ining carefully these reports. In fact, we have got only one-half the report in form, and I understand some changes have been made in that; but I want to study those reports and give my views to the Commission.

Senator KITTREDGE. Can you give your views to the committee as well before you leave?

Mr. STEVENS. I could not do it now, because I have not considered the matter.

Senator KITTREDGE. I mean, before you leave.

Senator MORGAN. I supposed Mr. Stevens might not be prepared. Mr. STEVENS. I am not prepared now, certainly.

Senator MORGAN. I am particularly anxious that this committee should hear him upon that question.

Senator KITTREDGE. So am I.

Senator GORMAN. We all are.

Senator HOPKINS. Have you given any thought as to whether it would be advisable to have this canal dug by contract?

Mr. STEVENS. I have given very serious thought to it: yes, sir. Senator HOPKINS. Are you prepared to enlighten the committee at the present time as to your views on that matter?

Mr. STEVENS. I am thoroughly in favor of contract work—thoroughly in favor of it.

Senator HOPKINS. You believe it would be to the best interests of the Government to let the construction of it, after the question has been determined as to whether it shall be a lock or a sea-level canal, under contracts?

Mr. STEVENS. I should certainly ask for bids on intelligent specifications; and when I got my bids I could tell what I would do. But I believe in doing the work by contract. There is no doubt about that.

Senator DRYDEN. But there would be no difficulty at this time in preparing specifications upon which to base bids, so that you would have a clear understanding and practically accurate knowledge of the cost of that canal when completed, or so far as the specifications went, when the bids were in, would there?

Mr. STEVENS. Assuming that the successful bidder carried out his contract.

Senator DRYDEN. Precisely-of course that would have to be assumed.

Mr. STEVENS. And there would be difficulty in making the specifications. It is a question that requires very good judgment and a good deal of discussion on the numerous points involved; but they can be written, I think.

Senator DRYDEN. What I meant to bring out-perhaps my question did not make it clear-was whether, at the beginning, the specifications can be drawn so that as an engineer you would have every confidence that when the bids were in no subsequent contracts would have to be made to complete the parts of the work contracted for?

Mr. STEVENS. No; approximately none. There should not be. I should think you could make it so broad as to cover that.

Senator SIMMONS. If it were let out by contract, would not the Government have to manage the transportation facilities over the railroad?

Mr. STEVENS. Over the railroad?

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Senator SIMMONS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. No; my plan would be to turn all this equipment over to the contractor, and he would run his trains over the Panama Railroad of course, under the Panama Railroad train dispatchers, which is done in the case of leasing trackage rights anywhere in the world, you know-at a nominal sum, which we would fix, per train mile. Supposing it was 25 cents, and he would run 25 miles; he would pay $6.25 for the privilege of running that train over those 25 miles.

Senator SIMMONS. But the Government would have to construct the railroad?

Mr. STEVENS. The Government would have to construct the railroad.

Senator SIMMONS. And bear the expense of its maintenance?
Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator TALIAFERRO. The Panama Railroad?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Not the canal railroad?
Mr. STEVENS. No, sir.

Senator KNOX. The Panama Railroad Company would have to construct the railroad. That is operated as a separate identity. Senator SIMMONS. I was referring to the spur tracks. Would you not have to construct those?

Mr. STEVENS. No, sir; I should turn them over to the contractor, just as I should expect them to be turned over to me if I were the contractor and doing this work for the Government.

Senator HOPKINS. The contractor would do there precisely as he would do if he was building the main line of any great railroad? Mr. STEVENS. Exactly.

Senator MORGAN. Mr. Stevens, I would like to suggest to you, inasmuch as you have made your pronouncement (I do not say that I disagree with you at all) about doing that work by letting it out to bidders, to contractors

Mr. STEVENS. You say you disagree with me?

