THE FRENCH FAILURE
One writes of "the French failure" at Panama with a consciousness that
no other word but failure will describe the financial and
administrative catastrophe that humbled France on the Isthmus, but at
the same time with the knowledge that failure is no fit word to apply
to the engineering accomplishments of the French era.
The French fiasco ruined thousands of thrifty French families who
invested their all in the shares of the canal company because they had
faith in de Lesseps, faith in France, and faith in the ability of the
canal to pay handsome returns whatever might be its cost. The failure
itself was due primarily to the fact that de Lesseps was not an
engineer, but a promoter. The stock sales, the bond lottery, the pomp
and circumstance of high finance, were more to him than exact surveys
or frank discussion of actual engineering problems.
From the first, de Lesseps ignored the engineers. The Panama
proposition was undertaken in spite of their advice, and at every turn
he hampered them by impossible demands, and by making grave decisions
with a debonair turn of the hand.
The next factor in the failure was corruption. Extravagance such as
never was known wasted the sous and francs that came from the thrifty
homes of that beautiful France. Corruption, graft, waste--there was
never such a carnival of bad business.
And then the French had to fight the diseases of the tropic jungles
without being armed with that knowledge that gave the Americans the
victory over yellow fever and malaria. It was hardly to be expected
that the French ever would discover the necessity of substituting the
Y. M. C. A. and the soda fountain for the dance hall and the vintner's
shop, if the canal were to be completed.
But the engineers did their work well, as far as they were permitted
to go. It may have cost too much--but it was well done. The failure of
the French Panama Canal project was due, therefore, to moral as much
as to material reasons.
Long years after the French had retired defeated from the field, one
could behold a thousand mute but eloquent reminders of their failure
to duplicate their triumph at Suez. From one side of the Isthmus to
the other stretched an almost unbroken train of gloomy specters of the
disappointed hopes of the French people.
Here a half-mile string of engines and cars; there a long row of steam
cranes; at this place a mass of nondescript machinery; and at that
place a big dredge left high and dry on the banks of the mighty
Chagres at its flood stage, all spoke to the visitor of the French
defeat. Exposed to the ravages of 20 tropical summers, decay ran riot,
and but for the scenes of life and industry being enacted by the
Americans, one might have felt himself stalking amid the tombs of
thousands of dead hopes.
Almost as much money was raised by the French for their failure as was
appropriated by the Americans for their success. From the gilded
palace and from the peasant's humble cottage came the stream of gold
with which it was hoped to lay low the barrier that divided the
Atlantic and the Pacific. At first the French estimated that in seven
or eight years they could dig a 29-foot sea-level canal for
$114,000,000. After eight years they calculated that it would cost
$351,000,000 to make it a 15-foot lock canal and require 20 years to
build it.
Never was money spent so recklessly. For a time it flowed in faster
than it could be paid out--even by the Panama Canal Company. When the
company started it asked for $60,000,000. Double that amount was
offered. The seeming inexhaustibility of the funds led to unparalleled
extravagance; of the some $260,000,000 raised only a little more than
a third was spent in actual engineering work. Someone has said that a
third of the money was spent on the canal, a third was wasted, and a
third was stolen.
The director general at the expense of the stockholders built himself
a house costing $100,000. His summer home at La Boca cost $150,000. It
came to be known as "Dingler's Folly," for Dingler lost his wife and
children of yellow fever and never was able to live in his sumptuous
summer home. He drew $50,000 a year salary, and $50 a day for each day
he traveled a mile over the line in his splendid $42,000 Pullman. The
hospitals at Ancon and Colon cost $7,000,000, and the office
buildings over $5,000,000. Where a $50,000 building was needed, a
$100,000 building was erected, and the canal stockholders were charged
$200,000 for it.
Supplies were bought almost wholly without reference to actual needs.
Ten thousand snow shovels were brought to the Isthmus where no snow
ever has fallen. Some 15,000 torchlights were carried there to be used
in the great celebration upon the completion of the canal.
Steam-boats, dredges, launches, and whatnot were brought to the
Isthmus, knocked down, and taken into the interior to await the
opening of the waterway. The stationery bill of the canal company with
one firm alone amounted to $180,000 a year. When the Americans took
possession they found among other things a ton of rusty and useless
pen points, not one of which had ever been used.
