LOOKING AHEAD

353

shall in time have to come to the sea-level plan. The question is whether we shall secure for ourselves and for posterity the advantage and the reward of a wise forethought, or shall incur the inexorable penalty of cowardice and delay. Surely it would seem that the fulfilment of the world's desire of four centuries in the completion of an equatorial waterway around the globe is an enterprise more worthily to be achieved in a Promethean than in an Epimethean spirit.

The same is to be said of the adjunct and auxiliary works. There are harbours to construct; perhaps, on the Caribbean, a new terminal city to build; the appurtenances of civilisation to supply throughout the Canal Zone. These are not simply to be done for the construction of the canal, during the next five or ten or fifteen years, but for the perpetual maintenance of the canal for uncounted centuries to come. It was a heroic task to get rid of yellow fever in the summer of 1905. But what is it going to be, to keep the Isthmus free from that and other pestilences "far on, in summers that we shall not see," in 1955, and 2005? Is that looking too far? We must respect the future, said Jacques Cartier. There are those who would interpret that to mean that we should not overtax ourselves with efforts and expenditures for the remote future, but should leave a share of the burden for the future itself to bear. That in a measure is true. But a no less true interpretation is that we are not to impose upon the future the handicap of our weakness and cowardice, nor to compel it to undo the ill-devised deeds of our shortsighted blundering. It might be well to leave the pecuniary cost of the canal to be paid little by little through the next century, or the next five centuries. It would not be well to turn a single spadeful of soil or to lay a single stone for some future generation to undo. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and sufficient unto the future days will be the tasks of that time, without a legacy of our ineptitude.

This principle applies with peculiar force to the question of labour on the canal. There is a vast amount of work to be done, and of manual work despite our utmost introduc

tion of machinery. It is reckoned that as many as 25,000 workmen, efficient according to the American standard, will need to be employed, if the canal is to be constructed with all possible expedition. Now the efficiency of labour in the United States is about three times as great as that in Panama. To secure such a working energy, therefore, it will be necessary to employ something like 75,000 men. That will be a formidable army, equal in numbers to the entire adult male population of the republic. It will be no easy task to secure such hosts of workingmen, and from the political and social point of view it will be no light thing to introduce them into the Zone and into the Republic of Panama.

There arises at once the question whether they are to be introduced for the temporary purposes of canal construction, or as permanent residents of the Isthmus. Beyond doubt, I think, the latter would be preferable, provided they were of proper character. Panama needs more men. The population of the state is not more than a tithe of what it should be. Belgium, scarcely more than one-third as extensive in area, has twenty-two times as many people. Bulgaria, only a little larger than Panama, has ten times its population. Switzerland, only half as large as Panama, and with so much of its area uninhabitable, has ten times as many people as the Isthmian republic. Nor need we confine ourselves to comparisons with distant lands in another zone. The neighbouring Republic of Salvador has scarcely a quarter of Panama's area, yet has more than three times its population. Hayti has only a third of Panama's area, yet has four times its population. Nor is there any natural inhibition against the increase of population on the Isthmus. Climate and soil and products are all well calculated for the prosperous maintenance of ten times the present number of inhabitants. We need not here enter elaborately into the causes which have retarded growth. They have been sufficiently indicated in the story of Panama's misgovernment at the hands of Colombia, with all the attendant wars and revolutions, the neglect of sanitation and other public interests, and the general

THE LABOUR PROBLEM

355

prostitution of Isthmian interests and welfare to the passions and greed of Bogotá. With the new era that was established in 1903, a marked change in the Isthmian census should be effected.

It would be desirable, then, to increase the population of Panama by introducing an army of workmen for the canal who would remain as permanent residents after the completion of the canal. But in that case, as I have already hinted, they must be men of desirable character, from both the Panaman and the American point of view. They must be such as would be congenial and acceptable to the present people of Panama, and would be worthy citizens of that republic; and they must be also well disposed toward the United States and its administration of the Canal Zone and its protectorate of Panama. It would be criminal to introduce an element which would be antagonistic to the Panamans, and it would be one of those blunders which are worse than crimes to plant upon the Isthmus a numerous colony hostile to the United States. From what source, then, could we secure a permanent industrial army answering these requirements?

The answer, I fear, must be that there is no adequate source. Workmen can doubtless be secured, but not enough of them of a kind desirable for citizenship in Panama. For to be thus desirable, or even acceptable, they must be of the Caucasian race. This is to be said without the slightest prejudice against either the black or the yellow race, but with the fullest sympathy with them and the fullest appreciation of their excellent qualities. But even those who-like myself-most strongly condemn the savage proscription and persecution of Chinamen which was begun by the hoodlums and criminals of the Pacific Coast and which-through agencies too well understood to require elucidation-have now become potent throughout the land, even we, I say, would shrink from the prospect of introducing say ten million Chinese coolies into the United States. Well, proportionally, it would be as bad as that to introduce fifty thou