THE PANAMA CANAL 
203 
of the sanitary campaign becomes re- 
markable. 
Of course there is no region on earth 
where so much money is spent in propor- 
tion to population or to area for keeping 
the people in health as at Panama. Did 
we spend as much at home for sanitation 
and hospitals in proportion to population 
as we spend at Panama, our total outlay 
for health would aggregate one-third of 
all the expenditures of public money by 
the United States, the States, the coun- 
ties, municipalities, and school and road 
districts of the country combined. Did 
we spend as much in proportion to area, 
our total outlay for health purposes 
would amount practically to 12 billion 
dollars a year. 
It has been said that there might be 
both a congress of nations and a con- 
gress of mosquitoes on the Isthmus. 
Counting the islands of the sea as sepa- 
rate countries, it is said that there are 52 
countries represented on the Isthmus, 
and the number of kinds of mosquitoes 
once was many times more. 
But the mosquito cannot operate suc- 
cessfully in oil stocks ; water is his line. 
A baby mosquito must live in the water, 
and is under the necessity of making 
some 8,000 trips to the surface while 
growing to adulthood. It comes up for 
air. If it happens to get a single speck 
of oil down its little gullet on any one 
of these many trips, there is a funeral in 
mosquitodom soon thereafter ; and thou- 
sands of barrels of oil have been scat- 
tered upon the mosquito-troubled waters 
of Panama. Doing this, keeping the 
grass cut, the drains all open, and dan- 
gerous diseases out of the ports repre- 
sents a large proportion of the health 
work at Panama. 
THE MAN AT THE; HELM 
When President Roosevelt called upon 
Lieut. Col. George W. Goethals to go to 
Panama and dig the canal, he selected a 
leader of men who is entitled to rank 
with the greatest captains of history. To 
study him at close range is to know one 
of the most remarkable men of the times. 
He cares just about as little for popular 
applause as any man I have ever known. 
Pie always keeps himself in the back- 
ground. Tall, broad-shouldered, bronzed- 
faced, with snowy white hair and mus- 
tache, he is physically a man among men. 
Intensely loyal to his military training, 
he cares as little for its fuss and feathers 
and trappings as did Grant or Stonewall 
Jackson. 
One day I was traveling with him 
across the Isthmus to Colon, and I re- 
marked that he must be the busiest man 
on the Isthmus, and that yet I had never 
seen a man who always seemed to have 
as little pressing work before him. "I 
have a contempt for the man who is al- 
ways trying to make it appear that he is 
busier than other people, and that they 
must wait on him," came the laconic 
reply. 
At another time I remarked that he 
seemed to have solved all of the prob- 
lems of the canal and had the whole 
force in smooth working order. "If you 
were to drop into my office any Sunday 
morning, when it is open to the lowest 
workman on the canal, you might think 
diiTerently," he responded. "I think," 
he continued, "that the best way to keep 
men contented is to give them a hearing. 
I may not be able to do what they would 
wish, but the very fact that I hear them 
makes them feel that I want to do the 
right thing by them." 
In speaking of the progress of the 
work in Culebra Cut, the Chief Engineer 
revealed to me a species of greatness 
above anything I have ever seen. He 
has worked and slept with his task for 
five years, keeping at it with unrelenting 
zeal and calm enthusiasm. The whole 
world rightly gives him great credit, but 
in one generous handful he turned the 
bulk of it over to his predecessor, doing 
it in about the following words : "The 
people talk about the success of the army 
engineer at Panama, but it was fortunate 
that Mr. Stevens preceded us. The real 
problem of digging the canal has been 
the disposal of the spoil, and no army 
engineer in America could have laid out 
the transportation scheme as Mr. Stevens 
did. We are building on the founda- 
tions he laid, and the world cannot give 
him too much credit." 
Colonel Goethals has special trains, 
private cars, and motor cars at his dis- 
