Essay On The Isthmian Canal

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Nineteenth-century developments in machinery, transportation, and communications put the Western world in motion. Ports were bustling with people and brimming with raw materials and finished products destined for distant markets. Finding ways to ship goods faster and cheaper was essential to continued commercial expansion. Water transport offered many advantages over rail, including inter-oceanic access. In addition to their commercial importance, canals had nationalistic and military significance. The French saw an isthmian canal as a magnificent private enterprise reflecting the glory of France. Americans like Theodore Roosevelt viewed an American-controlled canal as critical to U.S. domination of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1869, after 10 years of work by the…show more content…
Interest was so great that steamship lines diverted vessels from other routes to the Caribbean. Advertisement for the Great White Fleet, United Fruit Co. Steam-ship Service, from Country Life in America, December 1914 The Tourist’s Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala Reached by Beautiful Sea Trips from New Orleans, issued by the Passenger Department of the Illinois Central Railroad, 1912-13 At Ancon, a town at the Pacific end of the Canal Zone, the Isthmian Canal Commission created a tourist station with a lecture room, relief maps, and models of the locks. Tourists could also visit the work site by taking a special train whose open sightseeing cars had been converted from Panama Railroad flatcars (see postcard at left). The musicians of Tin Pan Alley played upon public interest in the canal. Cover artwork was often more memorable than the music and lyrics inside. (left, from top) “Where the Oceans Meet in Panama (That’s Where I’ll Meet You),” by Henry Jentes (music) and Charles McCarron (lyrics), 1914 “The Panamala,” by Gus Edwards (music) and Edward Madden (lyrics), 1914
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