Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1907 — CANAL BID IS HELD UP. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CANAL BID IS HELD UP.

Unless Oliver Gets Partner United States May Do the Work. The bid of Oliver & Bangs to complete the construction of the Panama canal for 6.75 per cent of the cost has been rejected so far as Anson M. Bangs of New York is concerned. But if Mr. Oliver can enter into a satisfactory arrangement with some other contractor, who is financially responsible, he will be given the contract, it is said. Some of the Washington correspondents seem to think that the government will build the canal itself without subletting any portion of the work to contractors. While doubt was expressed as to the advisability of pursuing the contract plan any further, it was virtually decided to advertise again for bids, although not in the belief that any of them would prove acceptable. The chief purpose in readvertising is to afford Mr. Oliver an opportunity to enlist new financial backing and submit another hid. W. J. Oliver of Tennessee and the wilderness, is the largest employer of negro labor in the world. He has forty contracts now on hand, which include tunneling Lookout mountain, damming the Tennessee river and thrusting railroads through Louisiana cypress swamps. If his bid is successful he will go down to Panama with an army of 5,000 southern negroes who have long been in his employ, organized like an army, with a trained superintendent at the head of each division. It wns intimated that Mr. Oliver might arrange to co-operate with McArthur & Gillespie. It -is known thnt the financial credentials submitted by Mr. Oliver and the McArthur syndiaate have been found satisfactory, and the statement is made that a compromise proposal will be considered, provided Oliver succeeds in making a satisfactory arrangement with McArthur & Gillespie. The Oliver & Bangs lid was 6.75 per cent, while the McAr-thur-Gillespie bid was 12.50 per cent.