Arizona republican., 1908-07-16
The Panama Canal
IV.-THE FORGE.

l CuleDra, canal zone, July 4.-NSpe- cial Correspondence of The Republi- can.)-The impression one gets from a stay among the men who constitute the American contingent of the isth- mian canal force is that every man seems to feel. himself the owner of the canal, and is anxious to get the job completed as soon as possible in order that he may begin to get income from it instead of suffer a perennial out go. Every one of the five thousand or more Americans connected with the undertaking is deadly in earnest. He | is proud of the record that is being made and seems to be imbued with the desire to have hand in the mak- | ing of this record. The time for loaf CTS, time-servers, drunkards and shirkers is past.
 A weeding out process has been go- | ing on for a year now. The induce ments which can be held out are strong enough to attract good men, and the commission no longer finds it. self under the necessity of tolerating incompetence or indifference. The men who care more for the cup that cheers" than for the canal soon find themselves canned" as they say on the isthmus when a man loses his po- sition. Now and then you see one of these. He has either lost his place or
 has been reduced in position. He is
 the only man on the isthmus that has a word to say against the work. He
 threatens all sorts of exposures He lwiH tell you that he has a friend in
 congress and that he is going to have
 an investigation that will reveal
 shameful conditions. He perhaps in i tends going to Peru or some other
 place where they pay good wages and appreciate good men-that is if he can
 get that passage money. But without exception it is all kick because he
 has lost a job or has been dropped to
 a lower position.
 II Everybody else is satisfied. Most
 of the men in the construction work are all old hands at the business. They
 have come in from everywhere. Some
 of them have spent years in cOnstruc-
 tion work in tropical countries and
 call themselves Tropical Tramps." But they have no aversion to hard
 work Years of residence in the trop- ics have inured them to climatic con ditions, and years of experience have taught them to care for their health. IThey have known conditions else where and are qualified to speak Without exception they will tell you that they make more money and have every condition of construction work better than anywhere else they have ever been. l met a foreman of one of the big dirt yards, the one at Pedro xtyha irf trains for the big dump at La Boca. He told me he had been on construc- ton work in the United States, in Peru, in Boliva, Ecuador and Brazil, and that nowhere had he been able to save as much money as on the 18th milan Canal. He said that everything that men could reasonably ask was given them. I heard the same thing from hundred sources, from men who have opportunity to know. At the La Boca dumps I met several men who had been on construction work in the states for years and they, without exception, declared that conditions down here, 2400 land miles from New York, were better than they had ever known on big construction jobs in the very heart of the states. From the chief engineer down it seems that the best talent obtainable has been secured for the prosecution of the work. The engineers of the construction depart ment are all men who have made good in their respective fields. For instance Civil Engineer Savelle, who has charge of the experiment at the Gatun Dam was selected for that work because of his proven ability in connection with the Wachusetts Dam near Boston, an engineering problem of similar na-