Part 8

At the end of the tunnel a car that looks like a limousine turned switch-engine is waiting on a siding for the “boss of the job.” Painted light yellow, like the passenger-cars of the Panama Railroad, it is known among the men as the “Yellow Peril,” or the “Brain-wagon.” But if any one expects, as a matter of course, to see the colonel in the “Yellow Peril,” he is as likely as not doomed to disappointment. The chief engineer drops off, now to see men drilling holes for dynamite, now to watch the loading of the dirt-trains from the great steam-shovels.

As we see the solid rock and rocklike earth of Culebra we realize that without dynamite the canal would be impossible. Let us watch for a moment the tearing down of the “everlasting hill.” Deafening machine-drills pierce the rock or hard soil with holes from three to thirty or forty feet in depth. These holes, which have been carefully arranged so as to insure the greatest effect in an earth-quaking, rock-breaking way, are filled with dynamite and then connected with an electric wire so that the pressure of a button will set off the entire charge. A rumble and then a roar--the earth trembles--heaves--then great masses of rock, mud, and water are hurled high in the air. A fraction of Culebra larger than a six-or seven-story building is frequently torn down by one of these explosions and the rock broken into pieces that can be seized by the steam-shovels and loaded on the dump-cars.

It is interesting to see how, through an ingenious arrangement of the network of tracks, the loaded cars always go on the down grade and only empty trains have to crawl up an incline. Much of the rock taken from the cut is used to build the great Gatun Dam, that keeps the troublesome Chagres River from flooding the canal. The rest goes to the construction of breakwaters at the ends of the waterway or to the filling of swamps and valleys.

The “brain-wagon” is going along without the head. He is climbing blithely over the roughest sort of ground, now dodging onrushing dirt-trains, now running to shelter with the “powder-men” at the moment of blasting. A question here, a word there, and on he goes. It seems as if even the steam-shovels know that there is a masterhand at the helm and vie with one another to see which can take up the most earth at a bite. You would think any man would be completely played out after such constant jumping and climbing under the hot rays of a tropical sun, as the hours draw near to noon, but the colonel pulls up the long flight of steps that lead from the cut and remarks briskly, “Nothing like a little exercise every morning to keep your health in this climate!”

“There never was such a man for being on the job!” exclaimed one of his foremen, admiringly. “The only time the colonel isn’t working is from ten P.M. to five A.M., when he is asleep.”

No despotic monarch in his inherited kingdom ever had more absolute power than had the Man of Panama. The men from the chiefs of divisions down to the last Jamaican negro on the line realized that he was master of the business and that his orders sprang from a thorough understanding of conditions and a large grasp of the whole. He was a successful engineer, however, not only because he knew the forces of nature that they were working to conquer in Panama, but also the _human_ nature he was working _with_. He knew that no chain is stronger than its weakest link, and that no matter how perfect his plans and how powerful his huge machines and engines, the success he strove for would depend first of all on the character and the coöperation of the workers.

“The real engineer must above all feel the vital importance of the human side of engineering work,” he declared. “The man who would move mountains and make the flow of rivers serve human ends must first be a master of human construction.”

He knew that if there were to be able and willing workers in Panama, they must be provided with the means of comfortable and contented living. It was not enough to defeat death in the form of plague and fever; it was necessary to make life worth while. For man could not live by work alone in a land of swamps and jungles. Houses with screened porches, with gardens, and all the comforts and conveniences to be found at home were provided for the five thousand American engineers, clerks, and foremen. Ships with cold-storage equipment brought food supplies from New York or New Orleans, and every morning a long train of refrigerator-cars steamed across the isthmus carrying fresh provisions to all the hotels, town commissaries, and camps.

“You needn’t pity us because we live in the Zone,” said Mrs. Smith. “We get just as good meat and green vegetables as you can in market and at wholesale prices. Our house is rent free, with furniture, linen, and silverware provided. We have electric lights and a telephone. We even have ice-cream soda and the movies!”

The Man of Panama knew that all work and no play would not only make Jack a dull boy, but also a poor workman. Recreation buildings were provided where one could enjoy basket-ball, squash, bowling, or read the latest books and magazines. There were clubs for men and for women, band concerts, and a baseball league.

“The colonel not only gave time and thought to the things that kept us contented and fit,” one of the engineers said, “but he always had time for everybody who felt he wanted a word with him. The man who was handling the biggest job in the world nevertheless seemed to think it was worth while to consider the little troubles of each man who came along. Have you heard the song they sing in Panama?

“Don’t hesitate to state your case, the boss will hear you through; It’s true he’s sometimes busy, and has other things to do, But come on Sunday morning, and line up with the rest,-- You’ll maybe feel some better with that grievance off your chest.

