THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
American control of the canal, as I have already pointed out, was taken
over without any particular ceremony immediately after the payment to
Panama of the $10,000,000 provided for in the treaty. Indeed so slight
was the friction incident to the transfer of ownership from the French
to the Americans that several hundred laborers employed on the Culebra
Cut went on with their work serenely unconscious of any change in
management. But though work was uninterrupted the organization of the
directing force took time and thought. It took more than that. It
demanded the testing out of men in high place and the rejection of the
unfit; patient experimenting with methods and the abandonment of those
that failed to produce results. There was a long period of this
experimental work which sorely tried the patience of the American people
before the canal-digging organization fell into its stride and moved on
with a certain and resistless progress toward the goal.
In accordance with the Spooner act President Roosevelt on March 8, 1904,
appointed the first Isthmian Canal Commission with the following
personnel:
Admiral John G. Walker, U. S. N., _Chairman_,
Major General George W. Davis, U. S. A.,
William Barclay Parsons,
William H. Burr,
Benjamin M. Harrod,
Carl Ewald Gunsky,
Frank J. Hecker.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TUNNEL FOR THE OBISPO DIVERSION CANAL]
In 1913 when the canal approached completion not one of these gentlemen
was associated with it. Death had carried away Admiral Walker, but
official mortality had ended the canal-digging careers of the others.
Indeed under the rule of President Roosevelt the tenure of office of
Isthmian Commissioners was exceedingly slender and the whole commission
as originally designed was finally abolished being replaced by one made
up, with one exception, of officers of the army and navy. The first
commission visited the Isthmus, stayed precisely 24 days, ordered some
new surveys and returned to the United States. The most important fact
about its visit was that it was accompanied to the scene of work by an
army surgeon, one Dr. W. C. Gorgas, who had been engaged in cleaning up
Havana. Major Gorgas, to give him his army title, was not at this time a
member of the Commission but had been appointed Chief Sanitary Officer.
I shall have much to say of his work in a later chapter; as for that
matter Fame will have much to say of him in later ages. Col. Goethals,
who will share that pinnacle was not at this time associated with the
canal work. Coincidently with the Commission’s visit the President
appointed as chief engineer, John F. Wallace, at the moment general
manager of the Illinois Central Railroad. His salary was fixed at
$25,000 a year.
In telling the story of the digging of the Panama Canal we shall find
throughout that the engineer outshines the Commission; the executive
rather than the legislative is the ruling force. The story therefore
groups itself into three chapters of very unequal length--namely the
administrations as chief engineers of John F. Wallace, from June 1,
1904, to June 28, 1905; John F. Stevens, June 30, 1905, to April 1,
1907, and Col. George W. Goethals from April 1, 1907, to the time of
publication of this book and doubtless for a very considerable period
thereafter.
Each of these officials encountered new problems, serious obstacles,
heartbreaking delays and disappointments. Two broke down under the
strain; doubtless the one who took up the work last profited by both the
errors and the successes of his predecessors. It is but human nature to
give the highest applause to him who is in at the death, to immortalize
the soldier who plants the flag on the citadel, forgetting him who fell
making a breach in the outer breastworks and thereby made possible the
ultimate triumph.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE TWO COLONELS
W. C. Gorgas and George W. Goethals, whose combined work gave the canal
to the world.]
Wallace at the very outset had to overcome one grim and unrelenting
enemy which was largely subdued before his successors took up the work.
Yellow fever and malaria ravaged the Isthmus, as they had done from time
immemorial, and although Sanitary Officer Gorgas was there with
knowledge of how to put that foe to rout the campaign was yet to be
begun. They say that Wallace had a lurking dread that before he could
finish the canal the canal would finish him, and indeed he had sound
reasons for that fear. He found the headquarters of the chief engineer
in the building on Avenida Centrale now occupied by the United States
legation, but prior to his time tenanted by the French Director-General.
