The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-09-20
ALL Seems
S%OClAL|STIC
THE EMPLOYEES OF THE GREAT
CANAL HAVE NO FEAR OF
RENT DAY OR or THE DREAD
Ed HIGH COST or LIVING,

(By Willis j. Abbot, author of Pan
anna and the Canal in Picture and
Prose, copyright. 1913. Syndicate Pub
fishing Co., New York. ALI rights re-
served.Y
Our Uncle Sam owns and manages
a line of steamships plying between
New York and Panama, carrying both
passengers and freight and connecting
successfully with several lines Of for
elgn-butlt ships. The largest vessels
are of 10000 tons and would rank well
with the lesser transatlantic liners. On
tnem congressman n Panama zone
officials are carried free, while en-
plloyes of the Isthmian Canal commits
sion get an exceedingly low rate for
themselves and their families. The
government also own and conducts
the Panama railroad, which crosses in
Tess than three hours from the ATTAIN
tic to the Pacific. This sounds like a
mighty good argument for govern
ment ownership and it is not much
more fallacious than some others
drawn from Isthmian conditions. The
president of the Panama railroad is
COL George w. Cocktails. The gov
INNER caught him young, educated
him at its excellent West Point school,
paying him a salary while he was
learning to be useful, and has been
employing and paying him ever since.
Like a citizen of the ideal co-opera-
tive commonwealth, he has never had
TO worry about a job. The state has
always employed him and paid him.
while he has done his work better
than others Of equal rank he has only
recently begun to draw n more pay
than other colonies. Sounds very So
clAliSfjH 6naSn't 40 AID Io ,oo-o~ o.
make a very good railroad president,
TOO, thoug the rshuffling of shares In |
Wall. street had nothing to do with his
appointment, and he hasn't got a di-
rector on his board i~nterlocked with
D.: r. Morgan & Co. or the CITY Ma
tional bank.
The government which runs this
railroad and steamship line doesn't
conine Its activity to big things. It
Will wash a shirt for one of it's canal
employees at about half the price thar |
John Chinaman doing business near |
by would charge, press his clothing. or |
1t Will send a man into your home-ir
you I'VE in the Zone-to chloroform |
stray mosquitoes lurking there
and convey them ava in a bottle. It
Will house in an archaeological, wire
screened tenement a Jamaican negro
at home lived in a basket-work
snack. plastcTed with mud and thatch-
ed with palmetto leaves. It is very
democratic too, this for It
won't issue to Mrs. Highfiyer more
than three wicker arm-chairs even If
she does entertain every day, while
her neighbor, Mrs, Domus, who gets
Just exactly as many, never e%ntertains |
at all.
We find a great central authority
nuy1ng everything imaginable in all
the markets of the world, at the mo-
ment when prices are lowest-an an
tnority big enough to snap it's fingers
any trust-and selling again., with
out pront, to the ultimate consumers. |
Ihere are no trust profits, no middle |
mans profits included in prices of
things bought at the commissary
stoIes' Ihere are eighteen such stores
IN the zone. The total business of the
commissary stores amounts to about
$6,0OO,0 900 annually. Everything is sole |
prices materially less than it can be
for in the United States, vet
the department shows an actual profit, |
is at once put back into TIE
A zone housewife told me
that a steak for her family that wouId
cost at least 80 cents in her home at
Brooklyn cost her 40 here. Shoddv or
merely cheap" goods are not carried,
and the United States pure food law
Is strictly observed. That terrible
problem Of the higher cost Of living
hardly presents itself to zone jewellers
purchasers Of purely native
products; those, thanks to the tour
lsts' nave double several times In the
last five years. But articles purvev-
by Uncle Sam are furnished to his
nephews n nteces here for about
less than the luckless ones
must pay who are sticking to the old
homestead instead of faring forth to
the tropics.
But more. The canal employe does
know what it Is to fear rent day.
Ii married he is supplied with quar-
all furnished, ranging from a
fiat to a sixteen-room
house, according to his Importance in
The canal organization. 70 him neith-
any t%errors, for the little coal he needs |
Is furnished free by the commissary,
md ice Is supplied at a price to nlt
he trust out of business
This is a benevolent despotism, the
sort Of government that PHILOSOPHERS
agree would be ideal if the benevo-
.ence of the despot could only be as
sured invariably and eternally. The
ear of Russia could do what is being
done down here were he vested with
Cocktails intolerance of bureaucracies.
'ed-tape, parasites, grafters, %.disobedi-
and delay. But Goethals is equal
y 1ntolerant of opposition, argument,
sven from below. His is the military
of personal command and per-
sonal responsibility. I don't believe he
Is over fond even of the council of
In a Socialistic community.
where every man had a voice in thel
government he would last only long,
enough for a new election to be called.
Though his popularity here is univer-
it would not withstand the at
lacks of demagogles were there field |
for demagogy here. |,