Panama fever (29 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

COLLAPSE AND SCANDAL

Rousseau arrived on January 30, 1886. With him, to relieve Bunau Varilla, was a new
Directeur Général
, thirty-five-year-old Léon Boyer, along with his own handpicked cadre of sixty engineers. Boyer was well known in France, having dabbled in politics, and also had a reputation as a brilliant civil engineer. He was a very good catch for the Company. Also on the boat was Charles de Lesseps, in theory writing a report of his own, but in reality keeping an eye on Rousseau and preparing for the arrival of his father.

Rousseau was accompanied by two other government-appointed experts. For two and a half weeks they toured the works. In the meantime, flags and bunting were dusted off, streets cleaned, speeches and pageants rehearsed, and machinery, whether operative or not, whitewashed.
Le Grand Français
, the “Presiding Genius of the Nineteenth Century,” was about to descend once more on Panama.

On January 31, 1886, John Bigelow learned that he had been invited, as a representative of the New York Chamber of Commerce, to accompany Ferdinand de Lesseps on his forthcoming visit to the works at Panama. Bigelow, lawyer, intellectual, former newspaper proprietor, and U.S. ambassador to France, had been at the lavish dinner for de Lesseps at Delmonico's back in March 1881. He was unsure whether or not to accept the invitation, and consulted friends and family. The first advice he heard was to have nothing to do with it, “that it was probably a scheme to use my name as an ex-Minister to France to bolster the stock of a chimerical enterprise.” But then another friend urged him to “embrace any opportunity of associating my name with such a magnificent enterprise.” Bigelow asked whether he could take his daughter Grace, for “her company and assistance.” The reply came back in the positive—and all would be at the Company's expense, including “a satisfactory remuneration” for himself. “This point, I confess, weakened my scruples about going,” he wrote in his private diary.

He accepted, but then spent a week worrying if he had made the right decision. Some big names, he learned, had said no. He was also worried about the illness on the Isthmus, and checked with a friend on the political situation to be reassured that the U.S. Navy was there in force.

On February 1 o he left with Grace on the steamer
Colón
, together with a journalist and other representatives from U.S. chambers of commerce. A party had already left from France. Throughout their voyage, de Lesseps kept the fifty or so businessmen, engineers, and diplomats entertained with “witty lectures” and stories of his time in Egypt. “He is indefatigable and inexhaustible!” exclaimed Gustave de Molinari, an accompanying journalist from the
Paris Economiste.
For the benefit of his readers in France, de Molinari spelled out the huge responsibility resting on the shoulders of
Le Grand Français:
“The success of the Panama business does not only interest the investors in the Company, it interests all of France. We live in a time where the power and the vitality of people is measured not only by the deployment of their military might and the success of their weapons, but also by their spirit of enterprise, the grandeur and utility of their works. If the French construction of the Panama Canal were to fail, the Americans (who are well disposed towards the idea) would take it upon themselves to buy out the project that we have given up on. As a result, with a lack of confidence in ourselves, the prestige of France would suffer for a long time in both countries. It would be like losing a battle. Let's hope that the battle is won!”

The party from France reached Colón on February 17, 1886, just as Armand Rousseau was preparing to leave, his inspection completed. As before, de Lesseps, now eighty-one, had come at the best time of year and the weather was bright and dry. But Colón was still a wreck. A few houses had been rebuilt, and there were huge improvised market stalls. But in between, writes de Molinari, were “vast open spaces left by the fire where stagnant rainwater, blackened beams, corrugated tin twisted by the heat, broken bottles and plates accumulate.” Mud and rubbish were everywhere, infested with toads, rats, and snakes, and “a myriad of mosquitoes breed in these low lying areas and spread through the mostly windowless houses and seek out their prey.”

John Bigelow's party arrived the next day, after twenty uncomfortable days at sea, and in the evening met de Lesseps for dinner on the USS
Tennessee
anchored in the bay. Grace Bigelow was seated on de Lesseps's left. “I was pleased to find that Grace and the old Baron got on admirably together,” wrote John Bigelow in his diary. “Went to bed about eleven but was too heated and excited by the events of the day and evening to sleep well.”

For the next three days there was an exhausting schedule of visits to the nearby works and workshops, and trips on boats along the river and the completed section of the canal. Bigelow was suffering in the heat, changing his clothes twice a day, was horrified by the price of clean water and the filthy latrines, but was impressed with much of what he saw. At one chantier, he noted how the black laborers gave de Lesseps a warm reception: “When we left they gave us repeated cheers which the old Baron returned with bows.” On board one British-built dredge, he noted approvingly its “immense power.” New, even bigger machines were just around the corner, the visitors were constantly told.

