Who Built the Panama Canal Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: it afterwards." Had the debate come first Mr. Roosevelt might not have "taken" Panama at all. His part in the great enterprise is already a matter of history. ... more » Had it not been for the railroad men (chosen, brought together, and directed by Theodore P. Shonts, who is deserving of credit for their success in the same manner that a general is deserving of credit for the victory of his army), the conditions under which the Canal was dug would never have been brought about on the Isthmus of Panama, for it would imply a bolder Congress than has yet met in Washington to finance a third attempt to subjugate the tropics had the railroad men proved unequal to their task after the failure of the Army and Navy regime, following that of the French. It is because no more competent historiographer has arisen for the railroad men that I venture into the breach. W. Leon Pepperman. New York, July 20, 1914. Since writing this Foreword I have seen a letter written to a friend in New York by Congressman Oscar W. Underwood, who has been either majority or minority leader in the House of Representatives since the Canal was started, in which he says: "I concur in what you say in reference to the civilian engineers, for although Col. Goethals and his corps of engineers are entitled to the credit for the final construction of the work, there is rio doubt about the fact that the plans and organization of the original civilian engineers constitute the base on which the Canal was built." chapter{Section 4CHAPTER I THE FRENCH AND THE FIRST COMMISSION ' For 400 years—ever since the early Spanish explorers, whose number included Christopher Columbus himself, gave up the search for the "hidden strait" across Central America the existence of which was a tradition among the native Indians—the...« less