 Darring Walter Houston in the Colossus of Panama, an original radio play on the Cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. The War of the United States Senate, the year 1904. Oh, Mr. President, the same of it. Billions of dollars, billion dollars to the American farmers and hand-worsened people. Four people written, younger, a thousand miles from our shores. Now what do we ask? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the voice of the senior senator from Alabama speaking at the turn of the century. His subject, the Panama Canal. That's great work which is so vitally important to us today in the defense of our hemisphere. Our play tonight will tell the story of William Crawford Gorgas, the man who made that work possible. It is called The Colossus of Panama and was written especially for this program by Robert Solomon. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Walter Houston in the role of William Crawford Gorgas in The Colossus of Panama. As our play opens, Alabama's Senator Morgan still has the floor. The name of this man, Mr. President, is going to be President for a motion for a recess. If there is no objection, the Senate is recessed. As the senators leave the floor, the sergeant of arms come forward to clear the gallery. But still seated deep in his own thoughts is a mild-mannered gentleman in a white linen suit. He turns to his wife and sits beside him. Well, my dear? I know how you must feel, William, but they had any conception of the importance of your work. The importance of my work? There are a hundred men who could do what I'm doing. It's the canal that grinds the self-cheat. That's something I'll fight for. Dr. Gorgas. That's the tenant. They're clearing the gallery, sir, until you'll be meeting me this afternoon. Yes, look after Mrs. Gorgas, will you? Yes, sir. I'm going to take up Senator Morgan's challenge. Now will you remember? Don't lose it, Heather, please. No, don't you worry, my dear. I'm just going to set the senator's state on his facts. He says it is costing me five dollars to kill one mosquito. I resent that. It doesn't cost five dollars. It costs ten. Well, Colonel Gorgas, I got a hand with you. You certainly are a friend. Ten dollars a mosquito, eh? Senator, if I were really frank, I would tell you that your speech out there today was a little short of peace. Come, come now, Colonel. Let's not be metadramatic. You have your business and I have mine. My business is to save money for my constituents. I have only one business, Senator. To see that the Panama Canal is built as quickly as possible. And I'm not even convinced it can be there, Colonel. The Spanish failed, the French failed. Now we're going to be made the ghost. I tell you, Senator, the only obstacle to the canal is disease. Get rid of the mosquitoes and you get rid of the disease. And I'm supposing you do. Will the canal ever actually repay what we put into it? We have enough merchant ships on both coasts as it is. Railroads are faster than boats. Why should we build a canal that only foreigners will benefit from anyway? There's only one flaw in that argument, Senator. What's that? Japan is building a navy. Oh, yeah. There they rose about in the Yellow Parrot again. I'm supposing Japan attacked the Philippines with a new navy. Or even Hawaii. We'd need every ship we could spare from the Atlantic. Japan would have won the war before we could get one capital ship around Cape Horn. Turn it all this. I respect you as a doctor. As a prognosticator of wars, I do not. Your theory about the Japs is like your theory about mosquitoes. You have a phobia about small things. Little bugs and little people. But let this be understood. Whether Congress appropriates the money or not, I shall continue to kill mosquitoes. And I think you will live to see that it is worth whatever it costs. Do you want to build canal goggles? Well, Dr. Gardner, welcome back to Panama. Have a nice vacation? Well, it was hardly... Let's just say it's nice to do that. How's the work going? Slowly. Too slowly. Another landslide here is to labor last week. That's why I came over here to take personal charge of the whole job. Sure. Then you can help me. Anything I can do, doctor. Just step into my shack here and we'll talk. Thank you. Sit down, would you? Sure. Now, what's on your mind, sir? I've been looking over the records at the Anson Hospital canal. Yellow fever is epidemic again. It's the weather. I've been there, you know. Who ordered my mosquito-killing squad to start cleaning up the streets in the city? I did. Did you realize what you were doing? We have to face it, Gorgas. They can't kill all the mosquitoes. That's no excuse for not killing all we can. Gorgas, I know what you're trying to do. But something has to be done about the sanitary conditions in Qoram and Panama City. If Congress ever sent a commission to investigate... Would you rather they