The operating force will have to learn how to work the huge gates and elaborate sluices, and pilots must know how to take ships through the new waterway. To give them practice, as well as to accommodate commerce, vessels will be allowed to pass through the Canal during this period, at their owners' risk. The final test will be at the official opening, when a great fleet of American and foreign warships, led by the President of the United States in the Mayflower, and followed by a long line of yachts, excursion steamers, and merchant craft, will all pass through the Canal in procession. May the spirits of Columbus and Balboa be there to see!
But when we are done with the saluting and champagne-drinking, and speechifying (orators almost invariably refer to the Panama Canal as "mingling the waters of the two oceans," in spite of its having a high-level, fresh-water lake in the middle), what good is the Canal going to do us? What return are we going to get on the three hundred and fifty million dollars it hast cost us?
It is much easier to prophesy than to make your prophecies come true, as was proved in the case of the Suez Canal. Most people declared that it would be an utter failure, and instead it has made its stockholders rich; others thought it would restore the old commercial supremacy of the Mediterranean, but the people who most benefited by it were the English, who had taken no part in building it and made fun of the French for doing so; and finally, there were many unexpected results of the opening of the Suez Canal, that no one had dreamed of. For instance, it brought the Philippines