Two years' service entitled employees to five months' leave of absence
and traveling expenses both ways. There was no adequate system of
accounting and any employee could have his requisition for household
articles honored almost as often as he liked. In a multitude of cases
this laxity was taken advantage of and quite a business was carried on
secretly in buying and selling furniture belonging to the company. One
official built a bath house costing $40,000. A son of de Lesseps
became a silent partner of nearly every large contractor on the
Isthmus, getting a large "rake-off" from every contract let.
Near the summit of the Great Divide the Americans who took possession
in 1904 found a small iron steamer. It is said to have been the
purpose of the canal promoters to put this little steamer on a small
pond in Culebra Cut, and by the aid of a skillful photographer to get
a picture showing navigation across the Isthmus. This steamer was
hauled by the Americans to Panama, where during the years of the
American construction work it did service in carrying the sick to the
sanitarium at Taboga.
The different uses to which this steamer was put during the French and
American régimes illustrates the different aims of the Americans and
the French in connection with the Panama Canal. There was little
concern about the health of the canal workers under the French, in
spite of great liberality in the construction of hospitals. The
construction work was let out to contractors, who were charged a
dollar a day by the French Company for maintaining the sick members of
their force in the hospital. Of course, the contractors were not over
anxious to put their employees into the hospitals. The result was that
the death rate at Panama reached almost unprecedented proportions.
[Illustration: THE MAN OF BRAWN]
[Illustration: FERDINAND DE LESSEPS
PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA
AN OLD FRENCH EXCAVATOR NEAR TABERNILLA]
This was aided to a very large degree by the manner of living
obtaining there at that time. In 1887 Lieutenant Rogers, of the United
States Navy, inspected the canal work and reported that the laborers
were paid every Saturday, that they spent Sunday in drinking and
Monday in recuperating, returning to work on Tuesday. A prominent
English writer declared after a visit to Panama that in all the world
there was not, perhaps, concentrated in any single spot so much
swindling and villainy, so much vile disease, and such a hideous mass
of moral and physical abominations.
Add to these things the fact that no one then knew of the
responsibility of the stegomyia mosquito for the existence of yellow
fever, nor that the anopheles mosquito was the disseminator of
malaria, and it is little wonder that the French failed. The
hospitals, instead of aiding in the elimination of yellow fever,
became its greatest allies. The bedposts were set in cups of water,
and here the yellow-fever mosquitoes could breed uninterruptedly and
carry infection to every patient. Wards were shut up tight at night to
keep out the "terrible miasma," and the nurses went to their own
quarters. When morning came there were among those thus left alone
always some ready for the tomb.
The history of the French attempt to construct the Panama Canal
begins, in reality, with the Suez Canal. In 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps,
a Frenchman connected with the diplomatic service, saw an opportunity
to revive the plans for a Suez Canal that had been urged by Napoleon
in 1798. His friend, Said Pasha, had just succeeded to the khediviate
of Egypt, and his proposals were warmly received. The building of the
canal, which presented no serious engineering problems, was begun in
1859 and completed 10 years later. There was a sordid side to its
story, too; but as the losses were borne chiefly by the Egyptians,
Europe ignored them and looked only to the great success of the canal
itself.
As a result, de Lesseps became a national hero in France, and when it
became known that he contemplated piercing another isthmus, the whole
country rose to his support. In 1875, six years after the Suez Canal
had been opened, and as soon as France had recovered her breath from
the shock of the war with Prussia, a company was organized by de
Lesseps to procure a concession for the building of a Panama Canal.
Already the world, as well as France, had come to regard de Lesseps as
an engineer, rather than as a promoter of stock companies, and in this
lay the germ of the disaster that was to overtake the whole scheme.
In 1876, Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte Wyse, a lieutenant of engineers in
the French Army, was sent to Panama to determine the most feasible
route and to conclude negotiations for the construction of a canal
there. He made a perfunctory survey, commencing at Panama and
extending only two-thirds of the way to the Atlantic coast;
nevertheless, he calculated the cost in detail and claimed that his
estimates might be depended upon to come within 10 per cent of the
actual figures. However weak in engineering he may have been, he was
strong in international negotiations, returning to France with a
concession which gave him the right to form a company to build the
canal, and which gave to that company all the rights it needed,
subject only to the prior rights of the Panama Railroad Company under
its concession. The concession was to run for 99 years, beginning from
the date when the collection of tolls on transit and navigation should
begin. The promoters were allowed 2 years to form the company and 12
years to build the canal. The Government of Colombia was entitled to a
share in the gross income of the canal after the seventy-fifth year
from its opening. Four-fifths of this was to be paid to the National
Government and one-fifth to the State of Panama. The canal company was
to guarantee that these annual payments should on no account be less
than $250,000.
