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National Geographic : 1912 Feb
Contents
THE PANAMA CANAL of the sanitary campaign becomes re markable. Of course there is no region on earth where so much money is spent in propor tion to population or to area for keeping the people in health as at Panama. Did we spend as much at home for sanitation and hospitals in proportion to population as we spend at Panama, our total outlay for health would aggregate one-third of all the expenditures of public money by the United States, the States, the coun ties, municipalities, and school and road districts of the country combined. Did we spend as much in proportion to area, our total outlay for health purposes would amount practically to 12 billion dollars a year. It has been said that there might be both a congress of nations and a con gress of mosquitoes on the Isthmus. Counting the islands of the sea as sepa rate countries, it is said that there are 52 countries represented on the Isthmus, and the number of kinds of mosquitoes once was many times more. But the mosquito cannot operate suc cessfully in oil stocks; water is his line. A baby mosquito must live in the water, and is under the necessity of making some 8,000 trips to the surface while growing to adulthood. It comes up for air. If it happens to get a single speck of oil down its little gullet on any one of these many trips, there is a funeral in mosquitodom soon thereafter; and thou sands of barrels of oil have been scat tered upon the mosquito-troubled waters of Panama. Doing this, keeping the grass cut, the drains all open, and dan gerous diseases out of the ports repre sents a large proportion of the health work at Panama. THE MAN AT THE HELM When President Roosevelt called upon Lieut. Col. George W. Goethals to go to Panama and dig the canal, he selected a leader of men who is entitled to rank with the greatest captains of history. To study him at close range is to know one of the most remarkable men of the times. He cares just about as little for popular applause as any man I have ever known. He always keeps himself in the back- ground. Tall, broad-shouldered, bronzed faced, with snowy white hair and mus tache, he is physically a man among men. Intensely loyal to his military training, he cares as little for its fuss and feathers and trappings as did Grant or Stonewall Jackson. One day I was traveling with him across the Isthmus to Colon, and I re marked that he must be the busiest man on the Isthmus, and that yet I had never seen a man who always seemed to have as little pressing work befcre him. "I have a contempt for the man who is al ways trying to make it appear that he is busier than other people, and that they must wait on him," came the laconic reply. At another time I remarked that he seemed to have solved all of the prob lems of the canal and had the whole force in smooth working order. "If you were to drop into my office any Sunday morning, when it is open to the lowest workman on the canal, you might think differently," he responded. "I think," he continued, "that the best way to keep men contented is to give them a hearing. I may not be able to do what they would wish, but the very fact that I hear them makes them feel that I want to do the right thing by them." In speaking of the progress of the work in Culebra Cut, the Chief Engineer revealed to me a species of greatness above anything I have ever seen. He has worked and slept with his task for five years, keeping at it with unrelenting zeal and calm enthusiasm. The whole world rightly gives him great credit, but in one generous handful he turned the bulk of it over to his predecessor, doing it in about the following words: "The people talk about the success of the army engineer at Panama, but it was fortunate that Mr. Stevens preceded us. The real problem of digging the canal has been the disposal cf tl 2 spoil, and no army engineer in America could have laid out the transportation scheme as Mr. Stevens did. We are building on the founda tions he laid, and the world cannot give him too much credit." Colonel Goethals has special trains, private cars, and motor cars at his dis- 203
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