The streets of the town were unpaved, ankle deep in foul mire in the
rainy season, and covered with germ-laden dust when dry. There being no
sewers the townsfolk with airy indifference to public health emptied
their slops from the second-story windows feeling they had made
sufficient concession to the general welfare if they warned passersby
before tilting the bucket. Yellow fever was always present in isolated
cases, and by the time Wallace had been on the job a few months it
became epidemic, and among the victims was the wife of his secretary.
[Illustration: A WALK AT ANCON]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: IN THE HOSPITAL GROUNDS]
However, the new chief engineer tackled the job with energy. There was
quite enough to enlist his best energies. It must be remembered that at
this date the fundamental problem of a sea level _vs._ a lock canal had
not been determined--was not definitely settled indeed until 1906.
Accordingly Engineer Wallace’s first work was getting ready to work. He
found 746 men tickling the surface of Culebra Cut with hand tools; the
old French houses, all there were for the new force had been seized upon
by natives or overrun by the jungle; while the French had left great
quantities of serviceable machinery it had been abandoned in the open
and required careful overhauling before being fit for use; the railroad
was inadequate in track mileage and in equipment. Above all the labor
problem was yet to be successfully solved. In his one year’s service
Wallace repaired 357 French houses and built 48 new ones, but the task
of housing the employees was still far from completed. Men swarmed over
the old French machinery, cutting away the jungle, dousing the metal
with kerosene and cleaning off the rust. Floating dredges were set to
work in the channel at the Atlantic end--which incidentally has been
abandoned in the completed plans for the canal though it was used in
preliminary construction. The railroad was reëquipped and extended and
the foundation laid for the thoroughly up-to-date road it now is.
Meanwhile the surveying parties were busy in the field collecting the
data from which after a prolonged period of discussion, the vexed
question of the type of canal, should be determined.
Two factors in the situation made Wallace’s job the hardest. The
Commission made its headquarters in Washington, 2000 miles or a week’s
journey away from the job, and the American people, eager for action,
were making the air resound with cries of “make the dirt fly!” In a
sense Wallace’s position was not unlike that of Gen. McClellan in the
opening months of the Civil War when the slogan of the northern press
was “On to Richmond,” and no thought was given to the obstacles in the
path, or the wisdom of preparing fully for the campaign before it was
begun. There are many who hold today that if Wallace had been deaf to
those who wanted to see the dirt fly, had taken the men off the work of
excavation until the type of canal had been determined and all necessary
housing and sanitation work had been completed, the results attained
would have been better, and the strain which broke down this really
capable engineer would have been averted.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
FRENCH COTTAGES ON THE WATER FRONT, CRISTOBAL]
Red tape immeasurable wound about the Chief Engineer and all his
assistants. Requisitions had to go to the Commission for approval and
the Commission clung to Washington tenaciously, as all federal
commissions do wherever the work they are commissioned to perform may be
situated. During the Civil War days a story was current of a Major being
examined for promotion to a colonelcy.
“Now, Major,” asked an examiner, “we will consider, if you please, the
case of a regiment just ordered into battle. What is the usual position
of the colonel in such a case?”
“On Pennsylvania Avenue, about Willard’s Hotel,” responded the Major
bravely and truthfully.
The officers who directed Wallace’s fighting force clung to Pennsylvania
Avenue and its asphalt rather than abide with Avenidà Centrale and its
mud. So too did succeeding commissions until Theodore Roosevelt, who had
a personal penchant for being on the firing line, ordered that all
members of the Commission should reside on the Isthmus. At that he had
trouble enforcing the order except with the Army and Navy officers who
made up five-sevenths of the Commission.