See Colonel Goethals, tell Colonel Goethals, It’s the only right and proper thing to do. Just write a letter, or, even better, Arrange a little Sunday interview.”

The colonel’s Sunday mornings were remarkable occasions. You might see foregathered there the most interesting variety of human types that could be found together anywhere in the world--English, Spanish, French, Italians, turbaned coolies from India, and American negroes. One man thinks that his foreman does not appreciate his good points; another comes to present a claim for an injury received on a steam-shovel. Mrs. A. declares with some feeling that she is never given as good cuts of meat as Mrs. B. enjoys every day. Another housewife doesn’t see why, if Mrs. F. can get bread from the hospital bakery, she can’t as well; because she, too, can appreciate a superior article!

“Of course, many of the things are trivial and even absurd,” said the colonel; “but if somebody thinks his little affair important, of course it is--to him. And that is the point, isn’t it? He feels better when he has had it out; and if it makes the people any happier in their exile to have this court of appeal, that is not a thing to be despised. Besides, first and last. I come to understand many things that are really important from any point of view.”

“He is the squarest boss I ever worked for,” declared one of the locomotive engineers, “and I’ll tell you the grafters don’t have any show with him. He had a whole cargo of meat sent back the other day because it wasn’t above suspicion. I happen to know, too, that he turned back a load of screening on a prominent business house who thought that they could save a bit on the copper--that for a government order it would never be noticed if it was not quite rust-proof.”

The canal was finished not only in less time than had ever been thought possible, but also with such honest and efficient administration of every detail that nowadays, when the statement is sometimes made that no great public enterprise can be carried through without more or less mismanagement and jobbing, the champion of Uncle Sam’s business methods retorts, “Look at Panama!”

The colonel’s quiet mastery in moments of stress was perhaps the most interesting phase of his human engineering. The representatives of a labor union threaten a strike unless he orders the release of one of their number who has been convicted of manslaughter. “When will we get our answer?” asked the spokesman.

“You have it now,” replied Colonel Goethals. “You said that if the man was not out of the penitentiary by seven this evening you would all quit. By calling up the penitentiary you will learn that he is still there. That is your answer. It is now ten minutes past seven.”

“But, Colonel, you don’t want to tie up the whole work?” protested the leader.

“I am not proposing to tie up the work--you are doing that,” was the reply.

“But, Colonel, why can’t you pardon the man?”

“I will take no action in response to a mob. As for your threat to leave the service, I wish to say that every man of you who is not at his post to-morrow morning will be given his transportation to the United States, and there will be no string to it. He will go out on the first steamer and he will never come back.”

There was only one man who failed to report the following day, and he sent a doctor’s certificate stating that he was too ill to be out of bed.

Human engineering was especially called into play when the Man of Panama faced committees of inquiry and investigation from Congress. A pompous politician once demanded in a challenging tone and with a sharp eye on the colonel, “How much cracked stone do you allow for a cubic yard of concrete?”

“One cubic yard,” was the reply.

“You evidently do not understand my question,” rejoined the investigator in the manner of one who is bent on convicting another through his own words. “How much cracked stone do you allow for a cubic yard of concrete?”

“One cubic yard.”

“But you don’t allow for the sand and concrete.” The implied accusation was spoken with grave emphasis.

“Those go into the spaces among the cracked stone,” was the unruffled reply. The smile that went around the room was felt rather than heard, but the pompous politician had no further questions.

This master of men, who was never known to yield his ground when he had once taken a stand, was always a man of few words. He preferred to let acts and facts do the talking.

“You know, Colonel Goethals,” said a prominent statesman on one occasion, “a great many people think we are never going to carry this job through to the finish. What would you say when diplomats of the leading powers come at you with questions and declare it will never be done?”

“I wouldn’t say anything,” was the reply.

On another occasion the boss of the job said: “Some day in September, 1913, I expect to go to Colon and take the Panama Railroad steamer and put her through the canal. If we get all the way across, I’ll give it out to the newspapers--if we don’t, I’ll keep quiet about it.”

It was said of old that if one had faith enough he could move mountains. We cannot doubt that the Man of Panama carried through his great work because he had faith--not a passive faith that hoped and waited, but an active _faithfulness_ that worked in full confidence that destiny worked with him. And this faith and loyalty was a living power that enkindled like faithfulness in those who worked with him.

