The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1912-09-19
How They Build the Panama Canal.

S~~~
No work in the world has wider
or deeper interest for the American
people than that done on the Isthmus
of Panama in the construction of the
great canal. The farmers of the South
should watch it's progress and await
it's opening with personal interest. In
an article in Golfers Weekly, Mr..
Davis thus describes the transforma-
ton of the isthmus, under Col. Cor
gas:
When Col. Gorgas and his assist
ants came to the isthmus they found
the canal g sewer and Colon and Pan
ANA pesthouses. After two years
and a half of work, they made the
isthmus place as healthy as any
spot in the United States.
They established a strict Quaran-
tine, wiped out the swamps, ex-
terminated the mosquitoes, built
reservoirs for water, drains for sew
erage, streets, roads, aqueducts. And
while the medical corps of the army
was making the isthmus a healthy
place in which to live, the engineers
of the army and those civilian en-
gineers who are of the old regime,
the survivors of the fittest, made it
an extremely comfortable place in
which to live. They constructed e.
900 buildings and remodeled 100
more. These included hospitals,
hotels and clubs. And they organlz-
ed q department store that every day
feeds $4,000 canal employees and
their families with the kind of food
they want, and furnishes them with
everything from khaki overalls to
invisible hairpins. They also recog-
nize that, no matter how healthy a
man may be, if he is discontented, he
is a poor workman, and for the en-
tertainment of the employees they
called to their aid the Y. M. G. A.
This organization took three months
to study the conditions existing on
the Zone, and then accepted the re-
sponsibility of making life there
more cheerful, more interesting and
more like home. 1t organized clubs
in which are reading rooms, billiards,
bowling alleys, it started baseball
mines, debating societies, camera
clubs, smokers" and dances, until
now the life of the employe can be
as strenuous by night as it is by day,
and in exercises that are healthy and
helpful.
Well housed, we'll fed, and mag
nifcently led, it is not surprising
that this army of men has fought
nightly, or that what is at this mo-
ment going on in the Canal Zone is
to an American one of the most
splendid and inspiring efforts of his
own people. Not only as feat OF
engineering, but as a triumph of or
ganization, as lesson in discipline,
as a proof that men can handle mill
lions of other peoples money, disburs-
ing it in every part of the world to
people of many nationalities, and
with a local payroll of two millions
month, without there being brought
against them one charge of graft or
self-seeking or personal gain.
The same spirit that inspires the
man who disburses the millions in
spires the man who is actually build
ing the canal, and those who feed,
nurse and shelter him, those men
who by relieving the combatant of all
responsibilities enable him to devote
himself entirely to the fight. All that
is asked of the combatant is that he
make the dirt fly. Butchers bills,
house rent, tax collectors, are not
permitted to disturb him. He is as
carefully cherished and looked after
as the fighting cock or star football
PLAYER. The army of $4,000 is divided
into gold" employees and "silver''
employees. That cuts the knot of the
color line and a rigid rule that gives
each man a house or a room exactly
in proportion to his wages wipes out
anv question of favoritism. If he be
worth good deal to the commission,
he is entitled to a house to himself;
if he is not worth so much, half OF
house or the first or second story
of a house; if he is worth still less