The Stratford Evening Pest WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913. THE PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 66, 23 July 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Pest WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913. THE PANAMA CANAL.

'The official announcement to the effect that the opening of the Panama Canal is put hack for yet another year owing to the great landslips in the Culebra Cut is quite what engineers have been predicting. Twelve months: ago. Colonel Goethals, the engineer in charge of the work, said that he expected to see the first ship go through the Canal on duly 1, 1913, and he upheld this prediction until j the big slips of a few months ago were reported. But it is apparent now that many millions of cubic yards of material have still to he removed from th" cut, and the American engineers are not losing any time in voicing their disappointment. They cannot estimate how much time it will take to remove the slides, because they can only guess at what is behind, and how much more of the loose soil will come down. Of course the delay is most disappointing, and will add greatly to the already lingo cost: of the scheme. It is now thought that the total cost of cutting the canal and making it. a navigable waterway, will he about £75,000,000, exceeding the oi l iua 1 estimate of the Canal Commission by about 017,000,000, so that the charge for interest alone will amount to more than £’2,500,000 a yeer. file expenditure on maintenance and the provision of a sinking fund will bring the annual cost of the completed canal to something like 000.000 a year. These figures have given financiers a good deal of cans" to think, and the earning powers of the Cana! will have to he very great to make headway at all. Tf the whole of tie’ burden of finding this huge su n annually is placed on other than America’; shipping, the charges are certainly going to he pretty high.