found a little filth and a few bad smells or everybody dead of yellow fever in the jungle growing over your fine machinery? Well, now that's an exaggeration. Not at the person's death rate of yellow fever and malaria. What do you propose that I do? Give me back my mosquito-killing squad. I can't do it. You're the only one who can, Colonel Gorgas. Well, you may as well know the truth, Gorgas. The Admiral said he would order our ships home unless something was done about the smell. I couldn't allow that to happen. Well, I can and I will. I see. Will you take personal responsibility for whatever happened? I will. If the epidemics would become worse, we might even have to stop operations, you know. Then I hope it happens. Then we will know that disease and nothing but disease is our obstacle. And that, Colonel Gorgas. I can prove. What happened? And I had to stop working till labor today. Men are afraid to work there too many down with a fever there the past week. Does that mean the end of the canal? Well, not yet, no. Bortles is still hopeful. He thinks transferring Jamaicans over there, the ones that are immune to yellow fever will solve the problem. What do you think? Well, it'll solve the yellow fever problem there for the moment, but not the malaria. I told him so. But they still expect me to fight it with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of white water. Oh, don't they know it's the mosquitoes and not the philtrum? Of course they know it, but they say there are too many of them. But it's hopeless. Man, I had to admit they were right. It does look hopeless. What are you going to do? I don't know. I've disobeyed orders. I refuse to resign. I can even decryde a manslaughter or heaven or a swap. I have to go through with it. Oh, William, I'm so worried for you. Is there anything I can do to help? I wonder. Tell me, Ellen, are you a good liar? William, why do you ask? Because I'm going to disappear for about two weeks. Disappear? Fair. No, don't worry. I'll be right here in my laboratory. Nobody is allowed in. Nobody, you understand? Yes, I do. And another thing, don't kill any mosquitoes you see about the house. Catch them alive and bring them into me. Mosquitoes? Well, I thought you already knew everything there was to know about them, William. Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I forgot that I'm a scientist. Canals seem to mean so much more. Tines seem too precious to waste in research. But now? Yes. Well, I might have known all along. Nobody ever knows enough about anything. You are listening to Walter Houston as William Crawford Gorgas in the Colossus of Panama, an original radio play on the Cavalcade of America, sponsored by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. Two tiny mosquitoes. By name Segomaya and Anopheles, they were everywhere. Their strength had been greater than all the accumulated knowledge of mankind. Yet the faith and labor of one man stood against them. William Crawford Gorgas. What is it you want? I want to see your water pitches. Oh, you are serious? You used to buy fabrics? You like these big ones? Let me see them all, Senora. It may take me some time to find the one I'm looking for. In the Americano, who has a big job in the canal, yet spends his time examining water pitches in the slum. Even the Americano is thinking strange. Nurse! Nurse! Yes, Dr. Gorgas? Who put the pans of water under the lead legs of this ward? Why, is it my superior, I did it, doctor. It seems you want some crawling up on the bed. Well, get rid of them. Do you hear? I'll throw them out. Doctor! I haven't time to explain to you. Just do as I say. And after this, no fresh water in the wards, except in covered vessels. Understand? Yes, doctor. I'll take care of it immediately. By the smallest details. In some quarters, he's conducted the scandal. My family are of the oldest mobility in Panama. What do you think this upstart has entered into my home? A cemetery, Gorgas. I'll tell you I will not support this incident. I am bankrupt. Ruling. He's finally got dead in Panama. And this assassin. He puts black oil in my water supply. He drains my beautiful lagoons. Water lilies, worms. Everything's beautiful in here. I'll go to the authorities. My wife and I came here for vacation. We haven't had a moment's peace. Restrictions, quarantines, searches, some peace. You wanted to see me, gentlemen? Yes. You know the admiral, I believe, and Commissioner Schaum. Yes. Good day, sir, Commissioner. I assume you know the purpose of this meeting, Dr. Gorgas. No, but I am glad you asked me to come here today, gentlemen. I believe I have found the final answer to the problem that has confronted us. I think I have a way to eliminate not just a few, but all the deadly mosquitoes in the canal zone, and perhaps even from the entire western hemisphere. Dr. Gorgas. Please, please, time it of the essence. I must get this information