Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . toget the ironpipes, ordinaryones at that,to e anwhilestreet pavingand seweragewere held upand when Wal-lace wired theCommission tohurry he wastold to be lessextravagant inhis use of thecable. No man suf-fered more from this sort of official delay andstupidity than did Col. Gorgas. If any man wasfighting for life it was he—not for his own lifebut that of the thousands who were working, or yetto work on the canal. Yet when he called for wirenetting to screen out the malarial mosquitos he wasrebuked by the Commission as if he were asking it
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . toget the ironpipes, ordinaryones at that,to e anwhilestreet pavingand seweragewere held upand when Wal-lace wired theCommission tohurry he wastold to be lessextravagant inhis use of thecable. No man suf-fered more from this sort of official delay andstupidity than did Col. Gorgas. If any man wasfighting for life it was he—not for his own lifebut that of the thousands who were working, or yetto work on the canal. Yet when he called for wirenetting to screen out the malarial mosquitos he wasrebuked by the Commission as if he were asking itmerely to contribute to the luxury of the amount of ingenuity expended by the Com-mission in suggesting ways in which wire nettingmight be saved would be admirable as indicativeof a desire to guard the public purse, except for thefact that in saving netting they were wasting hu-man lives. The same policy was pursued when ap-peals came in for additional equipment for the hospi-tals, for new machinery, for wider authority. When-. PAY DAY FOR THE BLACK LABOR ever anythingwas to be doneon the canalline the firstword fromWa shingtonwas alwayscriticism — thepolicy instant-ly applied wasdelay. Allowing forthe disadvan-tages underwhich he la-bored Mr. Wal-lace achievedgreat results inhis year of ser-vice on theIsthmus. Buthis connectionwith the canalwas ended in away aboutwhich mustever hang someelement ofmystery. Hecomplainedbitterly, per-sistently andjustly about the conditions in which he was com-pelled to work and found in President Roosevelta sympathetic and a reasonable auditor. Indeed,moved by the Chief Engineers appeals, the Presi-dent endeavored to secure from Congress authorityto substitute a Commission of three for the un-wieldy body of seven with which Wallace foundit so hard to make headway. Failing in this thePresident characteristically enough did by indirec-tion what Congress woiold not permit him to dodirectly. He demanded and received the resigna-tio
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Keywords: ., bookauthorabbotwil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
