Mr. STEVENS. Yes; I think so.

Senator MORGAN. I got my information from a man who is at work down there and came back on a little furlough. He likes the country. Senator SIMMONS. Do they make that for themselves or for shipment?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not know whether any of it is shipped or not. It is sold there.

Senator MORGAN. Looking to the possibility of those native people making a very heavy haul in the way of manufacturing this rum and selling it to the Zone people, or making it in the Zone, would it not be very well to make restrictions there of a severe character against the introduction of that drink? This man that I speak of says that they will sell it for 5 cents a pint, and that two pints of it will kill any man in the world, if he drinks it inside of an hour.

Mr. STEVENS. Well, I do not drink it myself. Of course I have tasted it; and I do not disguise at all the fact that I like rum. I like it in this way: Occasionally, I suppose a dozen times, down on the Isthmus we had made what we called a limeade. We raise the most beautiful limes in the world there, and they are very healthful; and we put about a tablespoonful of rum in it simply to flavor it, and it makes a very fine drink.

By the way, speaking about "two drinks killing a man," the people down there, who ought to know, tell me that the rum that is made there in this way is absolutely pure-100 per cent pure; that there is no purer rum in the world, and the only trouble is that it is so new and fiery that they drink a lot of it. And there is one trouble, speaking about the characteristics of the negro there: If he has 10 cents to buy a meal, and he starts to buy it, and meets a woman, a vendor, a Chinaman, or anybody with rum-the peddlers go around with these things on their heads, you know, selling cakes and bottles of sweetened water and rum; they inherited that from the French, by the way this man is just as liable as not to take this 10 cents or 5 cents or whatever he has and spend it for rum, and go without his dinner. They like it. But I say I never saw very many of them drunk. You scarcely ever see a drunken negro.

Senator TALIAFERRO. What is the trouble about lewd women on the Zone?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not know, Senator. There are none there so far as I know. There are lewd women there, undoubtedly; but they were not brought in by the Commission.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Do they get in on our ships?

Mr. STEVENS. Well, we are running a line of boats there, you know. coming in at Colon.

Senator HOPKINS. In proportion to the population there, is that condition any worse than you will find it in any section of the country?

Mr. STEVENS. No; it is not nearly as bad as in our old-settled cities here nothing of the kind; oh, no. There are such houses in Panama. I understand, several of them; but without taking too much of your time I will illustrate:

I know some very nice people that live in Panama. There are no better people in the world. They are agreeable people, cultured people. In speaking of the difference between the American administration and the French administration they say: "Now, you see that

plaza" you were there Mr. Chairman; I mean the plaza in front of the Central Hotel.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. They tell me that every night of the year, during the old French occupation, that was the scene of a howling orgy; they had no police force to deal with the thing then, and the scene that you could look out from the windows and see right around the plaza was something awful. The most debasing debauches were going on there all the time, participated in by men and women, and they say that now there are a good many canteeners, which are saloons where they sell liquor in the city of Panama; then every store was a canteen. Now after 8 o'clock it is like a tomb in Panama; you can testify to that yourself.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. It is so quiet. Nothing of the kind is going on. Undoubtedly, and, in fact, I know there are several of those places there, as there naturally would be. But the city of Panama is a very quiet, lawful, law-abiding place.

Senator HOPKINS. And a moral city?

Mr. STEVENS. I regard it so; yes.

Senator MORGAN. How is Colon?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not live there; I do not sleep there probably oftener than one night a week. I have never seen any trouble in Colon, except where some laborers have drifted in there, and then sometimes there is trouble. I never saw a fight in either town.

The CHAIRMAN. During the eight days I was there I did not see a drunken man from Colon to Panama, and I was out almost every day. Mr. STEVENS. No; I am free to say that the worst class we have had down there, to our shame, has been some of our men that have gone down from here. That is another thing that I have been criticized very harshly for. They do not stop very long; I send them home and get rid of them. It is a very peculiar position there; you can not understand it unless you are on the ground.

