The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-23

could easily exhaust those islands OF
able-bodied men. Their champions say
they can be secured in limitless guam
titles. That is entirely false. When we
have grappled with the task of building
the canal and gotten it under full
swing we shall need almost innumera-
BILE thousands of laborers. The most
optimistic estimates are that with co.
900 men we can complete the waterway
in eight years. 1t is more reasonable to
presume that $4,000 men will have it
ready to open in ten years.
If we estimate the number in this
corps by taking the mean of the esti-
innate given, respectively, by the optl-
mistic and the pessimistic, we shall
probably hit about the figure fact will
demonstrate as necessary. This will be
$4,000 men, with constant recruits to
fill the vacancies left by disease and
death, with the forces working an
eight-hour shift a day. One hundred
thousand will be the number if the
working day is divided into three eight
hour shifts. The West Indian islands
could not supply the smaller number,
to say nothing of the larger. Only those
West Indians to whom the wages Of
fered would prove a magnet could be
employed for this work; those who now
earn more on their native islands than
the canal contractors will pay could
rate of wages for ordinary manual Ia
Dor on the isthmus is 1920 Colombian
silVer) a day. 1t will probably never
be any higher, for should the republic
fix an arbitrary rate of exchange at
two for one, as is now proposed, this
wage will be equal to $1.10 gold a day.
Certainly the contractors on the canal
will not pay more than this sum.
Collie Labor Most Preferred.
This brings the labor problem back
| to the Chinese coolie, as no other class
| is available in number sufficient to
| meet the requirements of the under
taking. The most intelligent and best
| informed students of this problem
| agree almost unanimously in the judg-
ment that before we shall have pro-
| crossed very far in digging the canal
we SHALL no matter what our first in
tentions, be compelled to resort to the
| coolies. The Panamaian advocate of
Chinese exclusion retorts that if we
proceed upon this line disease will balk
our effort, and points defiantly to the
record under the French. Then the
Cinnamon died in appalling numbers,
even in the higher and healthier
| sections of the work, and the village
of Matachin-dead Chinamen-on the
line of the railway, midway between
this city and Panama, is a monument
to deaths wholesale depletion of the
coolies ranks. But the student has his
rejoinder ready. The French displayed
culpable ignorance IN selecting Chi
nese for importation. They picked up
the coolies wherever those willing to
come here could be found, whereas
little trouble would have been expert
enced had they gone-as our agents
will do-into the Chinese ricefields,
where coolies thoroughly Injured. to wet
climates and accustomed to working
more than knee-deep in water may be
found in countless and inexhaustible
numbers. This class of coolie labor
would, it is commended, be immune to
the isthmian'S climate terrors, and by
resorting to it's employment the con-
tractors under the United States would
never be confronted or impeded by a
scarcity of labor.
Such are the general aspects of the
labor problem as it will be presented
by the ratification of the canal treaty
This problem we shall have to face the
moment that treaty becomes operative
| and our interests assume a vested ma
ture. The advantages to result from
the employment of coolie labor are as
positive as are the disadvantages that
would follow the engagement of any
other class of workers. The patent in
ability of our government to use either
Caucasian or negro laborers from the
States on the actual work of excava-
ton places the coolie proposition in
light entirely different from that in
which it appears when the considera-
ton is one of Cinnamon going to the
states. Without, therefore, in any way
compromising the stand it has taken
on the question of excluding the Chi
nese from our own country, our gov
eminent should sit down very hard
upon the suggestion that this new re-
public pass a Chinese exclusion act.
This might as we'll be done now as at
any other time, for even if we should
start out with another idea. we shall
sooner or later be driven to realiza-
ton of the fact that the coolie alone
can solve the labor problem as it
will appear in the construction of the
canal.