Senator MORGAN. No; I say, inasmuch as you have stated that you have a preference for that method of doing work by contract, I desire to suggest to you that before we meet again I would like you to please consider the question as to what changes in the government of the Zone might be made necessary, if we had a lot of contractors working in there, from the present democratic system of constitutional law that we administer there, from the supreme court down to a magistrate, etc. I judge that our first duty would be to protect the contractor and his laborers against outside intervenors and people who might be interfering with their morals, etc., and their business. Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. And we would have to protect squads of men working under different contractors against each other.

Mr. STEVENS. You have struck the root of the greatest difficulty. Senator MORGAN. And we would have to protect the contractors against their employees. Now, it occurs to me that in conducting work in that way, the strongest arm of government that the Government can wield at all in the control of the situation there ought to be employed.

My preference would be, and my preference has always been, for treating this Canal Zone under those circumstances as a Government reservation, with the military power of government over all-not to be exercised in a strict military regimen, but with power to control and with a measure and means of controlling every situation that arises, not by going into a court and suing out a writ of habeas corpus or trying a case before a judge, but by ordering the things to be done.

Mr. STEVENS. Of course I have never gone into those questions.

Senator MORGAN. I expected that you had not, and I wanted to ask you to take them into your consideration in coming to a final conclusion as to whether this system you have now is the best one to

pursue.

Mr. STEVENS. But there are two things that the United States Government must retain control of, no matter how the work is done; that is the policing and the sanitation.

Senator HOPKINS. The letting by contract would not interfere with the sanitation of the government of the Zone at all, would it?

Mr. STEVENS. I think not; I think that can be worked out. The point that Senator Morgan brings up in regard to the conflict between laborers belonging to different contractors is another proposition, however, and a very difficult one to deal with.

In all large contracts in this country that I have ever been connected with, I have always had inserted in the contract a clause giving the chief engineer, or the railway company, or the corporation, a right to fix the hours and the price of labor; and the general control that the chief engineer retains of a railway contract in this country gives him power enough so that he can, nine times out of ten, adjust these labor troubles.

Senator HOPKINS. As between two companies, with the chief engineer to have supervision of the entire system, you could have in your contract, could you not, a penalty to be affixed and administered by the chief engineer if one contractor interfered with the other?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh. I presume so. Of course it is possible to draw a contract so one sided and arbitrary that it is useless. I have made them with that stipulation. You can make the chief engineer the sole and supreme arbiter in the contract, and still you can go into court in the United States and break it, as I have found several times.

Senator KITTREDGE. Mr. Stevens, returning to the eight-hour feature of this matter, is it possible for American labor to do the manual work on the Isthmus?

Mr. STEVENS. I think it would be possible from a hygienic and climatic standpoint, but not from a practical standpoint, because there is not the American labor to go there, either colored or white?

Senator KITTREDGE. Would the elimination of the eight-hour feature in any manner interfere with the American laborer?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not think it would in the least.

Senator KNOX. To what extent do you think that ruling that the eight-hour law applies to the Isthmus interferes with the work?

Mr. STEVENS. As far as the common laborer is concerned, as I think I said before, we are paying higher than that class of labor has ever been paid anywhere. We are paying 20 cents for the lowest classes20 cents in silver, 10 cents in gold; 80 cents for eight hours, in gold, or

$1.60 in silver, with this reservation: When the men are hired they are told that is the unit price of labor, the basing price. If, after they have worked awhile and demonstrated their ability by their hard work and attention to their duties they are capable of doing anything better, they are paid 26 cents; and that is the highest that common labor is paid or promised.

If I had the privilege of working those people ten hours a day, I should not pay them 20 cents an hour. because it is more than they are being paid anywhere else, and the islands negro is a peculiar being. The majority of them, you know, can not see very far ahead. As a inatter of fact, assuming that it costs those people 30 cents a day for actual food expenses, and we paid them $1.80 a day for work, I apprehend that one-half of them would work Monday, and they would not work again until next Monday, because that would carry them through.

