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Senator HOPKINS. I understood you in your statement earlier to say that one of the great problems was the mosquito question? Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir; killing the mosquitoes.

Senator HOPKINS. But that had been determined successfully before your arrival on the Isthmus?

Mr. STEVENS. Well, they had undoubtedly decreased them very largely; but, to put it broadly, I have seen more mosquitoes in a quarter section of North Dakota than I have ever seen in Panama in five months. There are no clouds of them like we see on our western prairies or away up north at Great Slave Lake or in Alaska. The mosquito there who does the most mischief—that is, the yellow-fever mosquito-is the little black house mosquito that breeds in damp, wet places. It breeds in your bathroom, if you are not careful; in your bath sponge, if you let it alone a day or two. It breeds in any place where fresh water is allowed to accumulate around your house. The mosquito is a little bit of fellow. I think they call him the Stegomyia. He does not come buzzing across the room after you to give warning of his approach, but he will slip around and bite you here, probably [indicating]. That is the one that is supposed to convey the infection of yellow fever. All this fumigating that is going on is simply to kill off these mosquitoes, and they have largely decreased them in Panama, Colon, and different other placesundoubtedly so.

Senator SIMMONS. Was this the mosquito season, when you say you were not bitten at all by mosquitoes?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, yes; the wet season.

Senator SIMMONS. You saw mosquitoes, you say?

Mr. STEVENS. Why, I saw a few. I go to ride very often about 5.30 or 6 in the morning, for half an hour or an hour's ride, for exercise before breakfast, and sometimes just before daylight, about daylight, when I am riding through a little clump of woods in one of these wagon roads there are a number of wagon roads leading off to either side-you will sometimes see a few mosquitoes. But if you brush them off you soon go right through them and do not see them again.

I have been living in a little house down there on Ancon Hill, in the hospital section, and I have it thoroughly screened, the porches screened, and screens over the beds, and up to the time Mrs. Stevens and my little boy came down-of course the little chap is in and out and he will leave the door open occasionally-I had seen and had killed in that house two mosquitoes in four months, and I have killed four since then in five months.

Senator SIMMONS. Do they screen the railroad cars there?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, no; oh, no; they do not even have any glass in them.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Your house is trebly screened?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator TALIAFERRO. The porches?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator TALIAFERRO. The windows?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator TALIAFERRO. And even the beds?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir; and they are screening everything on the Isthmus. We have given orders to screen the laborers' quarters.

Senator MORGAN. I understood you to say, Mr. Stevens, that you live there?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. Is there any reason why any gentleman who might be the proprietor of this canal and railroad down there, the owner of the whole of it, should not take out his family and live there and oversee it?

Mr. STEVENS. Why, I live there.

Senator MORGAN. That answers the question.

Mr. STEVENS. And I am in a hurry to get back. I never was better in my life-but then I always have good health. I like it very much there. The climate is not hot from our point of view-that is, the northern point of view-but it is very humid. I have never seen the thermometer over 86.

Senator MORGAN. And from that down to 65?

Mr. STEVENS. Well, 65 is a little cool. I never have a thermometer around me, however, because the effect on the imagination is such that you are either always sweating to death or freezing to death if you have a thermometer. I do not want it, but occasionally I get a chance to see one; and the nights are always cool. I do not think there have been six nights in the time I have been there that I have not either had a very heavy sheet or a light blanket over me.

Senator KNOX. Is the precipitation chiefly at night-the rain? Mr. STEVENS. No, sir.

Senator Knox. Or is there any distinction between night and day in that respect?

Mr. STEVENS. No, sir. Well, the rain generally comes on from 2 to 3 in the afternoon. It will come right up out of a cloudless sky. The sun may be shining, as it is now, and it will rain perhaps five minutes and perhaps rain half an hour, sometimes very hard. But the sun will come right out again, and perhaps come out while it is raining. We have no wind to speak of; it scarcely ever blows there to any extent, excepting the regular trade winds, which are the salvation of the country and make it pleasant to live in.

Senator KNOX. You do not have any continuous rain?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, no.

