Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

PREFACE

MY purpose in this work is to consider and describe the effect of the Panama Canal on the West Coast countries of South America from the year 1905. At this period its construction by the United States may be said to have begun. If my own deep conviction that this influence makes powerfully for their industrial development and their political stability be an illusion, the pages which follow may afford the disbelievers grounds for pointing out wrong premises or false conclusions. “We doubt” long has been the dogma of the North American and the European in everything relating to the permanency of progress in the Spanish-American Republics. “I believe” is yet only the creed of the individual. A huge material fact obtruding itself may secure a listening ear from the doubters. The Canal obtrudes.

The severely practical Northern mind finds itself in a brain-fog with reference to the Southern Continent. Speculative reasoning regarding new forces of civilization does not appeal to it. It wants the concrete circumstances. Now the Canal is not an abstraction. The industrial and commercial energies which it wakens are not abstractions. The interoceanic waterway is a national undertaking, but it shows the way to individual enterprise. More than the gates of chance are opened to American youth. They are the gates of opportunity. Consequently the need of knowledge.

The number of recent books relating to the history of South America seems to indicate a demand for this knowledge in its primary form. They open the path for a volume which may be limited more strictly to industrial, fiscal, and political information. For that reason, while not overlooking the historical element in the institutions and governmental systems, I have not thought it necessary to consider them chronologically from the colonial epoch or even from the era of independence.

The effort to divorce economic and social forces from places and peoples in order to analyze a principle usually is so barren that I have not attempted it. Places have their significance, and people are the human material. Customs and institutions are only understood properly in their environment. So many excellent descriptive works have been written about South America that I have sought to subordinate these features; yet since the information applies to localities something about them could not entirely be omitted. Moreover, I have that abounding faith which leads me to look forward to the time when the engineering marvels of the Canal construction may prove enough of a magnet to draw thither the travelled American who would know what his country is doing and who, once on the Isthmus, will be likely to continue down the West Coast with a view to determining the relative attractions of the noble Andes and the Alps. Yet I have made no attempt to preserve the form of continuous narrative. The treatment of the subject does not demand it.

To South American friends who may be offended at the frankness or the bluntness of the views expressed, a word may be communicated. The confidences extended me while on an official mission widened my own vision of the aspirations of their public men. At the same time they conveyed the idea that the economic evolution to which all look forward will come more swiftly if reactionary tendencies are combated more openly and aggressively. Opinions on the policy of the United States being uttered with freedom, I have not thought it necessary to adopt the apologetic attitude in regard to other Republics. In seeking the constructive elements in the national life and character of the South American countries, it has been with the undisguised hope that the contact and the impact of North American character may be a reciprocal influence.

Acknowledgment of material for the general map, which amplifies that of the permanent Pan-American Railway Committee, is due its chairman, Hon. H. G. Davis, whose faith in the future relation of the United States to the other American countries is an example to the generation which will share the benefits both of the Canal and of railroad construction.

C. M. P.

Washington, D. C.
January, 1906.