How great was the delay caused by red tape and absentee authorities
cannot be estimated. When requisitions for supplies reached Washington
the regulations required that bids be advertised for. I rather discredit
the current story that when a young Panamanian arrived at Ancon Hospital
and the mother proved unable to furnish him with food, the doctor in
charge was officially notified that if he bought a nursing bottle
without advertising thirty days for bids he must do so at his own
expense. That story seems too strikingly illustrative of red-tape to be
true. But it is true that after Col. Gorgas had worked out his plans
for furnishing running water to Panama, and doing away with the cisterns
and great jars in which the residents stored water and bred mosquitoes,
it took nine months to get the iron pipes, ordinary ones at that, to
Panama. Meanwhile street paving and sewerage were held up and when
Wallace wired the Commission to hurry he was told to be less extravagant
in his use of the cable.
[Illustration: PAY DAY FOR THE BLACK LABOR]
No man suffered more from this sort of official delay and stupidity than
did Col. Gorgas. If any man was fighting for life it was he--not for his
own life but that of the thousands who were working, or yet to work on
the canal. Yet when he called for wire netting to screen out the
malarial mosquitos he was rebuked by the Commission as if he were asking
it merely to contribute to the luxury of the employees. The amount of
ingenuity expended by the Commission in suggesting ways in which wire
netting might be saved would be admirable as indicative of a desire to
guard the public purse, except for the fact that in saving netting they
were wasting human lives. The same policy was pursued when appeals came
in for additional equipment for the hospitals, for new machinery, for
wider authority. Whenever anything was to be done on the canal line the
first word from Washington was always criticism--the policy instantly
applied was delay.
Allowing for the disadvantages under which he labored Mr. Wallace
achieved great results in his year of service on the Isthmus. But his
connection with the canal was ended in a way about which must ever hang
some element of mystery. He complained bitterly, persistently and justly
about the conditions in which he was compelled to work and found in
President Roosevelt a sympathetic and a reasonable auditor. Indeed,
moved by the Chief Engineer’s appeals, the President endeavored to
secure from Congress authority to substitute a Commission of three for
the unwieldy body of seven with which Wallace found it so hard to make
headway. Failing in this the President characteristically enough did by
indirection what Congress would not permit him to do directly. He
demanded and received the resignations of all the original
commissioners, and appointed a new board with the following members:
Theodore P. Shonts, _Chairman_,
Charles E. Magoon, _Governor of the Canal Zone_,
John F. Wallace, _Chief Engineer_,
Mordecai T. Endicott,
Peter C. Hains,
Oswald H. Ernst,
Benjamin M. Harrod.
As in the case of the earlier commissioners none of these remained to
see the work to a conclusion.
This commission, though similar in form, was vastly different in fact
from its predecessor. The President in appointing it had directed that
its first three members should constitute an executive committee, and
that two of these, Gov. Magoon and Engineer Wallace, should reside
continuously on the Zone. To further concentrate power in Mr. Wallace’s
hands he was made Vice-President of the Panama Railroad. The President
thus secured practically all he had asked of Congress, for the executive
committee of three was as powerful as the smaller commission which
Congress had refused him. In all this organization Mr. Wallace had been
consulted at every step. He stayed for two months in Washington while
the changes were in progress and expressed his entire approval of them.
It was therefore with the utmost amazement that the President received
from him, shortly after his return to the Isthmus, a cable requesting a
new conference and hinting at his resignation.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
IN WALLACE’S TIME
Sanitation work in Panama City]
At the moment that cable message was sent Panama was shuddering in the
grasp of the last yellow fever epidemic that has devastated that
territory. Perhaps had Col. Gorgas secured his wire netting earlier, or
Wallace’s appeals for water pipes met with prompter attention it might
have been averted. But in that May and June of 1905 the fever ravaged
the town and the work camps almost as it had in the days of the French.
