Individual holders of interior ranchos have made earnest efforts to produce foodstuffs and introduce definite reforms into the methods of farming, but such persons have usually served as fearful examples to their neighbors. In an industrial system in which the one method of the man at the top is to keep his eyes open and whenever he finds anyone who has by chance or industry accumulated something, take it away from him--this does not stimulate long hours and speeding-up on the part of the men who do the work. When the United States took over the Canal Zone and paid the purchase price to the new Republic of Panama, a good appropriation was made to the interior provinces for the building of a system of highways as the first step in a general improvement of the country. Most of the provinces have little to show for this expenditure of money. In one province reports were received that the money was being handed out in petty grafting operations and for political purposes and that no road was being built to speak of. An American engineer was sent to investigate. He reported the facts and was later put in charge of the "work." He reorganized the entire construction force, and at the expense of less than twenty thousand dollars built a road which has stood without repairs for a dozen years, and is in good condition to-day under heavy usage. But the reorganization pulled down on the engineer's head the wrath of the entire officialism of the province, and finally the men higher up in authority denounced the American for upsetting the smooth-working system at their expense. He had committed the unpardonable error of using the money to get results and build the road for which it was appropriated. This is interior Panama at its worst. There are Americans who have invested their money and their personal supervision in the development enterprises in Chiriqui, and they are hopeful of better things. There are officials who are genuinely anxious to see a better age begin. And the day will come when this fair land will make men rich by the abundance of its products and the certainty of large returns upon development work done under favorable conditions. But the conditions do not yet exist in any stable form. All of this is Panama at its worst, and forms but the background of contrast for the picture of the fine possibilities that lie in the soil, and in the unreleased resources of a human stock that has never had a fair chance. Once separated from hookworm and superstition, given an industrial education, and assured competent leadership and certain returns for toil, and the lot of the Panamanian is no more incurable than that of any other victims of a bad system. CHAPTER IX PANAMA AND PROGRESS