The news-democrat. (Providence, R.I.) 1906-1909, 1906-12-17
MESSAGE ON THE CANAL.


velt. From it the American people will obtain
more adequate idea OF what has been and is being
accomplished in the prosecution of this gigantic
undertaking and more correct conception of
the magnitude of the difficulties to be overcome
and of the skill and intelligence that are steadily
surmounting them than they have ever had before.
The message is admirably written. The style
is particularly engaging because of its and
fluency and because OF its avoidance of that tor
mality of expression and dryness of detail that so
frequently render public documents unattractve
and even repellant to the average citizen.
The presidents story of his visit to the 18TH
mus has all the charm of tale of travel written
with the sole purpose of interesting and inform
ing the general reader, but it possesses in addition
the merit of a forceful and convincing presentation
of conditions as they were revealed to an expert
enced and keen observer
In the message there is no attempt at special
pleading, no effort to magnify the good work that
has been accomplished or to ignore or minimize the
mistakes that have been made Naturally the
presidents attitude toward this enterprise of
worldwide Importance and significance, as we'll
as toward the men, high and low, engaged in its
prosecution, is of hearty sympathy; but that
sympathy does not deter him from candidy
and indicating the manner in which they have
been corrected.
These mistakes, it is made clear, were the
cult neither of incapacity, negligence culpabli-
ty They were rather the consequences of that
human fallibty from which, with all its science,
skill earnestness and experience, human kind can
not hope to escape. r's
The president spent three days on the sthmus
"a ba;0 ~ tbe ra;p ,yhe rcrt &c
prosecuted under the most disadvantageous condi-
tions and when the people are most liable to the
attack of disease. Thus the president saw the
canal zone and the tremendous operations in pro-
gress there at their worst, yet he returns full of
praise for that which has been achieved and en-
thusiastic as to future accomplishment.
Sanitation was the first great problem to be
solved, and an extremely difficult one it was, in
voving as it did the establishment OF healthful
conditions in the canal zone itself and also in the
nearby cities of Panama and Colon Although the
isthmus was in the past byword for deadly un-
healthfulness, two years OF American effort have
established conditions under which the percentage
of sickness and death compare favoraby with
reasonably healthy localities in the United States
Mosquitoes, those disease-carryIng pests, have
been practically externinated. Indeed, but one
mOSquto ana tnat not O1 the dangerous Species
was seen by any member of the presidents party
during the three days sojourn on the isthmus.
The hospital facilities received the presidents
careful attention, and he found that ample pro-
vision is made for the care OF the SICK both white
and black There are 6ooo whites in the canal
zone, 1900 OF whom women and children, yet
not death occurred among them during the past
three months, while OF the 10000 negroes the
roll only IS died during the month of October.
1t was in the midst OF an unprecedentedly
heavy rainstorm the president rode through the
streets of Colon. They were then at their worst
and, as the president says, they were undoubtedly
very bad; as bad as Pennsylvania avenue in Wash
ington before Grants administration"
But the streets are being rapidly improved and
three-fourths OF the town can be walked through,
during heavy rains, without wetting ones
feet. Complaints OF insufficient provision in caring
for some OF the laborers, OF failure to finish the
pavements OF Colon, supply water or build wooden
sidewalks for of laborers in the rainy season
the president found without exception TO be due
merely to the utter inability OF the commission to
do everything at once.
In the presidents opinion there arc too many
saloons in the zone, but he is hopeful tha, the high
license law, which will become operative ON Ian,,
ary next will close four.hfths Of them
Little less important than the problem OF sani
tation was that OF caring for the workers on III,