There had been, as already noted, some scattered cases of yellow fever
in the Zone when the Americans took hold, but they were too few and too
widely separated to cause any general panic. The sanitary authorities
however noted with apprehension that they did not decrease, and that a
very considerable proportion were fatal. It was about this time that the
Commission was snubbing Col. Gorgas because of his insatiable demands
for wire screening. In April there were seven cases among the employees
in the Commission’s headquarters in Panama. Three died and among the 300
other men employed there panic spread rapidly. Nobody cared about jobs
any longer. From all parts of the Zone white-faced men flocked to the
steamship offices to secure passage home. Stories about the ravages of
the disease among the French became current, and the men at work
shuddered as they passed the little French cemeteries so plentifully
scattered along the Zone.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
THE WASHING PLACE AT TABOGA
Taboga, site of the Commission sanitarium, is the most picturesque point
readily accessible from Panama City. The laundry place is the gathering
point for the women of the village.]
The sanitary forces wheeled out into the open and went into the fight.
Every house in Panama and Colon was fumigated, against the bitter
protests of many of the householders who would rather face yellow fever
then the cleansing process, and who did not believe much in these
scientific ideas of the “gringoes” anyway. An army of inspectors made
house to house canvasses of the towns and removed, sometimes by force,
all suspected victims to the isolation hospitals. The malignant
mosquitoes, couriers of the infection, were pursued patiently by
regiments of men who slew all that were detected and deluged the
breeding places with larvacide. The war of science upon sickness soon
began to tell. June showed the high-water mark of pestilence with
sixty-two cases, and six deaths. From that point it declined until in
December the last case was registered. Since then there has been no case
of yellow fever originating on the Isthmus, and the few that have been
brought there have been so segregated that no infection has resulted.
[Illustration: THE FUMIGATION BRIGADE
When the members of this command finished with a district in Panama the
mosquito was done for]
It was, however, when the epidemic was at its height that Mr. Wallace
returned from Washington to the Isthmus. Almost immediately he cabled
asking to be recalled and the President, with a premonition of impending
trouble, so directed. On reaching New York he met the then Secretary of
War, afterwards President, William Howard Taft, to whom he expressed
dissatisfaction with the situation and asked to be relieved at the
earliest possible moment. Secretary Taft declined to consider his
further association with the canal, for a moment, demanded that his
resignation take effect at once and reproached him for abandoning the
work in words that stung, and which when reiterated in a letter and
published the next day put the retiring engineer in a most unenviable
position. From this position he never extricated himself. Perhaps the
fear of the fever, of which he thought he himself had a slight attack,
shook his nerve. Perhaps, as the uncharitable thought and the Secretary
flatly charged, a better position had offered itself just as he had
become morally bound to finish the canal work. Or perhaps he concluded
in the time he had for cool reflection on the voyage to Panama that the
remedies offered for the red tape, divided authority and delay that had
so handicapped him were inadequate. His communication to the press at
the time was unconvincing. The fairest course to pursue in the matter is
to accept Mr. Wallace’s own statement made to a congressional
investigating committee nearly a year later, in answer to a question as
to the cause of his resignation:
[Illustration: TYPICAL SCREENED HOUSES]
“My reason was, that I was made jointly responsible with Mr. Shonts and
Mr. Magoon for work on the canal, while Mr. Shonts had a verbal
agreement with the President that he should have a free rein in the
management of all matters. I felt Mr. Shonts was not as well qualified
as I was either as a business man or an administrator, and he was not an
engineer.... I thought it better to sacrifice my ambitions regarding
this work, which was to be the crowning event of my life, than remain to
be humiliated, forced to disobey orders, or create friction.”