across to you quickly. Very well, doctor. I only wanted to say... I'll say it later. Gentlemen, I have sought, dreamt and observed, nothing for two weeks except the habits of two mosquitoes. I have developed a strategy which I believe will ensure success in the battle against them, not in a matter of years as we once hoped, but in a few months. A strategy, doctor? Colonel, when you go into a battle, what is the first thing you try to determine? Well, the weak places in the enemy's defenses, is the rule. Precisely. Now, take the Stegomaya, the Lofiba carrier. This mosquito has lived with mankind for so long, it has become over-civilized. It is Swedish. It lays its eggs only in clean water. To deal with it, we will have to go into every house in the canal zone and insist that every best will contain in fresh water to be tightly covered at all times. That sounds simple enough. But, uh, Dr. Gorgas, about this matter of invading people's houses, there have been complaints of more serious nature. I expected there would be. You'll take a very cavalier view of the matter, Dr. Gorgas. And if I may say so, this nonsense about mosquitoes and water pictures is wild, simply wild. Gentlemen, please, you agreed to hear me out. We, uh, stand corrected, uh, go on, Dr. Gorgas. Thank you, Colonel Gorgas. Our second enemy, gentlemen, is Anasili. The malaria mosquito. It is, well, it's a little more of a problem. It will breed in any kind of water. Mud puddles, car tracks, anywhere. Are you going to propose abolishing cows to the zone? Gentlemen, I have never been more serious in my life. Please give me a moment more. Sorry, Doctor, I won't interrupt again. Well, the malaria mosquito has a fatal weakness. It cannot fly more than 200 yards from its leading place. Are you absolutely certain of these sites, Dr. Gorgas? I expect my reputation on them. Well, what's left of it? And, uh, that's, uh, well, let's be candid. There's not much at the moment. However, if what you say is true, then it simplifies our problem. Then we shall have to enforce drainage for only 200 yards around the work and residential zones. It's worth trying, isn't it? Well, gentlemen, what do you think? Dr. Gorgas, let me say that I would like nothing better than to put you to work on this scheme of yours at once. Unfortunately, I cannot. But why not? The President of the United States is on his way to Panama at this very moment. I say to see why that should interrupt our work. The President will be greeted when he arrives, Dr. Gorgas, by a filth and stench of cologne in Panama City. Gorgas, entirely by your neglect of sanitation while you were preparing your scholarly treatise on the habits of mosquitoes. Then you refuse, you refuse even to let me start this work? I suggest that you wait, Dr. Gorgas, and discuss it with the President himself. The Commission will naturally abide by his decision. And we are fairly confident of what that decision will be. The President of the United States. Mr. President, welcome to Panama, Mr. President. Hi and welcome, Rocky St. Paul, dead cat to the street. No wonder all the men are dying. What's the excuse for this, Gorgas? Mr. Gorgas is in charge of sanitation, Mr. President. You'd better ask him. Gorgas, eh? You're Gorgas, aren't you? That's right, Mr. President. You've got gray hair since you were, eh? I don't want it. Do you realize the whole country's up in arms against you? And meet you because of you? Because of me. I started this whole project mostly on your say so. You said you could get rid of these smells. Make this a good place to live. Like you did in Nevada. I cleaned up Havana, yes, Mr. President. I made the mistake of cleaning up Havana. Eh? Come finally close that window, will you? Never heard anything like the racket down here. Now, what's that you were saying? I said cleaning up Havana was a mistake as far as the yellow fever was concerned. A mistake? Whitewash never killed one single mosquito egg, Mr. President. No, maybe you're right. What about it, Gorgas? Can you build this canal or not? Mr. President, if I could only be sure of the supply of healthy labor, then... Well, get them. Never mind the cost. They won't work for it at any price. Oh, scared, eh? You've been hardly blamed them. I'm a little frightened myself, Mr. President. What about you, Gorgas? Are you scared of this thing? I've already had yellow fever, Mr. President. I'm immune. You must have a fine physique, sir, dividing a thing like that. No, there are worse things in yellow fever, Mr. President. Seeing men die, for instance, when you know the way to prevent it. Then what if you do something about it? They tell me you spend all your time oiling pools and stocking streams with fish. That's right. Tell me, what are the fish for, sir? Well, to put it simply, they eat the mosquito eggs. Before, they can hatch out, eh? See, that's really... You never tell my son about