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This is a gratifying assurance for morals, for industry, and for thrift, and it will serve as another of those valuable object lessons which Americans are giving to the Panamans, and which the latter, it is encouraging to observe, appreciate and use to their own profit.

Early in 1906 two more decisions were made with a view to facilitating and expediting the work of canal construction. One was made on January 8, by the President, the Secretary of War, the Chairman of the Canal Commission, the Chief Engineer, and the United States Civil Service Commission, to the effect that the civil service rules and regulations, devised for use in the United States, should not apply in Panama, in the employment of what were termed in a general way "outside men,"-that is, track layers, skilled labourers, foremen, etc. To other classes of employees, stenographers, clerks, bookkeepers, and other "inside men," the rules were to continue to apply. The other decision was made by Congress, a month later; to the effect that the eighthour labour law should no longer be enforced upon the Isthmus. It was recognised that that law, devised for the benefit of American labourers in America, was not suited to the conditions at Panama, where the labourers were nearly all aliens, who had never even heard of the eight-hour law before and who had no desire for its application. The enforcement of that law would, therefore, benefit nobody and please nobody, but would greatly delay the completion of the canal and increase its cost.

CHAPTER XIX

STULTILOQUENTIA

THE progeny of Gifted Hopkins is numerous and vociferous. There is no important subject upon which much nonsense is not spoken, and there is no great work concerning which there are not counsels of folly. In most cases we may perhaps concede these to have been the output of honest ignorance, or of that intrepidity and precipitancy of judgment to which the human mind is too often prone. When the Quarterly Review declared a man might as well ride upon a Congreve rocket as upon a railroad train at twenty miles an hour, it was doubtless sincere, and not moved by malice against Stephenson. We may say the same of Thiers, with his cocksure pronouncement that, however useful railroads might be for some purposes, they could never be of value for transporting freight. Lardner was doubtless animated by a purely scientific spirit when he argued that no steamship could carry enough coal to feed its engines on a voyage across the Atlantic. The railings against the Erie Canal were perhaps less honest, having a strong tincture of partisan politics; and the British prophecies that the Suez Canal would never pay its cost were probably in part inspired by jealousy of the French builders of that great highway. In the case of Panama, there has been more folly emitted than in any of these others, and it has been of a distinctly lower type, marked chiefly either with deliberate malice or with a crass ineptitude most urgently requiring the fool-killer's attention. It would require a large volume to contain even a synopsis of the half-foolish and half-malicious stuff which has been spoken, written, and printed about various phases of the Panama enterprise in the last three years. The compass of this chapter would not

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suffice for a mere catalogue of it. But it may serve the purpose to cite just a few samples of its chief types. Ex pedeThersitem!

One of the first propagandists of folly, in point of time, was employed by a political organisation in the United States, to go into a foreign land and there lampoon and libel his own country and its government for the sake of hoped-for partisan advantages in a political campaign. He went to Colombia in December, 1903, right after the Panaman revolution, and sought to cultivate the acquaintance of the President, Dr. Marroquin. He represented himself as the agent of the newspaper press of one of the great political parties of this country, which was strongly opposed to President Roosevelt's administration and especially to his policy toward Colombia and Panama. He had come, he said, to investigate and to report upon the "situation of Colombia with regard to the painful occurrences upon the Isthmus of Panama." "There prevails in my country, with respect to this matter," he said, " a great sentiment of sympathy for Colombia; and the acts and attitude of the Roosevelt government are regarded with profound repugnance." He, therefore, sought "such information and opinions as shall enable the American people to make a decision in favour of your excellency's government and the people of Colombia." That is to say, he was confessedly seeking, in a foreign land, mud to throw at his own government! The political ethics of Colombia have not always been of the highest type, but they were far too high for such a scheme as that, and Dr. Marroquin pretty promptly and curtly declined to lend himself to the tainted scheme. He answered the applicant with a few words which produced "the most painful impression." Thereupon this precious propagandist betook himself to Panama, as the accredited agent of a political organisation, and there, in September and October, 1904, during the Presidential campaign in the United States, busied himself with trying to prove that Dr. Marroquin-who by this time was dead and unable to defend

himself against such attacks-had been a perjured and sordid knave, who had conspired with President Roosevelt to betray Colombia for American gold! The astounding fiction was evolved that President Roosevelt, through Secretary Hay, had bribed Dr. Marroquin, with $250,000, himself to foment the Panaman revolution and so turn the Canal Zone over to the United States. Cipher despatches were actually sent by this accomplished discoverer of mare's nests from Panama to his political employers in the United States, declaring that if he were supplied with sufficient funds he could secure documentary proofs of such a bargain! Doubtless he could have done so. The supply of fiction is always adequate to the demand, especially under the potent inspiration of "Culebra cocktails." I do not think the slightest perceptible result was produced upon the United States election by this fantastic folly, but I do know that the joy of Panama was materially enhanced by it. For many a week thereafter the very mention of that versatile propagandist's name, whether in a club on the Cathedral Plaza or in the less conventional purlieus of the road to "Section," was an unfailing and irresistible provocation to something more than Homeric mirth.

Another outbreak occurred a year later. At the beginning of September, 1905, the corner stone of a new school building was laid at La Trinchera, in the presence of the President of Panama and his Cabinet, and an oration was pronounced by a prominent young member of the Opposition party. Immediately it was announced, and bruited over the world, that the speaker had bitterly referred to the impending spoliation of Panama by the United States, and impassioned homilies were published upon the wickedness of America's thus oppressing the little republic, and we were warned-all this stuff in our own American press, of course that when the Liberals came into power in Panama there would be resistance to the bitter end against our confiscatory schemes. It is quite true that he did speak of the Republic of Panama as being about to be "rent in twain by the iron hand of Amer

ica," but there was scarcely a person in the audience who did not understand what was, of course, his meaning-that America was going to cut a big ditch across the Isthmus! He, in fact, welcomed that prospect, as assuring the future greatness of Panama.

I remember, too, another case, in which a probably wellmeaning descendant of the illustrious Hopkins, in an important magazine article, dolefully descanted upon the primitive and barbarous conditions which prevailed along the line of the canal. When this pious pilgrim visited the labourers' camp at Culebra, he found there actually no pavements on the sidewalks. Neither were there electric lights. He could find no resorts of entertainment and social culture, excepting a reading room and a café, the latter, by the way, deserted! Beside all of which, it rained! Men familiar with similar camps in the United States will appreciate the unrelieved horror of the situation, and will join with that scribe in condemning the American Government for trying to dig a canal without first establishing squash courts and automobile garages all along the line, and changing the climate so that it could be depended upon not to rain when distinguished visitors were in town.

At the risk of tediousness, I must quote somewhat at length a really notable gem of anti-Panaman literature, which has recently been widely current. Here it is:

"A land as feverish to the imagination as to the body is Panama. It is a land making a fitting environment to the deeds of conspiracy, piracy, loot, cruelty, and blood that have principally made its history for centuries. This gloomy, God-forsaken Isthmus is a nightmare region. One descriptive writer has truly said of it that it is a land where the flowers have no odour, the birds no song; where the men are without honour, and the women without virtue. He is not far wrong. The birds, brilliant as is their plumage, have no musical notes. The dense forests teem with bright-hued parrots, parroquets, and other birds, which squeak and scream but do not sing. There are beautiful orchids to be found in the swamps and jungles, fair to look upon, but they have no odour. The oranges have green skins, instead of