The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-11-19
PANAMA AND ITS PEOPLE.
WHY INDEPENDENCE IS NOW
 SOUGHT.

Land Rich In Natural Resouress,
 Whose inhabitants Have Ignored
 Them and Have Relied Wholly on
 che Canal PossibnIty-The Peculiar
 Evils Attendant Upon the Railroad.
 Physically socially and politically Panama is a panhandle. a remote, slightly connected appendage of CoIum- bia. It takes three weeks to go from the isthmus to the capital at Bogota.
 The interests of the two are essentially different. Columbia is a South Ameri- can country, whose prosperity depends, like that of the other South American countries, on mining and agriculture. As for Panama, the one gigantic acci- dent of nature which causes it to be a country apart is its canal possibility. That it is the narrowest part of the
 western hemisphere makes it sui gene ris. Its interests all hang on this, and good government for it would be one which should keep this steadily in mind. What, to the isthmus, is the price of cattle and hides in Bogota, compared to the golden prospect of the United States spending uncounted mil- lions in labor along the 49 miles that stretch between Colon and Panama? On the other hand, what is it to thepoli- ticians at Bogota that a canal is to be built at remote spot except an oppor- tunity to blackmail the United States? The native of Panama, then, when the Herran-Hay treaty was rejected at Bo- gota, saw project which was to bring fortune to him individually, in the
 countless ways in which the spending
 of so vast sum will bring money to the inhabitants of the territory, de- | feated because of the cupidity. of the Bogota politicians.
 Looked at as a commercial matter, the canal possibility is Panama's great
 asset. That the Colombian government
 should deal lightly with it as Panama's
 cause for secession. The same cause was tc' some extent involved in our civil war; and the canal possibility actually appeals more to the Latin-A American inl- 1 aginatien than the cotton crop or slave labor to the South Clashing eommer-
 cial interests, separate industrial uni- ties, is valid cause for separate goV- ernment. Looked at in this light, the Panama secession commands sympa- I thy.
 | Another reason for political unity is | geographical unity; and Panama is pe- culiarly and distinctly physical unit. On the south it is cut off right at, the point where the narrow neck of the | isthmus begins to expand abruptly in | to the giant torso of South America; on I the north it ends similarly where the l isthmus begins to broaden into Central ' America. Panama includes roughly all | that portion of the western hemisphere | which is less than hundred miles in each direction from the canal-not, l after all, greatly more than the amount
 of territory which should be policed by l the nation that builds the great water | way. The Panama nation will be a fit
 ting and convenient geographical frame
 for the Panama canal.
 Granted that new nation has been
 born, what has it to build upon. Again
 one comes back to Panamas one pecu- 1 liar source of wealth. Of this the pee I pie have had both the burdens and the
 benefits. Rather they have had the burdens, and the benefits are yet to
 come. In contemplating the pleasing vision of the fortune which would be \ theirs when the flow of gold to the ca nal should begin, they have been in l different to the possibilities of hard 4 work: and the natural resources of l Panama are to-day practically as un- developed as when Balboa cried "Tha-
 Iassa" from the backbone of the isth-
 mus. The easier source of revenue has l been too tempting: the mahogany that
 might be cut and exported the cocoa
 nuts and bananas that might be grown
 have been neglected.
 l The railroad, built by foreign capital and manned by foreign labor, is the on | ly highly developed business in the country. At the Atlantic end is Colon
 with 5000 people. at the Pacific end Pan anna with 20,000 These cities depend not on the natural resources of the l country at all, but occupy themselves | chiefly with the foreign transit from | ocean to ocean. For the rest, they live on the wreck of the French canal and the anticipation of the American one
 Panama" says Francis c. Nicholas
 in Across Panama" published this
 week, Hives on the travellers; so it has been for years, so it will always be, un- less the canal should be lost to the isthmus; which all who know the dis. I puted routes sincerely hope will not be the case But what fine time the
 sharks will have when once the work is established!"
 Leave the two cities and you find the
 worst type of the stagnation for which Latin America is notorious. Prof
 Josiah Rice tells of traveller on the Panama steamer who, during his first
 day in Colon, proposed "a carriage
 drive into the country to the amuse. ment of an American resident familiar l with the fact that there is not a car l riage drive leading out of the city. The
 only part of the interior accessible to | the traveller is that which lies along
 the railroad, and such settlements as l one sees there are described by the l United States minister to Colombia as
 composed of houses having for the | most part thatched-rof sheds with dirt 1 floors. Their inmates can hardly be
 classed as belonging exclusively to
 either of the three primal races. They
 are a curious mixture of red, white and | black; crude evidence of the lax moral ity which prevailed in Spanish colonial | times. How these people manage to | live nT why they newer had the enerpy