OHIO
and the
PANAMA CANAL
by CHARLES D. AMERINGER
"Uncle Sam digging under the
influence of the Sons of Ohio at the right
place." So ran a toast proposed at
the twenty-second annual banquet of
the Cincinnati Commercial Club at the
Queen City Club on November 13,
1902. The reference was to the role
Ohioans had played in the decision
of the United States to construct an
interoceanic canal in Panama, and
the man who offered the toast was in a
position to know whereof he spoke.
He was Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a French
engineer who had served the
De Lesseps enterprise in Panama in the
1880's and, when the French ven-
ture failed, had kept faith with the
project and eventually turned to the
United States to rescue it. His
speech-making and lobbying activities in
the United States in 1901 and 1902 were
legend.1 And from that night he
would go on to participate in the Panama
revolution of 1903, become
Panama's first minister to the United
States, and negotiate the treaty
under which the United States secured
the right to construct the Panama
Canal.
Bunau-Varilla's tribute was not limited
to Senator Mark Hanna, who,
everyone knew, had successfully led the
fight for the selection of the
Panama route in the United States Senate
the preceding June, but included
a large number of Ohioans who played
important, though less publicized,
parts in Panama's victory. Moreover,
this was not Bunau-Varilla's first
visit to Cincinnati; he had been there
in January 1901, when, at the invi-
tation of three Cincinnati businessmen,
he launched his crusade in behalf
of the Panama route. It was these
Cincinnatians and the many Ohioans
whom he met between January and April
1901, to whom he directed his
toast, and they included the following:
Edward Goepper, Cincinnati in-
dustrialist; Harley T. Procter, of
Procter and Gamble, Cincinnati; Jacob
G. Schmidlapp, president of Cincinnati's
Union Savings Bank and Trust
Company; William Watts Taylor, president
of the Rookwood Pottery
Company of Cincinnati; William
Worthington, Cincinnati attorney; Lucien
Wulsin, president of the Baldwin Piano
Company of Cincinnati and Chi-
cago; Major William Henry Bixby, A. O.
Elzner, and G. W. Kittredge,
engineers and members of the Engineers
Club of Cincinnati; Senator
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 69-70