Miasma must result from the excavation of the decayed vegetation of a thousand years which constitutes the waterway line with the exception of the Culebra Cut, and yet the central belt of the Isthmus has enough of pernicious malaria even with the earth undisturbed. Experiences at Havana and elsewhere will be utilized, and the mosquito, if not exterminated, will have its harmfulness curbed. Whatever can be accomplished by artificial means to combat disease-breeding Nature will be accomplished, and no doubt need be felt regarding the efficiency of the sanitary corps as organized under the Canal Commission. But when all is not simply said but done, it comes to this: the inherent unhealthy conditions of the Canal Zone will be reduced to a minimum. The climate will not be conquered. What may happen will be to reconcile it to the presence of a larger number of inhabitants than the region heretofore has had.
For those who will dwell and work on the Isthmus the suggestions of the sanitary corps are so complete that I can add nothing except to advise to follow these instructions and to take a vacation either to the healthful mountains of Costa Rica or down the Pacific coast or back home as often as possible. The population which will be living in the Canal Zone for the next twenty years in relation to health is to be taken in the mass, and the experiences of a few individuals who have been able to regulate their own occupations with a special view to conserving their strength are not to be accepted as applying to thousands of other individuals. Nor is the result of a few months’ life on the Isthmus in its effect on the human energies to be accepted as the index of what may be expected after several years, during which the mental and the physical faculties are concentrated on one task.
The lessons of the first year’s experience are easily learned. In the beginning was the buoyant, hopeful American temperament which goes straight forward to the task and, once determined that it shall be done, takes no note of obstacles. The Canal never would be built if the spirit of pessimism obtained at the outset. Optimism is always better in a great national undertaking. A large number of cheerful and confident Americans flocked to the Isthmus to fill positions in the engineering, the clerical, the sanitary departments and on the railroad. That there were confusion and cross-purposes in administration and complaint of red tape was not important. Actually the Washington authorities cut far more of the red tape than ordinarily can be done safely in government enterprises. But within a few months loud complaints were heard about low wages, the high cost of living, the long hours of labor, and the lack of recreation and amusement. Then the discouraged employees began to come home. They were of two classes. Many of the early home-comers were the adventurous fellows who had gone to Panama wanting a new experience and having had it more rapidly than they had anticipated, returned to spread the discontent. There was the other, and perhaps the more numerous, class who had gone in good faith, expecting to find conditions as to health and personal comfort similar to the United States, and intending to stay. It is likely, too, that both classes, working as they were for the government, expected easier conditions than would obtain in private employment.
The unvarying tendency of the returning employees was to discredit the glowing official and semi-official reports which had been made, and the promises held out of immunity from even the common ailments, including lassitude and homesickness. Then came the yellow fever epidemic of the Summer of 1905 and the long period during which the health authorities were baffled in locating the focus of infection. There was also the disagreeable evidence that pernicious malaria had had time to work havoc in many strong constitutions. The picture of the panic-stricken groups struggling to get away from Colon with every vessel may have been a little overdrawn, but that the feeling throughout the Isthmus was one of illy suppressed and contagious terror was undeniable. Yet to those experienced in tropical diseases the mortality was not an excessive one, nor were the general health conditions bad, allowance being made for surroundings. The permanent hospital records and vital statistics unquestionably will show that wonders were really worked under a scientific and systematic sanitation and provisions for conserving the health of employees. But the medical officials in their spirit of hopefulness had predicted freedom from the inevitable diseases of the Isthmus of Panama, and the failure of their prophecies caused the disappointing results to be exaggerated.
Ruins at Panama
Generally, during the first year the United States suffered from too much expert opinion and advice regarding engineering and administrative work of the Canal and too little practical application to the task in hand. This was not true of the sanitary authorities, who worked harmoniously and effectively. If only they had been more conservative in their original statements, it would have been better for their reputations as prophets of health. It always is to be remembered that ditch-digging in the most humid and rainiest section of the tropics cannot be made an entirely healthful occupation, and as fast as the subsoil is turned up by the steam-shovel the earth’s resentment at being disturbed will make itself felt. The procurement of the permanent class of employees and laborers with the physical stamina and the moral fibre which the work of Canal construction requires, is necessarily an evolution and not the creation of a single year. But that class will be evolved, and the undertaking will go forward.
My own point of view is twofold. The Canal insures the industrial development of the Isthmus of Panama along the lines of tropical agriculture. It creates an international commerce and it adds to the domestic trade. It will secure an increased permanent population to replace the army of construction when the work of excavation shall be completed. This is the certainty in relation to the resources and the people. It will be good for Panama. But there is a wider good which is not local. For ten or twenty years the Canal will be a training-school in which to test and strengthen the constructive energy of the American character. Nowhere will the initiative faculty make greater demands on the individual. For those “who die victorious” the tribute of Time will be the completed Canal. For those who live the task will be from year to year out of their abundant experience to help on the industrial development of adjacent lands, among them the West Coast countries. And that is the civilization which will sweep from the Atlantic through the Canal and down the Pacific.