Bigelow struck up a close and lasting friendship with Bunau-Varilla and also got on well with Charles de Lesseps, whom he called a “very clear headed and capable man.” One evening, however, he was shocked to hear Charles confidentially and sadly prophesy that “two or three years hence the United States would follow the example of England in the case of the Suez Canal, purchase an interest in [the Panama Canal] and take a share in its management.” In his diary Bigelow also noted private conversations he had with fellow Americans based on the Isthmus. Several who worked for the steamship companies told him that the Company would never finish the canal. Another told him that for the past nine years the corruption on the canal and on the PRR had been “shameless and that the Americans out there on the PRR rather excelled the French on the Canal.”

After three days, the party headed across the Isthmus. For the arrival of de Lesseps in Panama City a huge pageant had been arranged. Everywhere de Lesseps was acclaimed on his passage round the town by “Vivas,” shouts of “Long life the Genius of the Nineteenth Century; long live the Man of Progress, the Grand old Frenchman.” Celebrations continued into the night with a torch-lit procession and, reported an exhausted de Molinari, “banquets, dancing, lights, fireworks and who knows what else …”

The party stayed for a further week, exploring the Pacific side of the works by day and dancing and banqueting by night. As before de Lesseps was “indefatigable,” restoring confidence everywhere he went. “His stay is one continued fête…” wrote the new British consul James Sadler back to London. Had it been up to the people of Panama, he said, the lottery loan would be assured. De Lesseps confidently predicted that the year ahead would see 12 million cubic meters excavated; the next, 1887, would achieve twice that; and by 1888 there would be a monthly rate that would produce 36 million cubic meters for the year. With the same rate carried into the following year, he said, the sea-level canal would be completed by July 1889.

As the visitors prepared to return home, with no illness suffered, almost everyone declared themselves highly impressed. “I am delighted to say that our expectations were exceeded,” de Molinari concluded. “Even if the piercing of the Isthmus presents enormous difficulties, the effort made to conquer them is in proportion. Never has such a colossal work been undertaken, never have capital and science so united to deploy such a powerful machine to bring to an end the resistance of nature.”

John Bigelow was also overwhelmed by the grandeur of the project's ambition and size, writing that it had “no parallel among private enterprises in all history.” He would remain a “convert” to the cause of Panama, infected with its fever, for the rest of his life. But in his widely read report he also repeated many of the criticisms of Kim-ball—that machinery was idle or discarded due to lack of leadership or system; that contractors were unreliable and corrupt; the challenges of the Chagres and the deep excavation in the Cut were not being met; that information from the company was “often conflicting and rarely more than approximative.”

The fact that it was the dry season had not prevented him from noticing the “insalubrity” of the Isthmus, particularly in the swamp area at the Atlantic end. “You have a climate,” he wrote, “where it may, without exaggeration, be said that—’Life dies and death lives.’” Although, he said, “human life is about the cheapest article to be purchased on the Isthmus,” wages had steadily risen to keep attracting workers and mechanics to Panama, to a minimum of $1.75 silver a day, rising for skilled work to five times that.

Like Kimball, Bigelow believed that the fate of the canal would be decided by its finances. But he also agreed that “too large a proportion of its cost has already been incurred to make a retreat as good polity as an advance.” In the meantime, the “people of small means” who held the Panama stock would stick by de Lesseps, Bigelow believed, because success “would rank among the half dozen largest contributions ever made to the permanent glory of France.”

Remarkably, he also anticipated what would be the American agenda in the next decade, a time that would see a radical change in the international balance of power and a transformation in U.S. foreign policy. An open waterway would, Bigelow suggested, “secure to the United States, forever, the incontestable advantage of position in the impending contest of the nations for the supremacy of the seas.” But there was a serious caveat: until the money was secured, and, crucially, the cost of the debt ascertained, it was impossible to say when and on what financial or political terms the work would be finished. “And, for aught I see, this uncertainty must last until near the completion of the work,” he concluded, “for nowhere in the world is the unexpected more certain to happen than on such a work at Panama. It is destined to be, from first to last, experimental…”

hile the Company, indeed, the whole of France, awaited the verdict of Armand Rousseau, de Lesseps tried a new tactic to raise money— selling bonds on the bourse rather than by private subscription. The experiment was not a success, with less than 40 percent of the issue sold, even at an interest rate approaching 7 percent. The decision on the lottery was now more important than ever.

Rousseau's report was submitted at the end of April 1886 to the new minister of public works, Charles Baïhaut. “I consider a cut through the isthmus … is a feasible undertaking,” Armand Rousseau wrote, “and that it has now progressed so far that its abandonment would be unthinkable,” a disaster not just for the shareholders, who were almost all French, but also “for French influence throughout America.” If the Company failed, it would, he predicted, certainly be taken up by a foreign company, wanting to exploit the enormous sacrifices and the progress so far made. “I believe that the government should … assist it,” he decreed. But before sending the lottery bill to the Chamber of Deputies, he warned, the government would have to content themselves that the Company was addressing the project's “certain grave technical defects.” “Important reductions and simplifications” were needed if the project was to be completed in anything like the time envisaged.