The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-12-23
DOESN'T LIKE PANAMA
BEN PARKER BACK HOME AND IS
 GLAD OF IT.
Has Travelled All over World and There is Only One Other Worse Place Whose Name is Not
 Printable.

Ben Parker, well known and well liked in Middle and East Alabama, is at home from Panama, where he has been helping the United States dig the Panama Canal.
 The Government will have to finish the job without Ben's assistance. Ben has tried canal building for six months and while he agrees that it Is great work, a laudable work, he is quite will ling after the six months trial to let others get the honor and the glory of digging the canal
 Alabama is good enuogh for Mir. Par ker. He would be quite willing to help dig the canal If he did not have to live in Panama while he was doing it. Pan anna Is not d nice place to live. Mir. Parker says. MT. Parker has followed
 the flag in practically every climate and under every sky where Uncle Sam
 has planted it, but in his opinion Pan- anna is the limit.
 T went through whatever hardships there were in the Spanish-American | war: I was in China during the Boxer rebellion; l saw service in the Philip pines and the whole world knows that that is no picnic. I have lived for 1 awhile in Japan and I have passed some time in the Hawaiian Islands, and I am no tenderfoot when it comes to hard ships. But Panama-say, there is just one place worse than Panama, and I'd | tell you the name of 1t, but you Wouldnt print it in the paper.
 There are two classes of people who are not leaving Panama. One class is l the ignorant laborers who haven't got sense enough to get away and the other class is the Americans who haven't got
 money enough to get away. Still the people continue to come in. but they | continue to leave after awhile. But considerable work is going on down there, much more than the people in the United States have any idea. Of course great deal of it is preparatory | work. But much of it is actual dig ging. I was stationed at Culebra Cut
 a short distance out from Colon. I
 went there in May and stood it six months. No, thank you I'm not going back. Of course the principal trouble Is the climate. It is a fearful thing, that climate. Still we had no fever
 and we had no epidemic of any sort
 But malaria-the amount of malaria in that country can never be estimated. Nobody is free from it. I have seen la borers, great, strong men, in one min ute crumble up and fall to the ground, stricken in a second deathly sick.
 The labor there is partly native, partly United States. and partly West Indian. It is of an inferior order, far less useful than negro workmcn in the South. They work fewer hours over there than they do in this country. But then nobody could do full days work in that climate.
 ''The climate is not the only draw hack to the country One drawback to an American Is the fact that he is as far away from civilization as if he was in Alaska. I was timckeeper and book keeper for big gang of workmen on the Culebra Cut and right now I don't know what was going on four or five miles away on the canal work There were no newspapers of any sort, little if any mail service and there were no comforts which make life pleasant for an American"
 Mir Parker will leave today on a visit to relatives in East Alabama Before beginning his globe trotting career he was a well known hotel clerk, having been connected with prominent hotels
 in Montgomery. Troy and Union SpringS