Accordingly I recommended
to Congress, on February 19, 1906, that a lock canal should be built,
and my recommendation was adopted. Congress insisted upon having it
built by a commission of several men. I tried faithfully to get good
work out of the commission, and found it quite impossible; for a
many-headed commission is an extremely poor executive instrument. At
last I put Colonel Goethals in as head of the commission. Then, when
Congress still refused to make the commission single-headed, I
solved the difficulty by an executive order of January 6, 1908, which
practically accomplished the object by enlarging the powers of the
chairman, making all the other members of the commission dependent upon
him, and thereby placing the work under one-man control. Dr. Gorgas
had already performed an inestimable service by caring for the sanitary
conditions so thoroughly as to make the Isthmus as safe as a health
resort. Colonel Goethals proved to be the man of all others to do the
job. It would be impossible to overstate what he has done. It is the
greatest task of any kind that any man in the world has accomplished
during the years that Colonel Goethals has been at work. It is the
greatest task of its own kind that has ever been performed in the world
at all.
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