of water into Gatun Lake during the dry season, the lake level begins to fall and continues to do so for about four and a half months, until the wet season again comes in.

When the Canal was completed it was dug to such depth that there was a channel 47 feet deep in Gaillard Cut when Gatun Lake was at its high level. This seemed ample depth for ships around 1910, but in the pressure to make both financial ends meet, shipowners have loaded their vessels deeper and deeper until they now pass from one ocean to the other drawing as much as 34 feet. This means that when the lake is at its maximum height such ships have thirteen feet of water under their keels, but when the lake falls to eighty feet above sea level these deep draft vessels have only six feet of water under them. Six feet of water under the keel is near the limit of safety, for, as the depth of water under a ship's keel decreases, she becomes more difficult to handle. As the narrowest Canal channel is in the Cut, the navigation of which is ticklish at best, a reduction of depth here brings with it danger that some poor-handling ship may run into the rocky banks, sink, and block the channel.

It is certain that shipowners are not going to reduce the draft of their vessels; so, in trying to predict the time when a new Canal will be necessary, we shall assume that, in order to have sufficient water under ships' keels for good handling, the lake should be allowed to fall only seven feet during the dry season, maintaining a depth of 40 feet in the channel through Gaillard Cut. It is also reasonably certain that when one particularly long dry season comes, such as will prevent deep draft ships from using the Canal, it will cause enough criticism of the lack of capacity of the link between the two oceans to compel drastic action to relieve the situation.

There is a fuel oil power plant in the Canal Zone which could be enlarged and operated during the dry season to save all the water now lost in the generation of hydro-electric power. Assuming that this will be done and that we shall again be faced with a dry season as in 1920, the longest and driest on record, there will be enough water in Gatun Lake to lock through 975 ships a month.

From the table it can be seen that we shall reach 975 ships a

month in 1949. In other words, only twenty-six years from now something must have been done toward increasing the present capacity of the great ditch at Panama. As the present limit to the number of ships that can pass through the Canal hinges on the amount of water that can be stored in Gatun Lake, it will plainly be seen that by 1949 we must provide more water storage for locking through the natural increase of shipping, or we must dig a new Canal.

The dry season capacity of the link between the Atlantic and Pacific can be increased by building a storage dam at Alhajuela, thirteen miles up the Chagres River from the Canal prism, at a cost of something like six million dollars, and further increased by providing a small storage reservoir near the Pacific locks to prevent sudden temporary reduction of depth in Gaillard Cut when drawing off the great amount of water to fill the Pacific locks. The cost of the second and smaller project would be about a million dollars.

With these improvements, the ultimate capacity of the Panama Canal will be reached in 1979. By that time the Canal will be using all the water that can be obtained by additional storage, so that prior to 1979 America must have completed, ready for use, a second Isthmian Canal. It must be cut in some other locality than the Isthmus of Panama, as the present Canal will be using all the water obtainable there. Sometime between 1949, when the capacity of the present water supply will be reached, and 1979, when the Canal will be accommodating all the shipping it can ever handle, an increase in lock capacity will be forced upon us.

Operating full tilt, day and night, the two sets of parallel locks can accommodate all the shipping that can be cared for by the ultimate supply of water in this locality. Occasionally, however, a set of locks must be placed out of commission for renewal of valves, painting the metal parts, etc. During these repair periods, which sometimes last as much as three months at a time, the capacity of the Canal for the passage of ships is reduced to about 1260 ships a month. According to the predicted increase of shipping, in 1962 this number of ships a month will be anchoring at the terminal ports awaiting passage, so that by 1962 we must have completed a third system of locks parallel to the two now in use.

During the first five months of 1923 the average tolls collected from each ship was $4,506.87. Now, according to the predicted rate of increase in passage through the Canal, we shall average, between 1930 and 1950, at least 9,120 ships a year. Taking tolls from these ships at $4,506.87 each would yield a gross annual income of $41,102,654.40. Under the administration of Governor Morrow, economy of operation is steadily increasing, and it is believed that, eventually, the cost of Canal activities will be reduced to about six million dollars a year.

