Its cost had been enormous. No single construction effort in American history had exacted such a price in dollars or in human life. Dollar expenditures since 1904 totaled $352,000,000 (including the $10,000,000 paid to Panama and the $40,000,000 paid to the French company). By present standards this does not seem a great deal, but it was more than four times what Suez had cost, without even considering the sums spent by the two preceding French companies, and so much more than the cost of anything ever before built by the United States government as to be beyond compare.4 Taken together, the
...more
