After a year's experience of carrying forward the work at full swing, the commission decided to face the situation frankly and attempt to ascertain exactly what might be expected. This investigation disclosed the fact that the estimates of the amount of work to be done were a little over 50 per cent short. Under the experience of one year's work it was calculated that the total cost of the canal would be $375,000,000, including sanitation, government, and payments to the New Panama Canal Company and the Republic of Panama, instead of $210,000,000, as these items would have aggregated under the estimates made in 1906. This was about one and a half times as much as the estimated cost of a sea-level canal. But, although Congress had fixed the limit upon the basis of an aggregate cost of $210,000,000, it cheerfully faced the restatement of the anticipated cost, and finally set the limit at $375,000,000. From that day forward the great effort at Panama was to live within this limit, in spite of the extra work required. While Congress might have been willing to increase this limit, in view of the fact that an additional 97,000,000 cubic yards of material had to be removed, it was not asked to do so. The engineers desired above everything else to stay within their own estimates, and they did the extra work with money saved by increasing the efficiency of the force. The first law providing for the government of the Canal Zone was enacted in 1904. It gave to the President and those appointed by him the right to govern the Zone and imposed the duty "of maintaining and protecting its inhabitants in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion." In 1907 an effort was made to reduce wages on the canal. The sundry civil bill of that year carried a provision that wages on the Isthmus for skilled and unskilled labor should not exceed more than 25 per cent the average wage paid in the United States for similar labor. This proposition was urged by Representative James A. Tawney, of Minnesota, then chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the House. When it came to a vote the wages fixed under Chief Engineers Wallace and Stevens were upheld by a vote of 101 to 10. Congress took the ground that the canal could be built only by the most liberal treatment of the people who were building it.