yellow fever. But in the spring of 1907, Mr. Shonts and Mr. Stevens both resigned.
Handling a large working force, especially one doing rough work in the open, is very much like commanding an army in the field. And an army commanded by a commission of seven men has exactly six generals too many. Realizing this, President Roosevelt decided to make the head of the third Isthmian Canal Commission not only its chairman, but also the Chief Engineer, the President of the Panama Railroad and the Governor of the Canal Zone. One man was made commander-in-chief; to stay there until he had finished the job. That man was Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington Goethals,[1] United States Army Engineering Corps.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, June 29, 1858, of a family that had come from Holland to America only a few months before, he graduated second in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1880. This placed him among the honored few at the head of each class that are appointed to the engineering corps. Since then, General Goethals had spent his time in building locks, dams and irrigation ditches in the West, and coast-fortifications in the East, as instructor in engineering at West Point, chief engineer of the First Army Corps in the war with Spain, and as a member of the general staff in Washington, before he was sent to Panama.
The new commissioners were ordered to make their headquarters on the Isthmus and live there ten months in the year, instead of trying to dig the Canal from a
- ↑ Pronounced "Gō'-thāls," with a broad a and the accent on the first syllable.
