit as to send to the majority of Latin Americans catalogs printed in English. In traveling through these countries, endeavoring to ascertain wherein Americans have failed in their efforts to get a proper share of their foreign trade, one hears on every hand the complaint that the American manufacturer seldom meets the conditions upon which their trade may be based. No satisfactory credits are given, and no effort is made to manufacture machinery fitted to their peculiar needs. Agricultural machinery, for instance, which may serve admirably in the United States, is wholly out of place in many of these countries; and yet the Latin American customer must either buy the surplus of these machines or go elsewhere for machinery built to answer his requirements.

The European traveling salesman in these countries carries a line of goods immediately answerable to local requirements. Furthermore, the European exporter understands that the system of credits in Latin America is not the same as prevails in Europe and the United States, and he complies with their requirements. Of course, his prices are placed high enough so that he is nothing out of pocket for the seeming concessions he had made. The result is that in traveling in these countries, one meets three or four foreign "drummers" where he meets one American traveling man, in spite of their nearness to the United States. It will take years, even with the Panama Canal in operation, to overcome the disadvantage which bad business policy has placed upon the American manufacturers.

If the opening of the Panama Canal spells new American commercial opportunities, it also develops a new field of international politics in which the United States must make itself the dominant factor, and in which it will have a transcendental interest. It will unquestionably give to the Monroe doctrine a new importance and render its maintenance a more urgent necessity than ever. Prior to this time the breaking down of the Monroe doctrine would have been greatly detrimental to the interests of the United States, but from this time forth the domination of the Caribbean by some other strong nation would likely prove most disastrous to American welfare. It might even lead to the loss of the canal itself, and we then would witness that great waterway transformed from a military asset of immeasureable benefit into a base of operations against us.

Probably the chief danger to which the Monroe doctrine is exposed is from those countries whose rulers profit most by its enforcement. While the United States can control its own affairs in such a way as not to bring into question this doctrine, it is not so certain that the rulers of some of the Latin American nations will always do as well. In fact, some of the countries have conducted their affairs in such a way as might have involved the United States in a war with a foreign power. The knowledge that a small tropical American republic might act so as to force the United States into a critical situation has resulted in a desire on the part of the responsible authorities at Washington to exercise over the Republics of the Caribbean such a guiding control as would serve to prevent them, through any ill-considered or irresponsible act, from exposing the United States to dangerous controversies with foreign nations.

For instance, here is a country which owes a large debt to British bondholders. It defaults on the interest for a period of years. Efforts to collect are futile. Finally it is decided by the President that he needs additional funds. He reaches an agreement with the representatives of the bondholders, by which they agree to refund the debt and to lend him an additional half a million dollars, upon the condition that he hypothecate the Government's export tax upon coffee to secure the amortization of the refunded debt. He does so. Matters move along quietly for a little while, but soon he needs additional funds. He negotiates with New York bankers, getting from them the funds he needs, and hypothecates with them the same coffee tax that he had hitherto hypothecated with the British bondholders. Of course, the British bondholders protest at this impairment of their securities. He laughs at their protest. England sends a warship to his ports. He appeals loudly to the United States for the maintenance of the Monroe doctrine; but the United States does not hear him, so he decides to treat the British bondholders fairly. If he had not done so, and England had been seeking to break down the Monroe doctrine, an ideal opportunity would have been afforded.

It is to prevent such situations as these that many Americans hope that the Government may devise some plan that will at once protect the United States from such menaces, and at the same time allow the people of these countries to work out their own destiny in their own way.

The situation in tropical America today, with a few exceptions, seems to be that the republics have the form of liberty without its substance, and the shadow of civilization without its realities. Some of them have had over fifty revolutions in as many years. Some of them have been in the grip of tyrants who were as heartless in exploiting their people as was Nero in ruling Rome. The masses have received nothing from the Government except oppression, and they live in that hopeless, heartless ignorance so well described by a Spanish writer, picturing conditions in Porto Rico before the American occupation. We know that this picture was a true one. It was drawn in 1897 and won the prize awarded by the Spanish Government at the centennial celebration of the retirement of the English from this island. After dilating upon the splendors and magnificence of Porto Rico, this artist of the pen said of the masses:

"Only the laborer, the son of our fields, one of the most unfortunate beings in the world, with the pallid face, the bare foot, the fleshless body, the ragged clothing, and the feverish glance, strolls indifferently with the darkness of ignorance in his eyes. In the market he finds for food only the rotten salt fish or meat, cod fish covered with gangrenish splotches, and Indian rice; he that harvests the best coffee in the world, who aids in gathering into the granary the sweetest grain in nature, and drives to pasture the beautiful young meat animals, can not carry to his lips a single slice of meat because the municipal exactions place it beyond his means, almost doubling the price of infected cod fish; coffee becomes to him an article of luxury because of its high price, and he can use only sugar laden with molasses and impurities."