[Illustration: A STREET AFTER PAVING
Before paving it was of the sort shown on page 39]
The Wallace resignation was at the moment most unfortunate. There had
for months been an almost concerted effort on the part of a large and
influential section of the press, and of men having the public ear to
decry the methods adopted at Panama, to criticize the men engaged in the
work and to magnify the obstacles to be overcome. Perhaps this chorus of
detraction was stimulated in part by advocates of the Nicaragua route
hoping to reopen that controversy. Probably the transcontinental
railroads, wanting no canal at all, had a great deal to do with it. At
any rate it was loud and insistent and the men on the Isthmus were
seriously affected by it. They knew by Mr. Wallace’s long absence that
some trouble was brewing in Washington. His sudden departure again after
his return from the capital and the rumor that he had determined to take
a more profitable place added to the unrest. Probably the rather severe
letter of dismissal with which Secretary Taft met the Chief Engineer’s
letter of resignation, and the instantaneous appointment in his place of
John F. Stevens, long associated with James J. Hill in railroad
building, at a salary $5000 a year greater, was the best tonic for the
tired feeling of those on the Isthmus. It indicated that the President
thought those who had accepted positions of command on the Canal Zone
had enlisted for the war, and that they could not desert in the face of
the enemy without a proper rebuke. It showed furthermore that the loss
of one man would not be permitted to demoralize the service, but that
the cry familiar on the line of battle “Close up! Close up, men!
Forward”! was to be the rallying cry in the attack on the hills of
Panama.
[Illustration: STOCKADE FOR PETTY CANAL ZONE OFFENDERS]
Despite the unfortunate circumstances attending Mr. Wallace’s
retirement, his work had been good, so far as it went. In office a
little more than a year he had spent more than three months of the time
in Washington or at sea. But he had made more than a beginning in
systematizing the work, in repairing the railroad, in renovating the old
machinery and actually making “the dirt fly”. Of that objectionable
substance--on the line of the canal, if anywhere, they applaud the
definition “dirt is matter out of place”--he had excavated 744,644
yards. Not much of a showing judged by the records of 1913, but
excellent for the machinery available in 1905. The first steam shovel
was installed during his régime and before he left nine were working.
The surveys, under his direction, were of great advantage to his
successor who never failed to acknowledge their merit.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL BUILDINGS, UNITED FRUIT CO.]
Mr. Stevens, who reached the canal, adopted at the outset the wise
determination to reduce construction work to the minimum and concentrate
effort on completing arrangements for housing and feeding the army of
workers which might be expected as soon as the interminable question of
the sea level or lock canal could be finally determined. From his
administration dates much of the good work done in the organization of
the Commissary and Subsistence Department, and the development of the
railroad. The inducement of free quarters added to high wages to attract
workers also originated with him. At the same time Gov. Magoon was
working over the details of civil administration, the schools, courts,
police system and road building. The really fundamental work of canal
building, the preparation of the ground for the edifice yet to be
erected, made great forward strides at this period. But the actual
record of excavation was but small.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BEGINNING THE NEW DOCKS, CRISTOBAL]
One reason for this was the hesitation over the type of canal to be
adopted. It is obvious that several hundred thousand cubic yards of dirt
dug out of a ditch have to be dumped somewhere. If deposited at one
place the dump would be in the way of a sea-level canal while
advantageous for the lock type. At another spot this condition would be
reversed. Already the Americans had been compelled to move a second time
a lot of spoil which the French had excavated, and which, under the
American plans, was in danger of falling back into Culebra Cut. “As a
gift of prophecy is withheld from us in these latter days,” wrote
Stevens plaintively in reference to the vacillation concerning the
plans, “all we can do now is to make such arrangements as may look
proper as far ahead as we can see.”
President Roosevelt meanwhile was doing all he could to hasten
determination of the problem. Just before the appointment of Mr. Stevens
he appointed an International Board of Advisory Engineers, five being
foreign and nine American, to examine into the subject and make
recommendations. They had before them a multiplicity of estimates upon
which to base their recommendations and it may be noted eight years
after the event that not one of the estimates came within one hundred
million dollars of the actual cost. From which it appears that when a
nation undertakes a great public work it encounters the same financial
disillusionments that come to the young homebuilder when he sets out to
build him a house from architect’s plans guaranteed to keep the cost
within a fixed amount.