When Wyse returned to Paris he got de Lesseps to head the project. The
hero of Suez summoned an international commission of individuals and
engineers, known as the International Scientific Congress, which met
in Paris, May 15, 1879. There were 135 delegates in attendance, most
of whom were Frenchmen, although nearly every European nation was
represented. The United States had 11 representatives at this
congress. After two weeks' conference the decision was reached that a
sea-level canal should be constructed from Colon to Panama. Only 42 of
the 135 men who met were engineers, and it has been stated that those
who knew most about the subject found their opinions least in demand.
M. de Lesseps dominated the conference. Several members who were
radically opposed to its conclusions, rather than declare their
difference from the opinions of a man of such great distinction and
high reputation as de Lesseps enjoyed at that time, absented
themselves when the final vote was taken.
After it was determined to build a sea-level canal, the canal
concession owned by Wyse and his associates was transferred to the
Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique (The Universal
Interoceanic Canal Company) of which de Lesseps was given control. The
canal company was capitalized at $60,000,000. The preliminary budget
of expenses amounted to $9,000,000, of which $2,000,000 went to Wyse
and his associates for the concession. The organizers were entitled to
certain cash payments and 15 per cent of the net profits.
The canal company soon found it necessary to acquire a controlling
interest in the Panama Railroad. That corporation insisted on charging
regular rates on all canal business. In addition, it possessed such
prior rights as made the Wyse concession worthless except there be
agreement on all matters between the railroad company and the canal
company. The result was that the canal company bought the railroad,
and its rights, for the sum of about $18,000,000.
The first visit of de Lesseps to the Isthmus was made in the early
weeks of 1880. He arrived on the 30th day of December, 1879, and was
met by a delegation appointed by the Government, and one nominated by
the State Assembly. There was the usual reception, with its attendant
champagne and conviviality, and a fine display of fire-works at night.
The next day, with a chart before him, de Lesseps promptly decided
where the breakwater to protect the mouth of the canal from the
"northers" sweeping into Limon Bay should be located. He declared that
in the construction of the canal there were only two great
difficulties--the Chagres River and Culebra Cut. The first he proposed
to overcome by sending its waters to the Pacific Ocean by another
route--a project which it has since been estimated would have cost
almost as much as building the canal. The second difficulty he thought
would disappear with the use of explosives of sufficient force to
remove vast quantities of material with each discharge. There was a
great hurrah, and an international celebration during de Lesseps'
stay. The flags of all nations were prominently displayed, with the
single exception of that of the United States.
Count de Lesseps was over 70 years old when he first visited the
Isthmus, though he was still active and vigorous. Mr. Tracy Robinson
described him as "a small man, French in detail, with winning manners
and a magnetic presence. He would conclude almost every statement
with, 'The Canal will be made,' just as a famous Roman always
exclaimed, 'Delende est Carthago.' He was accompanied to the Isthmus
by his wife and three of his seven children. Being a fine horseman, he
delighted in mounting the wildest steeds that Panama could furnish.
Riding over the rough country in which the canal was being located all
day long, he would dance all night like a boy and be ready for the
next day's work 'as fresh as a daisy.'"
On New Year's Day, 1880, de Lesseps formally inaugurated the work of
building the canal. A large party of ladies and gentlemen visited the
mouth of the Rio Grande where the first shovelful of sod was to be
turned. An address was made by Count de Lesseps, and a benediction
upon the enterprise was bestowed by the Bishop of Panama. Champagne
flowed like water, and it is said that the speechmaking continued so
long that the party did not have time to go ashore to turn the sod, so
it was brought on board and Miss Fernanda de Lesseps there made the
initial stroke in the digging of the big waterway.
Some days later the work at Culebra Cut was inaugurated. Tracy
Robinson thus described the scene: "The blessing had been pronounced
by the Bishop of Panama and the champagne, duly iced, was waiting to
quell the swelter of the tropical sun as soon as the explosion went
off. There the crowd stood breathless, ears stopped, eyes blinking,
half in terror lest this artificial earthquake might involve general
destruction. But there was no explosion! It would not go! Then a
humorous sense of relief stole upon the crowd. With one accord
everybody exclaimed, 'Good Gracious!' and hurried away for fear that
after all the dynamite should see fit to explode. That was Fiasco No.
1."