That picture applies to more than 90 per cent of the people in tropical America to-day. It explains why these countries, which might be made to flow with the milk and honey of a wondrous plenty, are poverty-stricken and unable to work out a satisfactory destiny for themselves. It shows why Cuba, Porto Rico, and Jamaica to-day are rich in internal trade, and prosperous in foreign commerce, while other countries are eking out a bare and scanty existence.

American commercial opportunities around the Mediterranean of the West, in particular, and in Latin America, in general, will reach their full when government there becomes government for the welfare of the people rather than for the aggrandizement of the ruling class.

CHAPTER XXXII

The spirit that was San Francisco's following the terrible calamity of April 18, 1906, when the city was shaken to its foundations by a great earthquake, and when uncontrollable fire completed the ruin and devastation which the earthquake had begun, has been the spirit that has planned and is carrying to a successful culmination the Panama-Pacific Exposition. The San Francisco earthquake came as the most terrific blow that ever descended upon an American city. It left the metropolis of the Pacific a mass of ruins and ashes. In five years a newer and a prouder San Francisco arose from the ashes of the old, and greeted the world as the highest example of municipal greatness to which a community can rise at times when nothing is left to man but hope, and that hope is half despair.

The fire destroyed 8,000 houses, leaving such a hopeless mass of débris that $20,000,000 had to be raised to reclaim the bare earth itself. In five years 31,000 finer and better houses had taken their places. Assessed values before the fire were $30,000,000 less than five years after. Bank clearings increased by a third and savings-bank deposits were greater after only five years than they were before the terrible catastrophe.

It may be imagined what wonders this spirit of the Golden West will accomplish when applied to the creation of an exposition. It is easy to forecast that, beautiful as have been the expositions of the past, and magnificent as has been the scale upon which they were planned, fresh palms will be awarded to San Francisco and the great fair it will offer to the World in 1915.

The city of the Golden Gate was planning a great celebration nearly two years before the calamity which overtook it in 1906. The first suggestion for holding a world's fair at San Francisco was made on June 12, 1904, when Mr. R. B. Hale wrote a letter to the San Francisco Merchants' Association advising its members that it would be wise to take steps toward securing for that city a great celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, in 1913. The matter was agitated for a year and a half and, a little more than three months prior to the earthquake, Representative Julius Kahn introduced in the National House of Representatives a bill providing for the celebration of the discovery of the Pacific, in 1913. Then followed the great catastrophe, and for the eight months next ensuing the problems of planning a new and greater San Francisco demanded all the attention of the people of that city. In December, 1906, however, the Pacific Ocean Exposition Company was incorporated with a capital stock of $5,000,000.

By 1910 New Orleans had loomed up as an aspirant for the honor of holding the great international celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal, and San Francisco understood that time for action was at hand, and, moreover, that money raised at home for the exposition would be the most eloquent advocate before Congress. Realizing this, a great mass meeting was called and in two hours subscriptions amounting to $4,089,000 were raised, headed by 40 subscriptions of $25,000 each.

In the fall of that year San Francisco was afforded an opportunity of attesting the universality of its interest in the success of the exposition. A proposition to vote $5,000,000 worth of bonds for the exposition was referred to the people. It carried by a vote of 42,040 to 2,122. The State of California also gave its citizens an opportunity to show their feeling, and by a vote of 174,000 to 50,000 made available bonds for $5,000,000 for the purposes of the exposition. The result has been that from first to last, within the confines of California's borders, a sum approximating $20,000,000 has been raised for exposition purposes. To this, $30,000,000 will be added by outside governments and by exhibitors and concessionaires.