Senator KNOx. Days and days of rain?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, no. They are showers, tropical showers, altogether.

Senator Knox. Like the English climate?

Mr. STEVENS. Sometimes for two or three days we will have a succession of showers that will pretty nearly overlap each other.

Senator KNOX. But not enough to cause any holding back of the work?

Mr. STEVENS. No; with the exception that a tremendous amount of rain falls in a given time; and of course working in clay makes it nasty and wet.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Sometimes for two or three weeks you will have a rain every day?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, yes, yes; you are pretty certain, in the rainy season, for several months, to have a little rain every day.

Senator KNOx. What is the rainy season?

Mr. STEVENS. It commences in May, May or June, and lasts through November; but it has not let up yet. I had a letter from my secre

tary on the last boat, this week, or ten days ago, and he said he was having heavy rains there then.

The CHAIRMAN. We had a reasonably good rain the day we took dinner at your house.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes; I think that was one of the hardest rains we had all through the season.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the following day was a good rainy day, of

course.

Senator HOPKINS. How many days will pass in the best season on the Zone without any rain?

Mr. STEVENS. There are supposed to be from three to four months. Senator HOPKINS. With no rain whatever?

Mr. STEVENS. With practically no rain whatever. There will be possibly a light shower or two, but not to amount to anything. It gets very dusty, they tell me. Of course I have never been there in the dry season.

Senator MORGAN. Which is the healthy season in respect to yellow fever the wet or the dry?

Mr. STEVENS. It is supposed that the dry season is the healthy season, and the same way with malaria, because mosquitoes do not breed as fast; there is less moisture for them to breed in.

Senator KITTREDGE. Please tell us about the eight-hour requirement and the civil service, Mr. Stevens, and their application to the work. Mr. STEVENS. We are working under the United States eight-hour law, by decision of the Attorney-General.

Senator HOPKINS. You are working under that?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator DRYDEN. Does that include laborers?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir: all laborers are hired by the hour, and the few mechanics we have. Yes, sir; we only work eight hours.

Senator KITTREDGE. What is your judgment about that provision of law?

Mr. STEVENS. I think I could do the work cheaper and do it quicker if all restriction was thrown off as far as the labor is concerned. I would pay less for it, and work them more hours.

Senator SIMMONS. What per cent of those unskilled laborers are Americans?

Mr. STEVENS. The unskilled laborers?

Senator SIMMONS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. About one ten-thousandth of 1 per cent.

Senator SIMMONS. Practically none?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not believe there are ten white laborers on the work-not ten in number altogether.

Senator SIMMONS. They are all foreign?

Mr. STEVENS. All foreign.

Senator DRYDEN. Do you depend upon the Jamaica negroes for your labor?

Mr. STEVENS. I have never myself hired any Jamaica negroes. There were a great many who came there previous to my time, and there are quite a number going there now of their own volition.

I got a message yesterday from my assistant engineer, who is working in my place down there now, saying that since January 1 over 500 of them had come back of their own account from Kingston, and they reported that others in large numbers would follow them. We have

brought our people, since I have been there, from Martinique and Barbados, and from Cartagena in Colombia.

Senator DRYDEN. That fact would indicate, then, to your mind, that on the whole they are satisfied? It would appear so from their

return.

Mr. STEVENS. As a body, I know they are. They are earning more money than they ever earned in their lives.

Senator SIMMONS. Can you get, without difficulty, as many laborers as you want?

Mr. STEVENS. I made a trial here a short time ago at Jamaica and I met with defeat; I did not do it right. Secretary Taft stopped in Kingston in November, 1904, and had some negotiations with the governor, which resulted in nothing, about getting laborers, I believe; and when I sent my agent there and gave him credentials about six weeks ago, Sir Alexander Swettenham, the governor, took the ground (which was technically correct) that he had negotiations with Secretary Taft and therefore he could not open any negotiations with me until the other negotiations had been declared diplomatically closed. So I could not do anything.