If we charge the cost of the present Canal to naval strategy, and write the debt of construction off the books, as is proper, the net annual revenue from Panama tolls during the period 1930 to 1950 ought to average about thirty-five million dollars. In one generation, then, the tolls turned into the United States Treasury from the Isthmus should amount to about $700,000,000-nearly twice enough to build the new Canal when it is needed.

Summing up, we see that if Panama traffic increases as fast as that of Suez increased between 1880 and 1910, a big addition to the present water storage will be required by 1949, that additional locks will be needed by 1962, and last, but not least, that America must build a second Canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans before 1979.

It required fifty years of advertising to give the American people even a lukewarm feeling toward the necessity for the first Canal. The long trip of the old battleship Oregon, when she was so sorely needed in the Caribbean Sea, brought home to the people the strategic value of the Canal; but, even then, it needed the sheer strength and magnetic personality of a President like Theodore Roosevelt to convince America that the great work had to be done "Now!"

Without Roosevelt there would be no great ditch across the Isthmus. It will be only a short while until more water storage and more locks will be imperative necessities, and within the span of a reasonably short life we must pour vast millions into the construction of another waterway between the two oceans. Will there be a second Roosevelt ready to make America do it?

A. W. HINDS.

GOVERNMENT BY GROUP PRESSURE

BY ERNEST R. GROVES

THAT politically we are going somewhere everyone knows. But who knows where? At this time of government drift two facts stand out clearly from the fog of uncertainty. As a people we are increasing the powers, the activities and the cost of government. It is to most observers equally evident that we are doing nothing to improve the personnel of the governing officials. Indeed many who are loudly asking for more of government activities, at this point or that, are clearly not at all concerned with the outstanding necessity of having the quality of government keep pace with its quantity.

The tendency toward increase of governmental enterprises and authority is so pronounced that even the dullest citizen has been made conscious of it. The Government in one form or another seems omnipresent. The increase in government activities has had momentum sufficient to push aside political habits and theories that for more than a century have been characteristic of the American. Of course the war added force to the drift toward more government, but the movement was under way before April, 1917. The war gave an unexpected opportunity to the advocates of more government to advance their lines and dig in. With the coming of peace they were found far ahead of their former position, and so thoroughly established that even the returned soldier who was expected to lead the attack upon bureaucratic power, once safely out of France, has made merely a feeble protest followed by demands that the Government use its authority for his advantage. Surely the returned soldier has had no change of heart. Temperamentally he is as hostile to federal coercion as when he swore vengeance in France. He has discovered his helplessness. Government control and government regulation seem to have come to stay. Why not, he says, make the best of what appears inevitable, and at least get a share of the possible benefits?

It is strange indeed that so little effort is being made to increase the efficiency of the governing group. The powerful machinery which the Government represents remains in the hands of professional politicians who control the admission to this governing class by an apprenticeship which is so uninviting to the average man of ability that he can hardly be forced into office. It is certainly true that few college students and fewer able college students look forward to entering political life. The price one pays for political preferment has become common knowledge and the ambitious, confident student hesitates to set out upon a long journey of subserviency and partisanship. He · feels as a rule that business offers a squarer and more favorable opportunity. If business does not attract him he goes into a profession. Rarely does he plan a government career. And yet it is obvious that when government is extending its powers in every direction there is the greatest need of drawing into the Government the most promising of its young citizenship.

It is even more startling to discover that at the very time when governmental function is extending itself in so many directions and when there is so great a clamour for more and more Federal control, there is also rapidly developing a new political condition in American experience, a decided, widespread skepticism regarding political parties. The newspapers reflect it daily. Candidates are voted for with a surprising lack of enthusiasm and

assurance.

Even party discipline in Congress itself is difficult to maintain. Political issues and political leaders are relatively pushed into the background. Other interests have the right of way. No audience, however friendly, appears to take any political speeches seriously. Indifference seems best to sum up the general public attitude toward a class, now largely professional, who for the most part manage the great government machine which in size and power is being so greatly enlarged.

Some years ago, as many readers will remember, the railroads of the country had for several months a series of train wrecks. It was not difficult to locate the trouble. The locomotives recently added to the equipment were heavier and more powerful than they had been. The rails, however, over which they had to