The fight which led to the choosing of San Francisco as the city for holding the Panama celebration is, for the most part, familiar history. The law under which this choice was made was signed by President Taft on February 15, 1911. The presidential signature was the signal for the beginning of operations looking to the completion of all of the exposition buildings a full six months ahead of the opening date. The details of the site were worked out promptly. The site selected includes the western half of Golden Gate Park; Lincoln Park, which is situated on a high bluff overlooking the approach from the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate; and Harbor View, which is an extensive tract of level land, stretching along the shore of San Francisco Bay and back to the hills and the principal residential portion of the city.

Each element in this extensive site possesses its own peculiar charm; Golden Gate Park with its great variety of flowers and semitropical plants and trees; Lincoln Park with its outlook on the broad Pacific and along the rugged coastline to the north; and Harbor View with the Golden Gate to the left, a chain of climbing hills across the harbor in front, and the long sweep of bay and islands to the right. What nature has not done for the site of the exposition will be done by the art of the landscape gardener.

An ocean boulevard, to be made one of the most beautiful drives in the world, will become one of the permanent memorials of the exposition. A great esplanade, planted with cypress and eucalypti and liberally provided with seats, will extend along the water's edge for about half the entire length of the exposition grounds, affording ample opportunity for the thousands of visitors to watch the great water events which will constitute one of the features of the exposition. On the south side of this esplanade the principal exposition buildings, consisting of eight great palaces, will be located. A great wall, 60 feet high, will be built along the northern and western waterfronts for the purpose of breaking the winds which sweep down the harbor, and will be continued around the other two sides of the exposition grounds proper so as to constitute a walled inclosure which, in appearance, will remind one of the old walled towns of southern France and Spain.

The two principal gateways to the exposition grounds will open into great interior courts, around which the buildings will be ranged. It will be possible for the visitor to go from one building to another and complete the entire circuit of eight main exhibition palaces without once stepping from under cover. The three largest courts are named: The Court of the Sun and Stars, the Court of Abundance, and the Court of the Four Seasons. The Court of Abundance represents the Orient, and the Court of the Four Seasons, the Occident; the Court of the Sun and Stars, uniting the other two, will typify the linking of the Orient and the Occident through the completion of the Panama Canal. There will also be two lesser courts, known as the Court of Flowers and the Court of Palms. Outside of the walled city there will be five other important exhibition palaces.

The Panama-Pacific Exposition will be different from any that has gone before. Where others have been built on broad, level plains, this one will be located in one of nature's most beautiful natural amphitheaters, with the residential portions of San Francisco and the towns of the surrounding country looking down upon it. The architecture will be of such a nature that will make the "Fair City" indeed a fair city to behold.

If Chicago had its "White City," the San Francisco fair will be all aglow with rich color. It will be made to harmonize with the "vibrant tints of the native wild flowers, the soft browns of the surrounding hills, the gold of the orangeries, the blue of the sea." The artist in charge of this phase of the work declares that, "as the musician builds his symphony around a motif or chord," so it became his duty to "strike a chord of color and build his symphony upon it." The one thing upon which he insisted was that there should be no white, and the pillars, statues, fountains, masts, walls, and flagpoles that are to contrast with the tinted decorations are to be of ivory yellow. Even the dyeing of the bunting for flags and draperies is under the personal supervision of the artist in charge of the color scheme of the exposition. The roofs of the buildings will be harmoniously colored and the city will be a great party-colored area of red tiles, golden domes, and copper-green minarets. "Imagine," said Jules Guerin, the artist, "a gigantic Persian rug of soft melting tones with brilliant splotches here and there, spread down for a mile or more, and you may get some idea of what the Panama-Pacific Exposition will look like when viewed from a distance."

The lighting of the exposition will be by indirect illumination, affording practically the same intensity of light by night as by day. Lights will be hidden behind the colonnades, above the cornices, and behind masts on the roofs. Sculpture will stand out without shadow at night as by day. Great searchlights, many of them concentrated upon jets of steam, and playing in varying color, will add to the beauty of the scene. Even the fogs of the harbor will be made to contribute to the night effect of the exposition, and auroras will spread like draped lilies in the sky over the exhibition.

The sculpture will be unique in the history of exposition-giving. That phase of the work is under the control of Karl Bitter. In front of the main entrance, at the tower gate, there will be an allegory of the Panama Canal called "Energy; the lord of the Isthmian way." It will be represented by an enormous horse standing on a heavy pedestal, the horse carrying a man with extended arms pushing the waters apart. In the Court of the Sun and Stars two great sculptural fountains, typical of the rising and setting of the sun, will carry out the idea of "the world united and the land divided." In every part of the exposition scheme the sculpture will tell the story of the unification of the nations of the East and the West through the construction of the Panama Canal.