The fact of the matter is that the planters, who are the ruling class in Jamaica, and through them the Government, are opposed to the exportation of Jamaicans to the Zone or anywhere else. They want to keep them to get their labor cheap. The merchants and bankers and people who are interested more directly in smaller lines of business want them to go because they earn more money and it comes hack there. That is the situation exactly in Jamaica, say what they like. But we have gotten all that we want; and I think that the Martinique and Barbados blacks are superior to the Jamaicans, although I am not satisfied at all with either.

Senator DRYDEN. I was going to ask you whether they perform a reasonable amount of work?

Mr. STEVENS. They do not.

Senator DRYDEN. They do not?

Mr. STEVENS. And, regardless of anybody else's opinion-I am rather a self-opinionated man-the greatest problem in building a canal of any type on the Isthmus, or building anywhere in the Isthmus, is the one of labor. The engineering and constructional difficulties melt into insignificance compared with labor. That is the question to-day.

Senator DRYDEN. Have you any opinion which you would care to express to the committee as to the source from which it would be most desirable to get our labor?

Mr. STEVENS. Why, I have no hesitancy in expressing any opinions I may have. I do not know. I recommended some time ago to the Commission that we take measures to bring in Chinese, Canton Chinese. I have worked Chinese, and I have worked Japanese. I presume I was practically the first man in the United States that ever worked Japanese labor. Mr. Hill brought them in on the Great Northern Railway. I worked Chinese as long ago as 1884, when we were building the main line of the Canadian Pacific road.

I was in the Rockies there for them for four years on the heavy construction; and I regard the Chinese laborer as a first-class laborer. He will not do as much work as our northern laborer will, of course; we do not pay him as much; but from my experience, if he can stand

the climate down there-and he certainly should, in view of the fact that Canton has almost identically the climate of Panama-and is properly taken care of, I think that one Chinaman is worth two of the laborers we have now.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Mr. Stevens, how can you get that labor in there under the law?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not know, Senator. That is what I am trying to find out. I was a little discouraged over the fact of this alleged friction between the Chinese Government and our own Government in regard to certain things that have been happening lately.

Senator TALIAFERRO. How do you get these blacks from the islands, under the law?

Mr. STEVENS. Under the law?

Senator TALIAFERRO. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. Why, we simply hire them, and they come.
Senator KNOX. You agree to hire them when they come?

Mr. STEVENS. There has never been any question about that. We do not make any contracts with them as bodies.

Senator SIMMONS. Do not our contract laws apply to the Isthmus as well as our exclusion laws?

Mr. STEVENS. I have never been notified if they do.

Senator KNOX. Well, the eight-hour law goes there.
Mr. STEVENS. That has been ruled.

Senator DRYDEN. I suppose you let them come first, and you hire them afterwards?

Mr. STEVENS. We bring them over, and we pay their fares. There is no concealment about that.

Senator MORGAN. Mr. Stevens, I gathered from your statement, the general current of it, that it is your opinion that the proper way to proceed with this work is first to determine the plan of the canal?

Mr. STEVENS. Most assuredly.

Senator MORGAN. That is the first work that Congress ought to engage in, and the engineers and the Commission, and everybody concerned?

Mr. STEVENS. It ought to be decided.

Senator MORGAN. Yes; both for the sake of economy and certainty of work on the engineering projects, and all that. Will you be back here before that question is settled?

Mr. STEVENS. I hardly expect to. I do not want to come back at all until next summer if I can avoid it. It is pretty nearly a man's job down there, and I would like to stay there.

Senator MORGAN. I would suggest to the committee that, if Mr. Stevens is not to come back, inasmuch as he has a thoroughly practical knowledge of the situation on the Isthmus, some time ought to be devoted to his examination upon the report of the consulting engineers, who have reported (we have all seen the paper) in favor of a sea-level canal. We have all examined that paper. I want to ascertain at the proper time what difficulties Mr. Stevens finds in the report, both as to the possibility and feasibility of a sea-level canal, and as to the cost of it.

Senator KITTREDGE. When had you planned to leave, Mr. Stevens? Mr. STEVENS. I have got three or four days' work here, work that I have not done—and, in fact, the work the Senator speaks of, exam

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