Poor De Lesseps estimated the cost of a sea-level canal at $131,000,000,
though it is fair to say for the French engineers whose work is so
generally applauded by our own that their estimate was several million
dollars higher. The famous International Congress had estimated the cost
of a sea-level canal at $240,000,000. In fact the French spent
$260,000,000 and excavated about 80,000,000 cubic yards of earth! Then
came on our estimators. The Spooner act airily authorized $135,000,000
for a canal of any type, and is still in force though we have already
spent twice that amount. The Walker Commission fixed the cost of a
sea-level canal with a dam at Alhajuela and a tide lock at Miraflores at
$240,000,000. The majority of President Roosevelt’s Board of Advisory
Engineers reported in favor of a sea-level canal and estimated its cost
at $250,000,000; the minority declared for a lock canal fixing its cost
“in round numbers” at $140,000,000. Engineer Wallace put the cost of a
sea-level canal at $300,000,000 exclusive of the $50,000,000 paid for
the Canal Zone. Col. Goethals came in in 1908, with the advantage of
some years of actual construction, and fixed the cost of the sea-level
canal at $563,000,000 and the lock type at $375,000,000. He guesses best
who guesses last, but it may be suggested in the vernacular of the
streets that even Col. Goethals “had another guess coming”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A BACK STREET IN COLON
This street is as clean and well paved as any in the United States]
On all these estimates the most illuminating comment is furnished by the
Official Handbook of the Panama Canal for 1913 showing total
expenditures to November 1, 1912, of $270,625,624 exclusive of
fortification expenditures. The Congressional appropriations to the same
date, all of which were probably utilized by midsummer of 1913, were
$322,551,448.76.
The action of his Advisory Board put President Roosevelt for the moment
in an embarrassing position. A swinging majority declared for a
sea-level canal, and even when the influence of Engineer Stevens, who
was not a member of the Board, was exerted for the lock type it left the
advocates of that form of canal still in the minority. To ask a body of
eminent scientists to advise one and then have them advise against one’s
own convictions creates a perplexing situation. But Roosevelt was not
one to allow considerations of this sort to weigh much with him when he
had determined a matter in his own mind. Accordingly he threw his
influence for the lock type, sent a resounding message to Congress and
had the satisfaction of seeing his views approved by that body June 29,
1906. It had been two years and two months since the Americans came to
Panama, and though at last the form of canal was determined upon there
are not lacking today men of high scientific and political standing who
hold that an error was made, and that ultimately the great locks will be
abandoned and the canal bed brought down to tide water.
[Illustration: STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK]
The Americans on the Isthmus now got fairly into their stride.
Determination of the type of canal at once determined the need for the
Gatun Dam, spillway and locks. It necessitated the shifting of the
roadbed of the Panama railroad as the original bed would be covered by
the new lake. The development of the commissary system which supplied
every thing needful for the daily life of the employee, the
establishment of quarters, the creation of a public school system, were
all well under way. Then arose a new issue which split the second
Commission and again threatened to turn things topsy-turvy.
[Illustration: THE BALBOA ROAD
The trolley line shown will extend from Balboa, through Panama and Ancon
to the ruins of Old Panama]
Chairman Shonts, himself a builder of long experience and well
accustomed to dealing with contractors, was firmly of the opinion that
the canal could best be built by letting contracts to private bidders
for the work. In this he was opposed by most of his associates, and
particularly by Mr. Stevens who had been working hard and efficiently to
build up an organization that would be capable of building the canal
without the interposition of private contractors looking for personal
profit. The employees on the Zone, naturally enough, were with Stevens
to a man, and time has shown that he and they were right. There is
something about working for the nation that stirs a man’s loyalty as
mere private employment never can. But in this instance Mr. Shonts was
in Washington, convenient to the ear of the President while Mr. Stevens
was on the Zone. Accordingly the President approved of the Chairman’s
plan, and directed the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, to advertise for
bids. Mr. Stevens was discontented and showed it. That his judgment
would be justified in the end he could not know. That it had been set
aside for the moment he was keenly aware, and that he was being harassed
by Congress and by innumerable rules such as no veteran railroad builder
had ever been subjected to did not add to his comfort.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A DRILL BARGE AT WORK
The sea and tidal waters are underlaid with coral rock necessitating
much submarine blasting]
His complaints to the Secretary of War were many, and not of a sort to
contribute to that official’s peace of mind. When the bids came in from
the would-be contractors they were all rejected on the ground that they
did not conform to the specifications, but the real reason was that the
President at heart did not believe in that method of doing the work, and
was sure that the country agreed with him. This should have allayed Mr.
