STREET IN ANCON HOSPITAL GROUNDS

Panama were there any waterworks or sewerage systems. The mosquitoes were everywhere a pest. Nearly everybody was afflicted with malaria, while yellow fever was beginning to kill off the flower of the young men who went down to the Isthmus in those pioneer days. In short, it may be said that discouragement and death were the dominant features of the situation. To make this more realistic, I can relate an experience of my own. One Saturday night I had ten young men who held responsible positions on the canal as my guests at dinner in the Legation. On the following Saturday we buried under the wet clay four of these splendid fellows - dead by the yellow fever.

For nearly two years, beginning early in 1904, Col. Gorgas and his staff valiantly battled against overwhelming odds to kill off the yellow fever mosquito and stop the dreaded disease which was decimating the ranks of the Americans and discouraging those who escaped its clutches. By instituting a strict quarantine against all vessels coming from yellow-fever infected ports, by doing away with all stagnant water, by fumigating houses wherever an occupant had been afflicted with yellow fever, and by

following other comprehensive sanitary measures, he finally won out, and now the mention of yellow fever suggests only unhappy memories of the past.

A word should be said here about the trained nurses and other women who have left good positions or good homes in the United States to make up the hospital staff or perform other duties in the Canal Zone. Most all of the praise for remarkable work done from the early days of pioneer sanitation and construction to the present has been given to the men with too little thought of the nurses in the hospitals, the female teachers in the schools, and the wives, daughters, and sisters who have accompanied and encouraged the husbands, fathers, and brothers. From early 1904, when Miss Hibbard, as their chief, came down with the first forces of nurses and inaugurated their work with notable unselfishness and administrative skill, until the present, the women of the canal staff have done their part with a courage, devotion, skill, and patriotism deserving of the highest praise. In the trying days of yellow fever not a single nurse showed the white feather and asked to be allowed to return to the United States, and many a splendid young engineer, surveyor, clerk, or other employe owed his life to the skillful nursing and careful attention received from these untiring women. No wonder that happy marriages have often resulted from these experiences.

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LOOKING SOUTH, EAST CHAMBER, UPPER LOCK AT MIRAFLORES

In this connection, however, there should not be overlooked the force of quarantine officers, hospital doctors, and male attendants. Well and faithfully have they done and are doing their exacting duties. When the roll of honor is finally made up for valiant and faithful service from 1904 to 1915 a large number of the names must include men and women who began, built up, continued, and raised to a high standard, under the example and leadership of Col. W. C. Gorgas, the health hospital, and quarantine service and conditions of the Canal Zone.

Prominent among the present and veteran hard-working sanitary staff, aside from Col. Gorgas and Col. Phillips, are Major Robert E. Noble, General Inspector; Lieut-Col. Charles F. Mason, Superintendent Ancon Hospital; Dr. Wm. H. Bell, Superintendent Colon Hospital; Dr. J. C. Perry, Chief Quarantine Officer; Dr. Claude C. Pierce, Quarantine Officer, Colon; Dr. Fleetwood Gruver, Quarantine Officer, Panama; Joseph A. LePrince, Chief Sanitary Inspector, Ancon; and Dr. M. E. Connor, Health Officer, Colon.

WHAT THE CANAL MEANS

What does the Panama Canal mean? What does it mean to the United States, to Latin America, to Europe, to Asia, to Australia, and to all of the world?

These are questions which every man interested in the progress of the world cannot fail to turn over constantly in his mind.

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No other great engineering undertaking in the history of the human race, not even the construction of the Suez Canal, the building of the transcontinental railways of North America, the construction of the great wall of China, has had any such effect on the power, prestige, commerce, and opportunity of one or of a group of nations as will have the Panama Canal.

For the United States and its twenty sister American Republics the formal opening of the canal will be the solemn inauguration of a great new Pan American era of commerce, friendship, and peace. In separating North from South America with a water channel it will draw them closer together in ties of better acquaintance and larger trade.

While it will bring a quickening influence to every State and part of the United States, its most immediate benefits will be first felt upon the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific seaboards. Gradually the interior, especially the commercial, industrial, manufacturing, and exporting sections, and later the agricultural districts, will gain both direct and indirect advantages, until the whole land realizes that a new world commercial route is in operation. Too great changes or effects, however, must not be expected to come all at once. The real and lasting benefits to the trade and commerce of the United States will come only through the process of years and the adaptation of the business interests, not only of the United States but of foreign countries, to the new conditions of the canal. There is probability that much disappointment will be experienced in many seaports of the United States that their docks and wharves are not immediately crowded with shipping after the canal is opened. It must be remembered that water routes, though freer and less restricted than rail routes, require fleets of mercantile vessels, much capital, and large actual exchange of commodities to develop them on a big scale.

Just as a new railroad built through a sparsely settled country between two cities does not begin to do the business at first which

comes to it later on through the construction of feeders, the filling up of the country, and the growth of its terminal points, so the Panama Canal, through the extension of old steamship lines, the putting on of new lines and tramp vessels, and the building up of the countries reached by them, will increase its commerce and its shipping with eventual individual benefits to each port within the limit of its influence.

Probably the greatest good to the United States from the canal will result from the cheap, short, and quick route of water communication between its Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific seaboards. The exchange through the canal of trade and commodities between the Atlantic and Gulf States and ports on the one hand, and the Pacific States and ports on the other, should grow rapidly in quantity, volume, and value. This development should not and probably will not injure permanently the business of the transcontinental railways. On the contrary, it will so increase the prosperity, population, and business of the coast and adjacent interior States that it will develop the local trade of the railways