Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1904 — BIG PRICE FOR HEALTH. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BIG PRICE FOR HEALTH.

Sanitation of the Panama Canal Route Will Cost $2,000,000. The House committee on interstate and foreign commerce Wednesday again heard Prof. William H. Burr on the question of sanitation of the Panama canal route. The Isthmian Oaual Commission, he said, had regarded the subject as one of the greatest importance. The works of sanitation would be chiefly the construction of water works and a sewerage system for the cities of Panama and Colon and the drainage of districts between those cities. It would re-

quire the co-operation of the police, as the people on the isthmus had no idea of sanitary principles, he said, to make the territory healthful. He estimated the cost at $2,000,000. The completion of the canal, he said, could be accomplished in eight or nine years. Answering Mr. Hepburn, Prof. Burr said that where men are careless in their habits on the isthmus the mortality is high. He had not heard, he said, that a thousand men lost their lives for every mile so far as work has been done, nor had he ever heard of a graveyard containing 8,000 graves of laborers, or of the fact that of 800 Chinese 500 died in three months. Prof. Burr was subjected to many questions, bearing mostly on the amount of excavation by the two French companies, and said they had excavated about 7,000,000 yards, two-thirds of which was useful, leaving 1,000,000,000 cubic yards still to be excavated.

A VIEW ON THE CANAL.