After de Lesseps left the Isthmus he toured the United States where he
was everywhere welcomed although he did not find a market in this
country for his stock.
The scientific congress estimated the cost of building the canal,
whose construction de Lesseps had inaugurated, at $214,000,000. M. de
Lesseps himself later arbitrarily cut this estimate to $131,000,000,
and announced that he believed that vessels would be able to go from
ocean to ocean after the expenditure of $120,000,000. He declared that
if the committee had decided to build a lock canal, he would have put
on his hat and gone home, since he believed it would be much more
expensive to build a lock canal with twin chambers than to build a
sea-level waterway. There were those who declared that six years was
the utmost limit that would be required for building the big ditch.
Others asserted with confidence that it could be done in four years.
During the first three years the company devoted its time to getting
ready for the real work. By 1885 the profligate use of the money
subscribed by the French people brought the funds of the canal company
to a very low ebb. M. de Lesseps asked for permission to establish a
lottery, by which he hoped to provide additional funds for carrying on
the work. The French Government held up the matter and finally sent an
eminent engineer to investigate. This engineer, Armand Rosseau,
reported that the completion of a sea-level canal was not possible
with the means in sight, and recommended a lock canal, plans for which
he submitted. The summit level of this canal was to be 160 feet,
reached by a series of seven or eight locks. After this plan was
adopted, to which de Lesseps reluctantly consented, lottery bonds of a
face value of $160,000,000 were issued which were to bear 4 per cent
interest. But the people failed to subscribe.
At the outset of the work de Lesseps established a bulletin for the
dissemination of information concerning the canal; during the entire
period of his connection with the project this bulletin was filled
with the most exaggerated reports, and the most reckless
mis-statements in favor of a successful prosecution of the work. By
1888 the confidence of the French people in de Lesseps waned. Unable
to raise more money, and now popularly dubbed the "Great Undertaker,"
he found himself in such straits that he saw the French Government
take over the wrecked organization by appointing a receiver with the
power to dispose of its assets. This proved a terrible blow to the
people on the Isthmus. Untold hardships befell the small army of
laborers and clerks. The Government of Jamaica repatriated over 6,000
negroes. The Chilean Government granted 40,000 free passages to Chile,
open to all classes except negroes and Chinese, and for several months
every mail steamer south took away from 600 to 800 stranded people
from the canal region. Where good times and the utmost plenty had
prevailed for years, the Isthmus was now face to face with a period of
want and privation, its glory departed and its hope almost gone.
The receiver of the Panama Canal Company assisted in the organization
of another company known as the New Panama Canal Company. With a
working capital of $13,000,000, it excavated more than 12,000,000
cubic yards of material. In 1890 it found itself in danger of losing
everything by reason of the expiration of its concession. The services
of Lieutenant Wyse were again brought into play, and he secured a
10-year extension of the concession. In 1893 another concession was
granted, with the provision that work should be begun on a permanent
basis by October 31, 1894, and that the canal should be completed by
October 31, 1904. Toward the end of the nineties, it was manifest that
the concession would expire before the work could be finished, so, in
April, 1900, another extension was arranged, which stipulated that the
canal should be completed by October 31, 1910. The New Panama Canal
Company, as a matter of fact, had no other aim in view than to keep
the concession alive in the hope that it could be sold to the United
States.
With all of their profligacy, however, the French left to their
American successors a valuable heritage. What they did was done with
the utmost thoroughness. The machinery which they bequeathed to the
Americans was of immense value. There was enough of this to cover a
500-acre farm 3 feet deep, with enough more to build a 6-foot fence
around it all. The French equipment was of the best. Dredges and
locomotives that stood in the jungle for 20 years were rebuilt by the
Americans at less than 10 per cent of their first cost, and did
service during the entire period of construction.
Although the New Panama Canal Company at one time asked $150,000,000
for its assets, it finally accepted $40,000,000. An appraisement made
by American engineers a few years ago showed that the actual worth of
the property acquired, aside from the franchise itself, amounted to
about $42,000,000.
Count de Lesseps lived to a great age. His last years were saddened
and embittered by the volumes of denunciation that were written and
spoken against him. Certain it is that no man ever went further than
he to maintain confidence in a project that was destined to fail, and
yet his partisans declared that his sin was the sin of overenthusiasm
and not of dishonest purpose. Under the torrents of abuse that fell
upon his head his mind weakened, and, fortunately, in his last days he
realized little of the immeasurable injustice his misplaced zeal and
overenthusiasm had wrought against the people of France.