Stevens’ rising discontent. It certainly offended Chairman Shonts, who
stood for the contract system, and when the bids were rejected and that
system set aside promptly resigned. The President thereupon consolidated
the offices of Chairman of the Commission and Chief Engineer in one, Mr.
Stevens being appointed that one. Given thus practically unlimited power
Mr. Stevens might have been expected to be profoundly contented with the
situation. Instead he too resigned on the first of April, 1907.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO THE CANAL]
About his resignation as about that of Mr. Wallace there has always been
a certain amount of mystery. He himself made no explanation of his act,
though his friends conjectured that he was not wholly in harmony with
the President’s plan to abolish the civilian commission altogether, and
fill its posts by appointments from the Army and Navy. On the Isthmus
there is a story that he did not intend to resign at all. Albert
Edwards, who heard the story early, tells it thus:
“One of the canal employees, who was on very friendly terms with
Stevens, came into his office and found him in the best of spirits. When
the business in hand was completed he said jovially:
“‘Read this. I’ve just been easing my mind to T. R. It’s a hot
one--isn’t it?’ And he handed over the carbon copy of his letter. His
visitor read it with great seriousness.
“‘Mr. Stevens’, he said, ‘that is the same as a resignation’.
“And Stevens laughed.
“‘Why, I’ve said that kind of thing to the Colonel a dozen times. He
knows I don’t mean to quit this job’.
“But about three hours after the letter reached Washington Mr. Stevens
received a cablegram: ‘Your resignation accepted’”.
At any rate the Stevens resignation called forth no such explosive
retort as had been directed against the unhappy Wallace, and he showed
no later signs of irritation, but came to the defense of his successor
in a letter strongly approving the construction of certain locks and
dams which were for the moment the targets of general public criticism.
Two weeks before Stevens resigned the other members of the Commission,
excepting Col. Gorgas, in response to a hint from the President had sent
in their resignations. Mr. Roosevelt had determined that henceforward
the work should be done by army and navy officers, trained to go where
the work was to be done and to stay there until recalled; men who had
entered the service of the nation for life and were not looking about
constantly to “better their conditions”. He had determined further that
the government should be the sole contractor, the only employer, the
exclusive paymaster, landlord and purveyor of all that was needful on
the Zone. In short he had planned for the Canal Zone a form of
administration which came to be called socialistic and gave cold chills
to those who stand in dread of that doctrine. To carry out these
purposes he appointed on April 1, 1907, the following commission:
Lieut.-Col. George W. Goethals, _Chairman and Chief Engineer_,
Major D. D. Gaillard, U. S. A.,
Major William L. Sibert, U. S. A.,
Mr. H. H. Rousseau, U. S. N.,
Col. W. C. Gorgas, U. S. A., Medical Corps,
Mr. J. C. S. Blackburn,
Mr. Jackson Smith,
Mr. Joseph Bucklin Bishop, _Secretary_.
A majority of this commission was in office at the time of publication
of this book, and gave evidences of sticking to the job until its
completion. Senator Blackburn resigned in 1910 and was succeeded by Hon.
Maurice H. Thatcher, also of Kentucky; and Mr. Smith retired in favor of
Lieut. Col. Hodges in 1908. In June, 1913, Commissioner Thatcher
resigned and was succeeded by Richard L. Metcalfe of Nebraska. With the
creation of this commission began the forceful and conclusive
administration of Col. Goethals, the man who finished the canal.