CHAPTER VII

WHY THE FRENCH FAILED

THERE is a familiar story of a lawyer who told a judge there were twelve good and sufficient reasons why his client had not obeyed a summons to appear in court. "In the first place," he began in recounting them, "he is dead." "Never mind the other eleven reasons," said the judge. Perhaps it will be risking a similar interruption for me to attempt to tell the reasons why the French under De Lesseps so signally and disastrously failed at Panama, after even the brief mention which I have already made of their financial wastefulness and corruption. Nevertheless, some of the reasons are so instructive that they deserve more than passing notice; some of them apply not only to the original De Lesseps Company but also to its successor, the New French Canal Company; and some of them were such as were not realised by the world at large at the time, but have only now become apparent to those who have visited the Isthmus and have studied the records and the situation there.

Let me begin with the matter of finances, since I have already referred to it. The extent of the profligacy of the De Lesseps régime was not bounded by the bribery of French officials, the subsidising of the French press, and the exercise of secret and sinister influences in the United States. "The trail of the serpent is over it all," on the Isthmus as well as at Paris, New York, and Washington. We were standing one day on the wind-swept veranda of Major Le Jeune's cottage at Empire, that sightly and salubrious hill where camp the United States troops which guarantee the order of the Canal Zone and also, indirectly, of the Republic of Panama. It was one of the highest points on the Isthmus

along the line of the canal, and as we could see almost from sea to sea we fell to likening it to that "peak in Darien" whereon stout Cortez-alias Balboa-stood and gazed on the Pacific; in the midst of which, reverting to the topic we had been discussing on our way thither, I asked a man who knew, "What was the real cause of the French failure, and how can we hope to succeed where De Lesseps failed?" For answer, he persisted in the lighter fancies of our vision, and pointing to the splendid vistas, toward the Pacific and toward the Caribbean, he said: "You see all that?" "Yes." "Forty-seven miles from Colon Colon to Panama?" "Yes." "Well, in De Lesseps's time, it was forty-seven miles of 'graft.'" "Yes; and what is it now?" "Oh, now it is an American Canal Zone!"

Nor was his answer altogether obscure, to one who had seen what had already been pointed out to me. There was the house which had been built for the Director-General, at stockholders' expense, at a cost of $100,000. There was also his summer house, at La Boca, which cost $150,000 of stockholders' money. He drew a salary of $50,000 a year, and got an extra allowance of $50 for every day-or fraction of a day in which he travelled along the line in that sumptuous private car which had been provided for him at a cost of $42,000 of stockholders' money. Stables cost $600,000; the hospitals at Ancon cost $5,600,000, and those at Colon $1,400,000-they were needed, but they cost three times as much to the stockholders as they did to the builders. Office buildings, etc., cost-the stockholders $5,250,000. Everywhere the grossest extravagance prevailed, and in addition to the extravagance there was invariably an enormous "rakeoff." Where a $50,000 building was needed, a $100,000 building was erected, at a corrupt cost of $200,000.

The same conditions prevailed in the purchase of "supplies." In one place I saw where there had been stored a huge consignment of snow-shovels-thousands of them. Snow-shovels in Panama! In another place there had been received and stored some 15,000 kerosene torches, such as

are used in torchlight processions. They were sent to the Isthmus at the beginning of operations, for use in the grand celebration which was to mark the completion of the canal! Away up in the hills of Culebra, in the almost impenetrable jungle, miles from navigable water, I saw a number of sectional and portable iron steamboats. They had been sent from France, and carted up thither, overland, to await the time, years afterward, when the canal should be constructed up to them and they could be floated in it. Such examples might be repeated a thousand times.

Apparently, agents were sent all over France, asking manufacturers if they had any surplus stocks of goods of which they wished to get rid. If the answer was in the affirmative, as of course it usually was, they were told to ship the goods to Panama. But they were nothing that was wanted or could be used there. No matter; ship them along. So they sent cargo after cargo, of the most useless things, from hairpins to grand pianos. Almost every week the men at Colon were surprised by the arrival of a shipload of things they had not ordered, did not want, and could not use. But protest and demur were vain. They were told to take the things off and store them somewhere, anywhere, so that the ships could go back to France for more. The system was simple and effective. The manufacturers got rid of surplus, outof-date and almost worthless stock, at top prices. The purchasing agents got large commissions. The railroad and steamship companies got high freight rates. The managers, in France and on the Isthmus, got a rich "rake-off," and the stockholders paid the bills.

So much for the "graft," which consumed tens of millions of dollars and which was alone sufficient to cause the failure of the enterprise. What was suggested in the next place, by my informant's reference to the "American Canal Zone"? This: That the French did not secure control of such a zone, but tried to build a canal on Colombian soil, under Colombian control and jurisdiction. That was not their fault; it was their misfortune; since the United States cer

tainly would not have permitted them to obtain, or Colombia to grant, control of such a zone. But what did it mean to the French? It meant that they were left at the mercy of the Colombian police and of the Colombian courts. What that meant, in turn, let a single example, one of many, indicate.

So

There was a man of Panama, who owned some thirty acres of about the most worthless land on the whole Isthmus. It might have been used as a breeding place for malarial mosquitoes, or as a playground for baby alligators, but scarcely for anything else. It was, however, exactly in the path of the canal builders. They needed it. It was absolutely necessary that they should have it, and have it at once. they went to the man with an offer of purchase. Ten dollars an acre would have been a fair price. But the Frenchmen wanted to be liberal so as to ingratiate the natives, and also were willing to pay a large price for the sake of closing the bargain at once, so they offered him a hundred dollars an acre. He flatly declined it. How much, then, did he want? Would he be satisfied with a thousand dollars an acre? Oh, no; he could not think of accepting $30,000 for his land. Why? Because it was too much, and he did not wish to rob the generous Frenchmen? Oh, no; because it was too little. Well, then, how much would he accept? He answered, without the quiver of a nerve, $300,000.

Of course, they appealed to the courts-Colombian courts. Elsewhere it would have been for a writ de lunatico inquirendo. There it was simply for condemnation proceedings and judicial assessment of value. They presented their case. They showed that the land was necessary for the construction of the canal, but they proved, by abundant testimony, that for any other purposes it was practically worthless, and that ten dollars an acre would be a fair price for it. All that was, however, quite superfluous, for the man did not dispute it. He frankly admitted that his land was not worth ten dollars an acre, and that in other circumstances he would have been glad to sell it at that price. But, he added