The Man of Panama is General Goethals now, but when any admirer would imply that his generalship--his administration and human engineering--was the chief factor in the success of the great work, he invariably replies that he was but one man of many working shoulder to shoulder in a common cause. The simple greatness of the “prophet-engineer” and leader of men was shown in the words with which he accepted the medal of the National Geographic Society:

“The canal has been the work of many, and it has been the pride of Americans who have visited the isthmus to find the spirit which has

animated the forces. Every man was doing the particular part of the work that was necessary to make it a success. No chief of any enterprise ever commanded an army that was so loyal, so faithful, that gave its strength and its blood to the successful completion of its task as did the canal forces. And so in accepting the medal and thanking those who confer it, I accept it and thank them in the name of every member of the canal army.”

Since the completion of the canal, its master-builder has been called to serve his country in more than one great crisis. At the time of the threatened railroad strike in the fall of 1916, he was made chairman of the commission of three appointed by President Wilson to investigate the working of the eight-hour law for train operators, which was the subject of dispute between the managers of the roads and the men who ran the freight-trains. In March, 1917, he was selected by Governor Edge of New Jersey to serve as advisory engineer on the construction of the new fifteen-million-dollar highway system of that State.

A SHEPHERD OF “THE GREAT COUNTRY”: BISHOP ROWE

“Love is a bodily shape; and Christian works are no more than animate faith and love, as flowers are the animate springtide.”

LONGFELLOW.

Have you heard the story of Offero, the mighty giant of Canaan, who made a vow never to serve any master but the most powerful of all the rulers of earth?

“As my strength is great, so shall my service be great,” he said, “and my king must be one who stands in fear of no man.”

He wandered over all lands, looking in vain for the greatest monarch, for each king plainly stood in dread of some other power. At length, however, he was told by a holy hermit that the King of kings was an invisible Lord who reigned through love in the hearts of men.

“How can I serve him?” asked Offero.

“You must fast and pray,” answered the hermit.

“Nay,” cried Offero, “not so! For I should then lose my strength which is all that I have to bring to his service.”

For a moment the holy hermit prayed silently to be given wisdom. Then his face shone as if from a light within.

“There is a river over which many poor people must cross,” he said, “and there is no bridge. The current is often so swift and treacherous at the ford that even the strongest are swept from their feet and lost. With your great strength you could help one and all to safety. It would be a work of love--meet service for the Lord of Love.”

And so Offero, the giant, built him a little hut by the side of the stream and dwelt there all his days, lending his strength to all who needed it in the name of the unseen King whom he served. It is said that one night in a wild storm a little child came praying to be carried across. Now, for the first time, Offero knew what weakness and faltering meant. He staggered and all but fell in the foaming current.

“Oh, little child,” he cried out as he stumbled, panting and spent, to the farther bank, “never before have I borne such a weight! I felt as if I were carrying the whole world on my shoulders!”

“And well you might, strong one,” said the child, “for you have this night carried the Master whom you serve. Henceforth your name shall be not Offero but Christopher, which means one who has carried Christ.”

And the good giant was called Saint Christopher from that day. You have perhaps seen pictures of him, for more than one great artist has tried to paint the story of his faithful service of love.

We are going to hear to-day the story of a strong man of our own time, who, like Offero of old, vowed to serve with his strength the greatest Master of all--the King of kings. The tale of his life began November 20, 1856, when Peter Trimble Rowe was born in Toronto, Canada. He was a tall, sturdy lad, who early learned to laugh at cold weather and strenuous days in the open. The more wintry it was without, the more glowing the warmth within his hardy, alert body. If you had met him as he returned from a holiday afternoon spent on snow-shoes, your pulses would have throbbed in sympathy with his happy, tingling vigor. You would have felt as if you had “warmed both hands before the fire of life.”

He had bright Irish eyes, a ready Irish laugh, and the merry heart that belongs with them. His heart was, moreover, as warm as it was glad. He laughed with people, not at them; and he had a quick understanding of their troubles and difficulties as well as of the fun that lay near the surface of things. This means that his heart caught the beat of other hearts, and that he early learned the lessons that love alone can teach.

It was while he was still a student that he decided what his life work must be. “Man cannot live by bread alone”--these words had a very vital meaning for him. There were many in the world, he knew, who spent all their days struggling for bread, as if that alone could satisfy their longing for life. Very simply he said to himself: “I must use my strength to help where help is most needed. I must go to the far-off, frontier places where people live and die without light and without hope.”

As soon as he had graduated from Trinity College, Toronto, and was ordained a minister of the church, he went as missionary to an Indian tribe on the northern shore of Lake Huron. In caring for this wild, neglected flock the young shepherd needed all his splendid, vigorous health and hardihood. He went around in summer drought and winter storm, often sleeping by a camp-fire or in an Indian wigwam, in order that he might bring the light of a new hope into the dark lives of these first Americans.