The CHAIRMAN. The young men there in charge of squads of different kinds along the line seemed to me like very intelligent, bright young fellows.

Mr. STEVENS. They are.

The CHAIRMAN. They appeared to me so.

Mr. STEVENS. They are as fine a body of young fellows as I ever saw in my life. Now there is a club called the University Club in Panama. It has been started recently. They have very elegant club rooms. There are over 300 members of that club; and when you understand that they must be college graduates, either of a college or a university, in good standing, to secure their admittance, you can see what that means. I can not be admitted to the club, because I am not a college graduate-although I believe they made me an honorary vice-president to get me in. But there is the standard they have set up, and there are 300 in that club.

Senator TALIAFERRO. Only from the United States?

Mr. STEVENS. They are mostly our men.

Some of the Panamanians belong to it. There are quite a number of young men there who are graduates of our northern colleges and universities. Senator KNOX. What is the population of Panama?

Mr. STEVENS. As near as we can ascertain, about 28,000; about 8,000 in Colon.

Senator DRYDEN. Is it not true that the houses in Colon where the laborers live are built in the swamps?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator DRYDEN. And all surrounded by water?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir; it is true to a large extent.
Senator DRYDEN. Not drained?

Mr. STEVENS. Not drained.

Senator DRYDEN. Is that necessary? Is there no high ground there upon which these houses could have been located?

Mr. STEVENS. No, sir; no, sir. Manzanilla Island is only about 14 to 2 feet above the level of the sea. It is surrounded on all sides by salt water, and about one-half of the island is covered by a freshwater marsh from 1 inch to a foot and a half deep, possibly.

And then, these houses that you speak of are not creations of the Commission. They have been there for I do not know how long; possibly some of them for forty or fifty years. But at Colon-very few of our employees live there; taking Colon and Cristobal together, for they are practically one, I do not suppose there are over two or three hundred out of the twelve or fifteen thousand employees that live in Colon.

The CHAIRMAN. They all live at Cristobal, do they not?

Mr. STEVENS. Our white employees all live at Cristobal. Cristobal is an artificial peninsula which was built by the French out into the bay, and it is a most beautiful place of residence.

Senator DRYDEN. Does the same condition as to swamps exist there? Mr. STEVENS. No, sir.

Senator DRYDEN. That is healthier?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator SIMMONS. Have we built any houses or hotels in these swamps?

Mr. STEVENS. No, sir. On the contrary, I have made plans and definitely arranged now to destroy all of those that are there. We have plans adopted and approved for taking care of Colon's sanitation, and the work is going on at the present time.

Senator DRYDEN. For destroying all those houses that are now in the swamps?

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir: a lot of them we will destroy. Then in that low part we will take the people out of them, raise them up. fill underneath, and rebuild the houses. .

Senator GORMAN. Mr. Stevens, while this is a matter to which I do not attach the importance that a great many others do, I think it is due to you, as the matter has been brought up, to call your attention to a communication from the President of the United States and a letter of the Secretary of War, dated on the 10th and 11th of January, in which the emphatic statement was made by the Secretary of War that the women who had been brought to the Isthmus from Jamaica came voluntarily, and that their transportation was not paid. for by the Canal Commission.

Afterwards the Secretary of War, in a note, makes the statement that after conferring with an agent that you have in Jamaica. Mr. Settoon, it appears that that agent did engage the women, and paid their fares to the Canal Zone as the wives of laborers, and that this

was done after consultation between the agent and yourself, and without the knowledge of the Commission. I think you ought to have an opportunity to state all the facts about that.

Mr. STEVENS. The facts are these: None of those women came from Jamaica, although that is not an essential point; they came from Martinique. We bring laborers from Martinique and from Barbados and other places, and since my time down there we have brought none from Jamaica. A great many of these laborers that came from Martinique claimed the right to bring their families, their wives, along, and we had no quarters for anybody excepting bachelors. The French did not provide them.

