Show ig IT BANKRUPT in a recent issue of the forum george 0 hurlburt gives coma figured concern ing thy condition of the panama canal which throws it into any but light the funds reported a available on the of june 1887 amounted to francs A new loan was offered on the of july of franc bonds of these bonds offered at franca only were taken these added to the companas comp anys francs and swelled the indebtedness debt edness to francs and the yearly interest to francs the visible resources of the company are therefore barely sufficient for one years expenses the story as it is told with ail its evident suppressions and flossea and mystifications allowing no more than their fair value to these it is plain that the company is ruined the concurrent testimony of I 1 disinterested scientific men europeans and americans is that the mass of the excavation to be made is even now greater than the companas comp anys highest estimate for the entire work it has cost therefore francs to do nothing at all if all this money had been furnished by M de lesseps and his friends who could know what they were doing it would leave been mere waste to spend it on an enterprise conceived in vanity and prosecuted without seriousness and without intelligence but we have all been told with wearisome iteration anat the panama canal was the work of poor proprietors of people that is to say who had no money to lose M de lesseps has used the magic of his name to beguile these simpleminded simple minded folk and to wheedle them into risking the hard earned savings whick they kept such was their knowledge of the world and of finance laid away in a corner it is they and not he who will suffer by the failure of the canal for his cheerful spirit ia not to be quelled by the misfortunes of others nor even by the reflection that his place in the history of his time is already marked out by the side of eliat minister who with a light heart led his country into the most fatal ot wars |