Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Isthmian Canal: An Address by Mr. George S. Morison, of New York, Member Isthmian Canal Commission, Delivered April Twenty-Fourth, 1902, Before the Massachusetts Reform Club
There is another element. It has been considered by many that the limit of time required to complete a great work was the time required for the largest single item of that work. This is perfectly true in a country sup plied with labor, with facilities of transportation and other such things as exist in the United States or any of the other settled portion of the world. But it is not the case on the isthmus, where there is practically no working population, where there are no lines of access, where everything must be brought in and everything must be got ready. While some of my colleagues have differed from me, I have not the slightest doubt that in actual practice it will take at least one-quarter longer to build the Nicaragua Canal than to finish the Panama. I might cite, as an instance of this, the construction of our Pacific railroads 30 years ago. Their time could not be determined by the time any great work on the line required. They had to be begun at the two ends and built till they met in the middle. It was slow work at first, gradually hastened. Those roads were built in what was then considered marvellously quick time. They could be built in one-quarter of that time now, simply be cause we have access to them.
Nicaragua has been supposed to have three special advantages. The first of these is the position of its western terminus. The western terminus of the Nicar agua Canal is more than 500 miles nearer San Francisco than Panama is. That is an undoubted fact and an undoubted advantage that Nicaragua possesses.
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