When Congress came to make the permanent canal law it profited by the unsatisfactory results that would have grown out of a rigid adherence to the principles of the Spooner Act, and concentrated all authority under the governor of the Canal Zone. There were those who thought the sanitary department should not be under the control of the governor, and still others who felt that the operation of the canal probably should be under one man and the civil government under another. But these suggestions were not followed, and the act as finally adopted makes the President practically a czar of the Isthmus, and under him the governor need give account to no one but the President. It has been the ambition of the present chief engineer of the canal to see the operating force fully installed and things moving along on a satisfactory working basis before leaving the Isthmus. He thinks arrangements should be made whereby acute changes of policy should be prevented. This he would do by having a principal assistant who would succeed the governor at the end of his four-year term. This would permit a continuous policy and an unbroken line of action which, according to his view, would make for the efficiency of the operating force. In speaking of this phase of the matter, he stated that were a new man chosen at the end of the four-year term of his predecessor--a man who had had no previous experience on the Isthmus--there would always be a tendency to make radical changes. He would have on the governor's staff a doctor from the Army to have charge of the work of sanitation on the Canal Zone, who would report directly to the governor. The quarantine officer, in his opinion, should be under the Public Health Service of the United States. Under the plan as adopted in the permanent canal law, any officer of the Army or of the Navy chosen to fill a position in the canal operating force will be paid the same salary as a civilian, with the exception that he would get only the difference between his regular Army or Navy pay and the salary his position carried. It is estimated that the expense of operating the canal will amount to about $3,500,000 a year. This includes the cost of operating a number of dredges which will have to be maintained in connection with the canal work. The estimate was made upon the amount of business handled at the Sault Ste. Marie Canal which has the largest traffic of any canal in the world.