“The Indians have learned little good from the white men or from civilization,” he said ruefully. “They have acquired some of our weaknesses and diseases--that is about all.”

He longed to bring to them in exchange for the old free life in their vast forests and broad prairie country, a new freedom of the spirit that should enable them to understand and use the good things in the white man’s world. Do you think that he tried to do this through preaching? He really did not preach at all. He lived with the people and talked to them as a friend who was ready to share what he had with others on the same trail.

Do you remember Emerson’s much-quoted challenge?--“My dear sir, what you are speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you are saying.” What a person is will always be heard above what he says. In the case of Mr. Rowe, the strong, self-reliant, sympathetic, kindly spirit of the man ever talked with a direct appeal to his people. He tramped and hunted, canoed and fished with them, and shared with them the fortunes of the day around the evening camp-fire. No one had a cheerier word or a heartier laugh. They were ready to hear all that he had to tell them of the things that make life happier and better, and of the Master he served, who loved his red children no less than the white.

When the work was well under way on the Indian reservation, the young man accepted the call to a new field at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Here he had again the challenge and inspiration of pioneer work. There were six members of his church when he took charge; when, ten years later, he left his flock to another pastor it numbered two hundred and fifty. He had, moreover, pushed out into the surrounding country and established missions at several different points. He was sure that his strength and endurance, his power to conquer cold, fatigue, and other unfriendly conditions, should be used in the greatest cause of all--in going “to seek and save those that are lost” in the wild places of the earth.

“I love battling with wind and weather and pulling against the stream,” he used to say. “I was born tough, and it’s only common sense to put such natural toughness to some real use.”

So it was that, like Saint Christopher, he was resolved to serve his King with his strength.

In 1895, when a bishop was wanted to take charge of the great unexplored field of all Alaska--scattered white men who had gone there for fish, furs, or gold; Indian tribes in the vast, trackless interior; and Eskimos in the far North within the Arctic Circle--people said without hesitation, “Mr. Rowe is the man to go as shepherd to that country.”

A bishop, you know, is an “overseer,” one who is responsible for the welfare of the people of a certain district or diocese, as it is called. He is a sort of first shepherd, who has general charge of all the flocks (churches and missions), and who tries to provide for those that are without care. The man to undertake this work in Alaska would have to be one of the hardy, patient explorer-missionaries, like Father Marquette, who in 1673 traveled in a birch canoe through the Great Lakes and along the Mississippi, ministering to the Indians and making a trail through the New World wilderness.

Alaska is an Indian word which means “the Great Country.” It is, indeed, not one but many lands. Most people think of it as a wild, snow-covered waste, whose arctic climate has been braved by white men only for the sake of its salmon, seals, and later for the gold that was found hidden away in its frost-locked soil. The country along the Pacific coast is warmed by the Japan current just as the British Isles are by the Gulf Stream, and its climate is milder in winter and cooler in summer than that of New England. It is a land of wonderful, inspiring beauty, with lordly, snow-crowned mountain peaks; forests of enchanting greenness bordering clear, deep fiords; and fields bright with poppies, bluebells, wild roses, and other flowers of the most vivid coloring. The interior, through which flows the Yukon, that great highway of Alaska, is much colder, but it is only the northern portion reaching into the Polar Sea that has the frigid conditions that many people associate with “the Great Country.”

When in early April, Bishop Rowe took the steamer from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, he found that two hundred of his fellow passengers were bound for the newly discovered gold fields. Many of them were fine, rugged fellows who loved strenuous endeavor better than easy, uneventful days. Some few of them were “rolling stones” of the sort that would make trouble anywhere.

“When I looked forward to what might be done for the lonely settlers and forlorn natives in Alaska,” said Bishop Rowe, “I did not at first realize that an important part of the work would be with the great army of gold-seekers who suddenly find themselves in the midst of hardships, disappointments, and temptations that they have never known before.”

Of course the men on board were anxious to learn everything they could about the “Great Country.” Each person who had been to Alaska before was surrounded by a group of eager questioners.

“It is the richest country on God’s earth,” declared a merchant. “There are no such hauls of salmon and halibut anywhere else. Why, the fisheries alone are worth more in one year than the paltry sum of $7,200,000 that we paid Russia for Alaska. And think how the people in America made fun of Seward for urging the purchase. Said it was fit for nothing but a polar bear picnic grounds.”

“Wasn’t it hinted that the United States was paying Russia in that way for her friendship during the Civil War--by offering to take a frozen white elephant off her hands and giving her a few million dollars into the bargain?” asked another.