Nothing seems to have been overlooked in the plans that have been made to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal at San Francisco. There will be a working model of the Panama Canal, with a capacity of handling 2,000 people every 20 minutes. A reproduction of the Grand Canyon of Arizona will be another feature. The liberality of the prizes offered is indicated by the fact that premiums in the live-stock exhibits alone aggregate $175,000.

One of the greatest events of the exposition will be the rendezvous of representative ships from the fleets of all the nations of the earth in Hampton Roads in January and February, 1915. Their commanders will visit Washington and be received by the President. He will return with them to Hampton Roads and there review what promises to be the greatest international naval display in history. After this a long procession of fighting craft, perhaps accompanied by an equally long procession of tourist steamers, private yachts, and ships of commerce, will steam out of the Virginia Capes and turn their prows down the Spanish Main to Colon. Here the canal authorities will formally welcome the shipping world and pass its representatives through to the Pacific, whence they will sail to San Francisco, there to participate in the great celebration during the months which will follow. It may be that this great procession will be headed by the U. S. S. Oregon, whose trip around South America in 1898 proclaimed in tones that were heard in every hamlet in the United States the necessity of building the great waterway.

In addition to the great exposition at San Francisco, another will throw open its gates during 1915—the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego. This exposition will be held at a total outlay of, perhaps, $20,000,000. Nearly $6,000,000 is being spent on a magnificent sea wall. The San Diego and Arizona Railway is being built on a new and lower grade for nearly 220 miles. About $5,000,000 will be spent in making the exposition proper in Balboa Park. Over 11 miles of docks and a thousand acres of reclaimed land for warehouses and factory sites will be ready when the exposition opens on January 1, 1915. The fair will have 30 acres of Spanish gardens. A great Indian congress and exhibit will be held, representing every tribe of North and South America. This exposition will in nowise interfere with the big show at San Francisco, but will be supplemental to it.

When the Suez Canal was finished, its opening was celebrated by the most magnificent fete of modern times, the profligate Khedive Ismail Pasha apparently endeavoring to outdo the traditions of his Mussulman predecessors, Haroun al Raschid and Akbar. The fete lasted for four weeks, Cairo was decorated and illuminated as no city, of either Occident or Orient, ever had been before. The expense of the month's carnival was more than $21,000,000.

An opera house was built especially for the occasion, and Verdi, the famous Italian composer, was employed to write a special opera for the occasion. That the opera was "Aida," and that it marked the high tide of Verdi's genius, was perhaps more than might have been expected of a work of art produced at the command of an extravagant prince's gold.

The canal itself was opened on November 16, 1869, a procession of forty-eight ships, men of war, royal yachts and merchantmen, making the transit of the Isthmus in three days' time. In the first ship was Eugenie, Empress of the French. In another was the Emperor of Austria, and in still another the Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VII. A more imposing gathering of imperial and royal personages never before had been witnessed, and all of them were the Christian guests of the Moslem Ismail.

When the procession of royal vessels had passed through, the captains and the kings went to Cairo for the fete. The canal was open for traffic. It was significant that the first vessel to pass through in the course of ordinary business, paying its tolls, flew the British ensign. The building of the canal had wrecked Egypt, financially and politically; was destined to end forever the hope of Asiatic empire for France; and was to make certain England's dominion over India, a thing de Lesseps and Napoleon III had intended it to destroy.

The celebration of the completion of the Suez Canal was the wildest orgy of modern times, the last attempt to Orientalize a commercial undertaking of the Age of Steam and Steel.

The celebration at San Francisco will be more magnificent in its way, and will cost more money. But the millions will not be thrown away for the mere delectation of the senses of two score princes—they will be expended for the entertainment and the education of millions of people, the humblest of whom will have his full share in the celebration.

From the spruce woods of Maine, from the orange groves of Florida, from the wide fields of the Mississippi Valley, from the broad plains of the Colorado, from the blue ridges of the Alleghenies and the snow peaks of the Rockies, Americans will go to the Golden Gate to commemorate in their American way the closer union of their States, the consummation of the journeys of Columbus: The Land Divided—the World United.

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