Arizona republican., 1904-05-13
American Success to Follow French
 Failure.

canal company TeCelNeu lAO.u 'HI government of the United States the fcrty million dollars in cash which Uncle Sam paid in full consideration to the canal company for it's claims, there passed finally from French con- trol the worst white elephant that ever burdened the French people. It would be impossible. probably, to ascertain within many millions the total cost Of the transfer to the United States, but it is known to have exceeded 750 mill lion dollars.
 Indeed the financial history of the enterprise under French control is a chronicle of mismanagement, wasteful extravaganza and failure and graft the parallel of which the world can not furnish. When Ferdinand de Les pletion of the Suez canal, announced that he proposed to cut a ship canal across the isthnus of Panama, the people of France fought for a chance
  From an engineering standpoint the work was prosecuted legitimately un- der de Lesseps, but the extravaganza was colossal. When the exposures finally came, in subsequent years. nothing verse than incompetence was proved against de Lesseps. but some of his relatives, along with numerous officials of the French government. were found to have been steeped in ~raft.
 After the first collapse of the ven ture, under de Lesseps, there was an unsuccessful effort to revive the scheme through a lottery, and after that reorganization was resorted to, but practically little progress in the work of construction was made. The expenditures went on, however. Net only were the direct losses resulting from the legitimate prosecution of the work under de Lesseps enormous, but those of an indirect character which were sustaintd by French banking in stitutions, who sought to finance the scheme, and by the French people, are estimated at about s75OOOO,O 900.
 After the failure of the lottery scheme in 1SSs which was organized with the object of providing 15O mil lions of dollars for the. resumption Of work on the. canal. it was officially stated that $50 million dollars had already been expended upon the work, which was then only half completed, with the most difficult part of the canal yet to be dug. The lottery scheme was devised in order to effect a recovery at least of part of this loss, but even if the 15O millions of the bonds had been sold, the amount real ized therefrom would not have been more than 12O millions, owing to the concession in the issue price of the securities, and of this sum there would remain only 36 millions for the prose cution of the work after providing for defciences in interest to prevent fore closure.
 
 the lottery scheme were, however, con fident Of the success of the enterprise and the former was on record in 1880 as promising that with the aid of the new contributions which were then solicited the canal would be made ready for opening in 1890, and that an annual traffic of four millions Of tons would yield the anticipated dividend. The immediate cause for the failure of the lottery scheme was the collapse of the Societe des Metaux, the great copper syndicate of Paris, which pre- cipitated a crisis making it necessary for the bank of France to come to the relief of the market with an advance of 20 millions of dollars, while private bankers contributed an equal sum.
 The losses involved by this crisis, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, discouraged further attempts to promote the Panama lottery scheme, the canal company was subsequently, compelled to liquidate and the sue ceeding new corporation, whose inter- ests have now been bought by the United States, undertook the prosecu- tion of the work. A controlling inter est in the Panama railroad, which was the most valuable asset of the cid company, was turned over to secure some of the contractors and the liqui- dators of the old corporation reported that two and half millions of dollars would be required from the new com pany to prevent deterioration of the plant.
 The Barring panic in 1890 caused fur ther financial Arrangements in Paris making difficult the procurement by the new Panama Canal company of capital for the prosecution of the en- terprise and it was not until the effect of these disturbances had entirely dis appeared that this corporation was en- abled to resume work on the. canal. When the negotiations were opened for the sale of the property to the