The Gigantic Swindle of the Century.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4988, 23 April 1889, Page 3

The Gigantic Swindle of the Century.

“ I see by the latest despatches that the Panama Canal project is ‘ busted,’” said Waller JE. Bidwell to a Stockton Mail reporter. “ Well, I’m glad of it, it was the most gigantic robbery over perpetrated. Criminal extravagance we saw everywhere on the trip.” “ Take, for instance, the camps occupied by the French officers. They were not tents; they were not cabins ; they were not plain cottages. Not at all: many of them were excellent residences, and coat frightfully large sums. They have brick foundations, and are covered with rustic at 120dols a thousand feet. Yet these camps ere deserted after two or three months' occupancy, and new ones are built elsewhere.

“ At one place our attention was drawn to thirty-two locomotives standing bunched up on an unused track. Their woodwork was rotted completely away. The bands round the boilers were burst. The boilers themselves were seived with holes where the rust had eaten through. A junk dealer would not have given XOOdols. for the lot. And yet those locomotives cost a cool million and a half. I inquired about their history, and learned that five years ago someone suggested that when the canal was completed ships ought to bo towed through it by locomotives instead of horses. Instantly a commission was appointed to post off to Belgium and get thirty-two of the finest locomotives that could bo turned out —for use, mind you, when the canal was completed ! Of course those who worked the job divided the big commission they got from the Belgium machine shops. “ That is only'one instance of many like ones. I saw machinery, turned out from the finest workshops in the world, lying half buried in the mud, where it had been dumped off the Panama railroad-machinery that had not even been unboxed, left lying there so long that it sunk down and half entombed itself in the mud.

“ Steals are sticking out every where. Take the town of Ohristofo Colon, for instance. The point was a swamp, which the company filled up for the accomodation of the French officers, who wanted to build up a city there. The earth for the purpose was brought down on a railroad, which was run several miles back into the highlands. I don’t know how much the cost of the work was, but it must have been immense. The point was filled until it was three feet above tide water. And yet mind you, at the very time earth was being taken by the Company right past the point on clapets and carried seven miles out to sea to be dumped. Clapets are peculiar scows having two bulls, and are so arranged that the bottom drops out and lets the earth out. They could just as well have filled up that point as not, but, don’t you see, that would Lave knocked the other contract out. The whole object down there is to get the money out of the stockholders’ coffers, so that the officers can get their fists on it. Why, everywhere you will hear this toast among the officers : ‘ Here’s to the Panama Canal; may it always continue, and never be finished ! ’ Fact; everywhere you go among the Company’s employes—from the highest to the ordinary positions—you will bear that toast.”