Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1904-06-28

be determined.
Labor unions in the United States
have already debated the regulation Of
wages and working hours at Panama,
and have announced an intention to
organize the laborers there to this end.
But no sensible person can spend an
hour in the heat of the Culebra cut
without coming to the conclusion that
this is not a white mans Job. The
French Canal company is now paying
it's laborers s1.0s a day, Colombia sill
yer, worth about A cents in United
States currency"
DR.. Stephens says that 1t Is an err
ror to speak Of any locality as In it.
self "unhealthful." If disease Is pres
ent it has been brought there by the
men or animals which have become in
fected elsewhere. No locality breeds
new disease. He wants the govern
ment to establish a school Of tropical
diseases at Colon. The greatest varie-
ty Of clinical material would be abun-
dant. Canal laborers arriving from
various points in the tropics will af-
ford excellent material for study, with
the added advantages Of observing the
course Of the diseases in tropical cli-
mate.
DR.. Stephens also favors camp OF
detention and observation for incoming
laborers. In no other way can dis
ease be prevented from gaining access
to the labor camps along the line of
the canal. Nor when forwarded from
the camp of observation to labor camps
should the executive guardianship over
the laborers cease or be relaxed for
a moment. A single hole in ones mos
quito net lets in the mosquito that will
inoculate him with yellow fever or
malaria; so with a system Of health
protection for 10000 laborers. At a
single weak point Of the system an
epidemic may enter; the system must
be precise, efficient at all points and
constantly operative. If the best
economic results are to be obtained the
labor camps must be inclosed, policed
and regulated as If under military dis
cipline. He thinks it would be found
expedient to have a canteen at every
camp, where tobacco, malt beverages
and a limited quantity Of distilled IL
quors Of standard quality could be
purchased by the laborers.
Good Words For the chagres River.
This observers account Of the Cha
gres river Is interesting. The whole
world has heard Of the Chagres river
but has heard no good of it. Indeed,
the English. French and Spanish Ian
guages have been ransacked for terms
with which to stigmatize it. 1t is the
"torrentiap' Chagres. the deadly
Chagres, the "miasmatic" Chagres, the
Uncomfortable, ungovernable" Chagres,
the "accursed" Chagres, that Internal
river" 1t has even had a fever of
lethal character named after 1t.
when the French Canal officials
wished to find a scapegoat," says DIR.
Stephens, "for their malfeasance In
spending, or stealing, s2OO,00O,000, and
not digging canal with it, they select
ed the Chagres river and attributed
everything bad to that. 1t washed
back all the earth which they dug out;
it rendered a tide water canal impos-
sible; it brought malaria and death to
their laborers: in fine, they would have
constructed the Panama canal by 1892
but for that awful Chagres river!
II really expected to see a moral
monster Of a river there. was look
ing for something like the Styx, as de-
scribed by the classic poets. 1t would
not have surprised me greatly to see
a stream Of miasmatic, green slime,
haunted by Chagres fever ghosts. In
stead, what one sees Is a pretty little
river Of azure water, purling gently over
sandy bars-quite an ideal stream,
with lovely gravels and pools beneath
green banks, the bare sight Of which
makes one think Of his fish hook and
line.
But this was the dry season. I be-
gan making careful inquiries as to the
wet season. Once. seventeen years
ago, 1t did rise pretty high. At
place where the channel is much COM
pressed, at Las Cascades, it rose be-
tween thirty and forty feet that year
for a few hours. found that at home
among its neighbors, so to speak
the Chagres bore a good enough repu-
T,, f1a
floods the Chagres is no worse than
the Big Sandy, the French Broad, or
the Androscoggin in our own country.
But for the Chagres an inter-oceanic
canal at Panama during the next quar-
ter of a century would be physical
impossibility. A tide-water canal at
Panama is impossible, except at such
cost as to be practically useless to the
American people. 1t Is just here that
the Chagres river comes In. BY build
ing a dam across 1t and across the ca
nal at Bohio, near sea level, on the
Atlantic side, an elevated island lake
may be formed across the highest por-
ton Of the Isthmus extending through
the Culebra cut. By using the Cha
gres to form this lake, more than four
fifths of the excavation necessary for
a tide-water canal may be avoided.
Were it not for the Chagres river this
lake could not be formed. The volume
of water which flows is just about suf-
ficient to fill the lake and supply water
for the locks. If it were much larger,
1t would give trouble; If less, 1t would