Senator MORGAN. The South is full of object lessons of exactly that character with our own negroes.

Mr. STEVENS. And it is accentuated the farther south you go, in the islands.

Senator MORGAN. They will work two days in the week and live the balance of it in idleness.

Mr. STEVENS. They have absolutely nothing of what we call ambition.

Senator KNOX. My question had not so much to do, Mr. Stevens. with the cost of the canal, but with the length of time that it would take to build it, and to what extent the work is interfered with by the ruling that the eight-hour law applies. Are those men capable of working much longer than eight hours?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, yes.

Senator TALIAFERRO. And they are accustomed to it?

Mr. STEVENS. They are accustomed to it at the plantations, you know; they work from sun to sun.

Senator KNOx. Then it is interfered with to a serious extent?

Mr. STEVENS Theoretically (I will not say it is practically true) we are losing 20 per cent.

Senator KNOx. That is what I want to get at.

Mr. STEVENS I will not say it is practically true with that class of labor, but I can figure it out that way-it is ten hours against eight. Senator TALIAFERRO. And I suppose one of your reasons for favoring the contract system there is that the contractors would not be bound down as you are?

Mr. STEVENS. I understand that they are bound down. They are bound in the United States.

Senator HOPKINS. Yes: Government contractors are.

Mr. STEVENS. If the ruling of the Attorney-General will apply to our laborers, I do not see why it should not apply to the contractors. Senator SIMMONS. Have you ever worked American negro labor? Mr. STEVENS. Why, ves; more or less.

Senator SIMMONS. What is the efficiency of the negro that you have down there as a laborer compared with the American negro laborer?

Mr. STEVENS. With the average American negro?
Senator SIMMONS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. I can only speak of American negro labor on railroad work. I should say that the average American negro laborer I have seen and had around me on railways is worth at least two of the island negroes. Some of the very best men I ever saw in my life were Southern negroes, on the railway, and some of the poorest. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Stevens, do you not think that the American negro, if you took him down on the Isthmus, would in a short time. be about as worthless as the Jamaican darkey? Mr. STEVENS. Well, I could not say that. of theory.

That is a pure matter

Senator MORGAN. I do not think that the negro ever gets tired of hot weather. I never saw one that did.

Senator KITTREDGE. How about the civil-service restrictions?

Mr. STEVENS. Well, I have had more or less controversy, as you know, with the civil-service people. I suppose my experience there has been rather bitter with the class of men that have gone down. I do not believe that for outside men, for men like train men, steamshovel men, foremen, track foremen, and people of that class we should be held to the civil-service examination. As far as clerks, clerical men, inside men, are concerned, I am thoroughly committed to it and believe in it.

Senator KITTREDGE. You think that you should have a free hand in the management and control of outside men?

Mr. STEVENS. I think so.

Senator KITTREDGE. Just the same as in the management of a railroad?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes; I think so.

Senator GORMAN. Well, has not that order been modified, so that you have now?

Mr. STEVENS. I understand that it has.

Senator KITTREDGE. To what extent?

Mr. STEVENS. To the extent that I have said that all outside men are outside of the civil service.

Senator MORGAN. Has there been any trouble in the Zone among the laborers, etc., arising from drunkenness?

Mr. STEVENS. No; not very much. I will say this for the islands negro: He is the most harmless and law-abiding person for the numbers that we have collected together there that I ever saw in my life.

Senator MORGAN. Are you aware that the natives, the Panamans or Panamaniacs, or whatever you please to call them, are moonshiners, making rum out of sugar cane?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, yes.

Senator MORGAN. That is a common practice, is it not?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. That is what I thought. How about aguardiente?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, no; aguardiente is made in Mexico. No; they make plain rum. The cane grows wild there, and you can go out and

find hundreds of acres of it.

Senator MORGAN. Yes; and they take it and take the juice out of it and distill it?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator MORGAN. That goes on in the Zone, too?