Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1907 — SHONTS QUITS CANAL POST. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SHONTS QUITS CANAL POST.

Leave* to Become President of New York Interborongb. Theodore P. Slionts, chairman of the isthmian canal commission, has resigned to become president of the Interborough-

Metropolitan Company of New York, vice August Belmont. Slibnts is to get SSO.OUU a year. 11 was learned authoritatively that headquarters will be removed from Washington to'the isthmus and that a high-salaried chairman to serve in that capacity alone will not be named. This

being admitted, it follows that John F. Stevens, the engineer in charge of the construction of the canal, would not be

made subordinate to another official on the isthmus. There have been stories of disagreement between Secretary Taft and Shouts and it has been said that the President has not been satisfied with him. Still, these stories have always been denied at the White House and in the War Department, where it has been consistently held that Shonts was in perfect accord with the President and Taft. When Mr. Shonts went to Washington it is declared he did not at all realize that the actual control over the digging of the Panama canal had been officially placed in the hands of the Secretary of War. Out of this misunderstanding of official status there grew a social tempest which has bubbled up more or less in every 5 o'clock teapot in Washington.

EVELYN NESBIT THAW.

THEO. P. SHONTS.