The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-12
rHp rRoUpLrs AT PANAMA.

However willing or anxious we might be to discredit the many gruesome stories about the unsanitary and dam gerous conditions existing on and about the canal sone 1t will not do to declare them all untrue. It is natural that those who come away. either on &C., count of Ill health or through fear of 1t would be inclined to exaggerate the danger, but we are bound to believe that conditions are decidedly bad. The Kansas City Journal thus refers to the subject:
 The dismal and grewsome testimony of clerks. mechanics and women nurses concerning the conditions on the isthmus are enough to make ones flesh crawl. It Is bad enough to read about chasres fever and bubonic plague. be-. sides the deadly malarial diseases that when 1t is added that in the cemetery on Monkey Hill, outside of Colon ten graves are kept ready all the time, and that the funeral train makes from one attaches to the government employees who are clamoring for passage home. Such stickler for high ideals as Sec retary Taft might reasonably expect a high official to stick to his post and do or die, but a poor clerks pen is apt to falter or a mechanics hand to lose its cunning. at the constant and sinister invitation of those ten ready-made. open graves.
 All such stories may not be entitled to unlimited credence. but we repeat that they cannot be dismissed or nulli- fled by a sheer, for there is too much testimony of a positive nature to allow us to disbelieve all we hear. Recently a gentleman from Stockton. Cal, return ing from the Isthmus told a reporter that on one day forty-three new cases were placed in the hospitals. which week. Such testimony. and 1t comes from many sources, cannot be entirely ignored, even if we cannot give full credence to 1t. We are bound to admit that conditions there are bad, and that the danger to white men is great
 We do not mean to admit or to argue that the canal cannot be built. or that 1t should be abandoned. Our govern ment has vast resources and Is not likely to give up what it has under- taken to do, but the evidences are con- tinually accommodating that we have ticipated and that we have gone at 1t without due preparation. We are reaching the conclusion that it would have been much better If the govern ment had first devoted its money and It's energies to the work of sanitation before any work on the canal proper had been started. The success of Gen. eral Wood and others at Havana Is a notable evidence of what can be ac- complished in the way of promoting healthful conditions in a most un- healthy region. and what was done there can be done at Panama. we have no doubt.
 It is true that the sanitation of Ha- vana and vicinity was a small under taking, compared with what will be necessary on the Isthmus, but that Is the only difference, SO far as we are aware. It might require several years to do there what was done in Cuba, but we apprehend that the time would not be lost. If the canal strip can be made reasonably healthy and safe for white foreigners there will be no dif- ficulty about getting all the labor that is needed. On the other hand. the con- tinual reports coming from there will keep labor away and really delay the work indefinitely. It would be better to spend two or three years and few million dollars to secure the health of the laborers than to go on under pre- sent circumstances. and we believe the work would be expedited by it. It begins to look as if the French failure may be repeated unless something is done to prevent 1t.