money can tell, when a fleet of transports comes hurrying through with empty bunkers, or a battered dreadnaught limps into Balboa shipyards, to be sent back to the fighting line. Professor Emory R. Johnson, Special Commissioner on Panama Canal Traffic and Tolls, says, in his report to the Secretary of War:
"The distance from New York to San Francisco, by way of the Straits of Magellan, is 13,135 nautical miles,[1] by way of Panama, 5,262 miles, the Canal route being 7,873 miles shorter. The saving between New Orleans and San Francisco is greater—8,868 nautical miles—the Magellan route being longer and the Canal route shorter from New Orleans than from New York. The Canal will reduce the distance from New York to the Chilian nitrate port, Iquique, 5,139 nautical miles, to Valparaiso 3,747 miles, to Coronel 3,296, and Valdivia about 2,900 miles. For New Orleans and other Gulf ports, the reduction is greater." It is only 1,395 miles from New Orleans to Colon, while from New York to Colon it is 1,974 miles.
The Pacific coast of the United States is the region that expects to be most immediately benefited, and for that reason the Panama Pacific Exposition is to be held in San Francisco in 1915. California oranges and lemons and Oregon apples can be shipped much more cheaply in refrigerator-ships than in refrigerator-cars, while the saving on wheat, coal, lumber, and other heavy freight is even greater.
Most of the passenger traffic will still go by rail, as
- ↑ A nautical mile is 6,080 feet long; a statute or land mile, 5,280 feet long.