that. How did you find that out? I worked for them doing it. That's really bully. Well, eh, Krishna, I'll have to take all this over. Now, Mr. President, there's no time to think it over. Give me the authority. I can have the men back at work at a each time. Then they eat them for one day and the epidemic will be out of control. You have got to decide tonight whether you're going to build the Panama Canal or not. Things are that bad, eh? Well, gentlemen, we'll do it. We've got you, believe me. I think Dr. Gorgas is my man. It's your decision, Mr. President. I'll take personal responsibility. Mind you, don't make a fool of me again, Gorgas. I think I can promise you results this time, Mr. President. Really? Well, good day, gentlemen. And I want you men to get behind Gorgas, all of you. Those are my orders. Panama. Squads of men work feverishly against time and against the most relentless heat on the face of the earth. They see me heated the jungle. They cut back the brush, spilling the stagnant pool of the free precarious of death. Volunteers go ahead with tins of oil. And where they have walked, the freshwater stream shall be marked of the Americana of Gorgas. The little rainbows smear of oil on the surface of the water. Look, Compa Leros. This is again. Yeah. At least it's fresh oil. They must be nearby. Hey, here they are. Listen, we are just ahead. Hola. Hola. We found them. Come. Well, we're certainly glad to see you. We have the food to get it out. And they're drinking water. And the letters. Ah, thank you. All right, man. You can knock off for a while. Lunch. Ah, all right. All right. Not a nasty job. How much longer are you going to keep it at this, Colonel? Until there's not one case of yellow fever that ends on hospital. That'll be the millennium, won't it? That's just what it'll be, son. Then you'll get it out of there. The letters. Aren't you going to read the letters? Oh, yes. Yes. Thanks for reminding me. It is heat enough to knock you flat. What's the matter, bad news, sir? No, no, it's from Colonel Gothel. They stopped work today at Calabra. At noon? At noon. All right, it's about one minute from now by my watch. I wonder if we can hear them from here. Listen. It sounds like the tenon in the old fort. No, sir, it's not. That's blasting. They've already begun. The southern men have returned to their posts. Confident. Unworried. The great steel shovels whirl about like giant dinosaurs fighting to the stone flesh of the mountains. Sorghum. Yes, Sergeant? After a fortune. The compound is about to be closed and tamed. Drainage and operation. Sir, you may inform Colonel Gothel that work might be resumed to that side of the couple. Yes, sir. Yes, Sergeant. Arrange the plants for your company to charge us. The plane leaves in the morning. But the Great River is forced into a new channel. An evacuated town of 10,000 souls is drowned in margin fields. Silent brown-skinned men and women in their pockets is bolting with sense American dollars. Happily watched the destruction of the homes that have brought them on the move. They will move into new whitehouses along the queen's blue waters that will join the oceans together. Our battle is won. In a few days standing on this hill at sunset, we will see the lights go on from Cologne to Panama. May they never be extinguished. But our job has only just begun. Now comes the most hazardous work of all. Only volunteers will go. We must go back into the jungle. We must follow every stream to its source. We must find a secret place, the endemic source of this disease. And there, we must destroy the one tiny class of insects that started the trouble. Who among you has the courage to do this thing? Gentlemen, I salute you. President, Senator William Crawford Gorgas. Bring him in, bring him in. Senator Gorgas. We meet under the most happy of circumstances. If it troubles an old busybody, you don't know what that means. Perhaps I know better than you imagine, Mr. President. Well, now tell me, how did you do it? I'd be frank with you, I never thought you would. It was a last resort by choosing you. Well, it's a long story. Yes, of course, of course. What about those fish? My son would be like it with that story. He'd be like it. But we finally found where they came from. The Stegomaya mosquitoes, I mean. It was a lake in Ecuador. And you put those fish in there, eh? And they just gobbled them up. Worry! Here's the thing, Mr. President, that it always seems to be the same. When large numbers of people are plagued by some one trouble, it nearly always turns out to be a very small group somewhere that is causing all the misery. Just so. Get this Russian military group in Europe. Don't trust them, never did. And these jets. Now they have a bunch they call a samurai. That's what they're getting to be dangerous for. And it turns out to be the same way with Yellow fever and so on. Extraordinary. Mr. President, we