94 6 THE PANAMA CANAL AND CANAL ZONE 



After yellow fever had been stamped out there has been no case originating in the Canal 

 Zone since December 1905 there was a campaign against malaria in 1906, and the sick- 

 rate was cut from 6.83% to 1.54% in 1911. Plague, typhoid and dysentery have been 

 vigilantly combatted by the U.S. Army doctors. The care of the general health and 

 comfort of the employees has been minute. There has been a large corps of dentists. 

 Y.M.C.A.'s have been organised and women's clubs the latter by an expert employed 

 by the government so that married women might be willing to stay in the Zone. 1 In 

 the last fiscal year the average daily sick was 22.91 per 1,000 employees (23.01 in 1909-10; 

 24.77 f r 1910-11) and the death rate 10.16 (11.34 in preceding year), 9.21 (10.01 in 

 preceding year) for whites, 5.9 (5.35 preceding year) for whites from the United States, 

 10.47 (n-8i, in 1910-11) for blacks. In 1911 nearly 1,000 labourers were brought 

 from Barbadoes, and the West Indian negro is everywhere in evidence. On June 30, 

 1912 the total number of employees was 34,957 (including 5,100 Americans) the 

 maximum being 40,159 in November 1912. 



Up to June 30, 1912, appropriations for the canal were $293,561,469, and by the 

 act of August 24, 1912, $28,980,000 was appropriated for the expenses of the year 

 1912-13. The est'imate for the year 1913-14 is $30,174,432. Of the cost as now esti- 

 mated ($375,701,000), about 69% ($259,653,237) was charged to the work up to June 

 30, 1912, and of this amount more than one eighth ($34,183,183) in the last fiscal year. 

 Although one of the reasons why a lock canal was recommended was that it would cost 

 $100,000,000 less than a sea-level canal, the actual cost of the lock canal will be much 

 more than the cost of a sea-level canal ($250,000,000) as estimated in January 1906 

 (see E. B. xx, 67ob). But the slides at the Culebra Cut are considered by many au- 

 thorities to show conclusively that a sea-level canal would not have been feasible. 2 



An act of August 24, 1912, provides for the opening, maintenance, protection, opera- 

 tion, sanitation and government of the canal and the Zone. A governor with a 4 year 

 term and a salary of $10,000 a year is to be appointed by the president with the consent 

 of the Senate. It was President Taft's intention to appoint as governor Col. George 

 Washington Goethals, 3 chief engineer of the canal since February 1907. As the appoint- 

 ment was for 4 years, opposition was threatened in the Senate, where the Democrats 

 wished such appointments to be made by the new (Democratic) administration 

 although Col. Goethals was suggested for the portfolio of war in President Woodrow 

 Wilson's cabinet. President Taft did not appoint a governor. 



The same act authorised the President to frame a system of workmen's compensa- 

 tion for the Zone, and a scheme has been drafted but not put into effect, as Congress 

 made no appropriation therefor. The act ordered the dismissal of the Isthmian Canal 

 Commission upon the completion of the Canal. 



Besides, the act exempted from tolls all coastwise vessels but forbade American 

 railways to own ships operating in the Canal (after July i, 1914, unless the time was 

 extended by the Interstate Commerce Commission, to which jurisdiction is given in 

 the case of lines giving beneficial service), prohibited the use of the Canal by ships owned 

 by illegal combinations, and admitted to American registry foreign-built ships owned 



1 See Mary G. Humphreys, "The Family'and the Panama Canal," Scribner's, Sept. 1912. 



2 In the opinion of the chief engineer no slides in 191 1-12 were sufficiently serious to have 

 interfered with navigation had they occurred while the canal was in use. 



3 Goethals was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., on June 29, 1858, studied at the College of the 

 City of New York in 1873-76, and graduated at the U.S. Military Academy in 1880 and 

 entered the engineering corps, being teacher of engineering at the Military Academy until 

 1888. He was lieutenant-colonel of volunteers and chief of engineers in the Spanish American 

 War and at the close of 1898 returned to the regulars. He graduated at the War College in 

 1905 and was promoted to colonel (of engineers) on December 3, 1909. For some time he 

 was in charge of engineering construction on the Muscle Shoals Canal on the Tennessee river 

 (see E. B. xxvi, 625d). In the Canal Zone he showed himself not merely an able engineer 

 but a leader of men and an administrator and final judge in the petty and annoying quarrels 

 of a strangely mixed population. Most of the more serious problems of canal construction 

 were met in his administration, although the system of removing spoil was devised by his 

 predecessor, a civilian, John F. Stevens, chief engineer in 1905-07. Goethals received the 

 honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Columbia University in June 1912. 



