The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-20

must sleep upon the miasmic ground or go long distances and pay exorbitant rent. He found that the former com mission. acting under moral timidity, had bent every energy toward digging as many cubic yards of earth as pos sible. leaving the comfort and health of the force out of consideration. He found even that under the most ordi- nary preliminary work undertaken by every American contractor to insure the safety and completeness of their work. was utterly neglected. He found that the tracks for the worktrains had not been ballasted, per hitting the rails; laid upon the virgin and the day he started out upon his first inspection he encountered five loaded trains with their crews tied up because other trains had sunk with their tracks and could not be extri- cated.
 He found ten thousand dIspirited men. Supplies were scarce. and, as has all ready been stated. prohibitlve in price He found machinery rotting for want of facilities.
 MT. shOnts' Discipline First.
 The first thing done was to call his engineers and heads of department to- Fether and give them q plain. straight there were Jealousies and bickerings. He gave them to understand that the frst man who. failed to obey orders instantly would be discharged. and let ii be plainly understood that the slight est infractiOn of rules would be tanta- mount to acceptance of the delinquents resignation. He emphasized his re- marks by dischargtng on the spot the chief offender.
 Then he withdrew all the carpenters and other constructors from the work, called halt upon digging, and de- voted all his energies to house build ing This demanded a degree of moral courage of the highest kind. for 1t ln- evitably suspended operations for sev- eral months. He built mess houses on every section and put up hospital huts his energetic efforts the death rate from yellow fever was kept below thir- ty. in spite of the wild reports of a Wallace for 10000 men was counter handed until the zone should be ready to house and care for them.
 Thus within thirty days order was brougat in and prices reduced to nor mal figures. Meanwhile the digging stood still and alarmists sent word that the stoppage was due to demoraliza-
 Zone WiH be HeaIthFuI.
 When the canal is built and in oper- ation,'" said MT. Shonts, the health of the zone will be excellent. for a river of salt water will be introduced. perfect drinaEe will be provided. and the Gov ernmeut doctors will enforce a most rigid sanitation. While the canal will not be completed under five years. and all that has been done during the year ana n HHll tuht ndS pthSHtu goes pEttt'- tically for naught owing to III advised and unhusnesslike inception, Mir Roosevelt will see the greatest engi- neerlnR difficulties overcome and large part of the waterway actually traversed bv vessels
 T have left Mir. Stevens in supreme control and he will press the work un- til we are ready for the 1000 men who will earnestly push the canal. I shall go back in October. Meanwhile I am in daily touch with the work by means of the cable l meet with the Advisory Board in September"
 It is now known that Mir. Wallace was cabled by George Westinghouse within a week after his return to Panama and offered a larger salary to go with the