have a peculiar situation here. As a scientist, I've learned something from politics. And as a politician... Well, let's not go into that. I spoke with the graduation exercises at Walter Reed Hospital the other day. And this is what I said. I'd like to repeat it to you now. I said, Gorgas is the Panama Canal. And the Panama Canal is Gorgas. And no man will ever get higher praise than that for me. That, Mr. President, is all that any man can ask. Thank you, Walter Houston. Ladies and gentlemen, in a few moments we will hear again from our star. In the meantime, we want to tell you a story of a chemical product necessary to the building of the Panama Canal and other great engineering projects in peacetime, as well as a vital force for increasing production and wartime. America, in the middle years of the last century, was an eager, vibrant young nation struggling to grow out to her wider boundaries, struggling but bought. Then in Switzerland, a man invented gun cock. In Italy, another man invented nitroglycerin. In Sweden, a man discovered dynamite. And science placed in her hand the great mountain-moving lever that America needed. For America, DuPont manufactured this new explosive of tremendous strength. Promptly, the gold miners of California found they could chatter and move out of the way four times as much rock. Nevada's silver miners doubled their production. Into the copper, the iron lands of Lake Superior went the new chemical tool, working mass miracles there. In the 1890s, iron production quadrupled. That of copper was multiplied nine times. Cold production increased five times. At last, Americans could use cement as a building material because dynamite made big-scale rock-blasting practicable. Between 1870 and 80, 40,000 miles of railroad tracks were laid. And then in the 90s, trackage doubled. America grew to stature in a roar and thud of dynamite. There are old-time blasting men who remember the great nation-building jobs dynamite handled at the turn of the century. Jobs never before possible, like the Panama Canal about which you've heard tonight. Men who have worked with dynamite since canal days, grateful for its safety, impressed by the amount of work it does, see in it a chemical tool of infinite potentiality for mankind's benefit, both for today and for the future. At a critical period in America's expansion, DuPont responded with a product filling of vital needs. DuPont has done exactly that consistently in a 140-year history that parallels the history of the nation. Dynamite is a prime mover. In peace, America uses a million pounds of it every day. 150 million pounds of the various types each year, produced by 25 companies in 42 plants throughout the United States. DuPont alone manufactures nearly 200 different types and grades of dynamite. Nitromon, the single-out-one blasting agent, is the safest known. Used especially in quarrying and oil prospecting, Nitromon can be held in a flame or riddled with rifle bullets without danger. In this war year, America will use an estimated 450 million pounds of dynamite. Dynamite is helping to produce more steel, more coal, more copper. Dynamite helps feed cantonments and airports, excavations and harbors. On one island outpost of the United States, dynamite is quarrying 20 million yards of rock for a single giant air base. Between British Columbia and Alaska, dynamite is helping to cut and surface a 24-foot roadway 1,500 miles long, the Alaska Highway. In the Tennessee Valley, dynamite has helped to bring power to our war industries from the great New Dam, Norris, Iwassi, Chickamauga, Cherokee and the others to say nothing of Grand Coulee and Boulder and Shasta of the Great West. At one Navy ammunition storage dump, it's helping build 3,000 igloos, as they're called, each one of which stores a quarter of a million pounds of ammunition. Bad news for America's enemies. DuPont Dynamite, weapons of production in wartime, in peacetime, helps to bring better things for better living through chemistry. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we'd like you to meet our star of the evening, Walter Houston. I gratefully acknowledge our applause, not for myself or the cavalcade players, but for William Crawford-Gorgas, whose unshakable faith in pursuing an idea made possible the great canal across the eastern Panama. Today is never before we realize how great was his vision and foresight to the preservation of America and all things that are American. Thank you. Next week on the Cavalcade of America, DuPont will bring you an original radio play starring Paulette Goddard in The Lady and the Flag, a story of a great American woman, Betsy Ross. The orchestra and musical score on this program were under the personal direction of Don Burry. Don't forget, next week on Cavalcade, Paulette Goddard in The Lady and the Flag. This is Clayton Collier, sending best wishes from the DuPont Company.