All of these laborers' quarters were simply houses of one room, and (as the express policy of the Commission was for the blacks and whites alike to have their families there, to get their minds on their work so that they would stay on the work, we are following that policy with whites as well as blacks), we immediately started rebuilding a lot of these houses to make married quarters. The agents reported that we could get a better class of blacks if they could bring their wives.

I said: "Whenever our quarters are so that we can take care of them as they should be, decently, where each family can be segregated from the other, I am perfectly willing that they should come under the same conditions that the laborers came, namely, that we pay their fare from Fort de France or Martinique," which is, I think, about $7. Then, when the Commission went into the hotel business, we found a terrible dearth of servants; we could not get anybody to take care of rooms; and the suggestion was made that we could get some of these women for servants.

They make very excellent ones; and a few of the white employees, the higher grade people, who keep servants, wanted some. I said: "All right; you can bring these people along provided you know it is all straight;" and they were brought when the quarters were ready. And Mr. Settoon tells me that he selected them carefully, personally, the 280-odd, I think, that he brought over; he knew the family relations of every one of the less than 300 women that were sent, and every one of them had a father or a brother or a husband on the Isthmus that had preceded her. Now, there is the situation exactly. Senator GORMAN. It was clearly within your province to make that arrangement, without consulting the Commission.

Mr. STEVENS. I may have exceeded my orders from the Commission, though I never had any orders. My orders were to stock the work with laborers, and I tried to do it.

Senator GORMAN. What is the result of the experiment, so far as it has gone? Has it been beneficial, or otherwise?

Mr. STEVENS. Why, it has been beneficial. We have gotten a better class of laborers, and they have settled down, and expect to stay there and stay with the work.

Senator SIMMONS. You said the Government paid their fare, $7? Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator SIMMONS. If that was a woman, how would that be returned to the Government?

Mr. STEVENS. It is not returned. We are not deducting from laborers that come from Martinique and Barbados the cost of bringing them over.

Senator SIMMONS. As to the labor that comes to engage in the work and is employed by the Government, you would not deduct it, I can see that; but suppose it comes there, not to be employed by the Government, as some of these women were, would you still pay their fares?

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, no; oh, no. If the people come and want to work, we put them to work.

Senator SIMMONS. But these women who came over, and whose fare you paid, came over to serve the Government?

Mr. STEVENS. Why, certainly; and they are serving the Government. I think there is a report there in some of these papers from our chief of police, whom we had investigate every individual, and who knew just what every one of them was doing.

Now, I do not want to be misunderstood (I want to make this statement right here) as saying that, according to our church forms, every one of these women was what we would ferm a legal wife. But I do mean to say what I believe, that in the country where you are the custom is the law, and if a man and woman live together thirty or forty years, even if the benediction has not been pronounced over them, they are man and wife. That is the condition that obtains all over the islands. I do not suppose that over 50 per cent of the people who live with each other their lives long, and never consort with any other, have had the benediction pronounced over them; but they are man and wife nevertheless. They are so recognized. In other words, while, as I say, we did not know that a benediction had been pronounced in every case over these people, we did know before leaving the island that all of these so-called wives had been living with these men for many years.

Senator KNOX. They were common-law wives?

Mr. STEVENS. They were common-law wives.

Senator GORMAN. The result has been to improve the efficiency of the labor?

Mr. STEVENS. There is no doubt of that. The very best class of our laborers are the ones who bring their families.

Senator GORMAN. I merely asked about it because the question has been raised.

Mr. STEVENS. There has been so much talk and misrepresentation about it that I am very glad you did.

Senator GORMAN. Yes. Now, Mr. Stevens, I would like to ask you one or two questions, going back to your original statement, about the equipment of the Panama Railroad-I mean the main line.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Senator GORMAN. Outside of the switches and spurs, what was the estimate made by your predecessor on the whole of the remodelling and laying down of additional track, double tracking that road with the equipment?

Mr. STEVENS. I do not recall it, Senator.

Senator GORMAN. You do not?

Mr. STEVENS. No, sir.

Senator GORMAN. Can you furnish it to the committee from any data you have?

Mr. STEVENS. You mean for changing the gauge and changing the equipment?