In the capital city are educated and refined men, both prosperous and progressive. Their activities are divided among business enterprises, professional callings, and political activity. Very few of these men are interested in development projects to any extent. Agriculture as a basis of national wealth has little place in their thinking, unless somebody else can be induced to attend to the agriculture while they themselves take care of the wealth. Working on a farm is all right for ignorantes and peons, but has no interest for a gentleman. The development of natural resources is not interesting unless it affords a percentage of some sort, to be earned without effort. The unfortunate fact is that such modern conditions as exist in Panama to-day have largely been brought to her ready-made, which may be why she does not take more interest in them. The question of morals and marriage laws is one which had better be let alone unless the prowler is prepared to find some very unpleasant things. All children are baptized, and, as before explained, the baptisms are registered and classified either as "Legitimo" or "Natural"--the latter, of course, being illegitimate. Only thirty per cent of the births of the Republic as a whole, are born of married parents. The reasons for this are not so simple as may at first appear. Panama has to-day a civil marriage law, but unless a man has abundant leisure, endless patience, and can afford to hire a lawyer or two, he had better be married somewhere else. Evidently, influences were brought to bear upon the framers of the civil law which induced them to overload it with requirements that make it exceedingly unpopular. No voice of protest is raised against this scandalous moral situation on the part of the priests of the established church, who merely shrug their shoulders and shake their heads and say, "What can you do about it?" Certainly, they themselves do nothing at all except to ignore the situation. There have been physical factors that have militated against the progress of Panama. While the climate is comfortable, most of the time it lacks stimulus. There is no "kick" in it. Without occasional respites in a higher altitude and cooler atmosphere, the man from the north loses his driving power and his wife sometimes gets a case of nerves. Four hundred years of it will take the energy out of any man; and many of the present inhabitants of interior Panama appear to have lived here for about that length of time. For the development of high human efficiency it is required in a climate that it be something more than comfortable. It should at times be uncomfortable, and occasionally exasperating. [Illustration: WOODEN SUGAR MILL AND ITS MAKER]