Hello, I tried another search for information on-line about the workers on the Panama Canal (at a different part of the day/night), and I did find something new. This is the first part of a newspaper article on the subject: http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:55993515&num=8 As a child in the 1920s, Walter Muller played baseball, followed railroad tracks to his grade school and enjoyed watching U.S. infantry practice military maneuvers. But instead of growing up on apple pie or selling newspapers on New York streets, the plucky youngster ate plantains and sold parakeets and fish to sailors traveling through the steamy, tropical Isthmus of Panama. Such was the life of children whose parents migrated to Central America during construction of a historic interoceanic passage, the Panama Canal. The passageway, completed in 1914, didn't just ... ... Unfortunately, as with other "newspapers," you must "pay" to receive the entire articles from an Archives ! "Knight-Ridder Tribune, 1999, author: Diane SMITH: And, the title of the article was: "Families have Deep Roots in the Panama Canal Zone." Here is another web site mentioning the "deaths by disease:" http://www.june29.com/Tyler/nonfiction/pan2.html Before any work could begin, the most deadly of the problems on the isthmus had to be overcome - disease. The government wasn't going to allow mortality rates like had been seen during the French reign - somewhere between ten and twenty thousand were estimated to have died at the canal zone between 1882 and 1888. For this purpose, American doctor William Gorgas was called to examine the area. The most troublesome diseases were the mosquito-carried malaria and yellow fever - the same diseases that had kept Napoleon Bonaparte from putting down the uprising in Hati in 1801 - but almost all diseases known to man were endemic. Tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, bubonic plague - all were cases on file at Panama hospitals in 1904. Here's other interesting articles: http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/joining.html http://www.ralphmag.org/panama.html http://www.canalmuseum.com/photos/panamacanalphoto050.htm This web site offers resources recommended by the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/rr/international/hispanic/canal/resources/canal-general.html Just found this: http://www.pancanalsociety.org/index.html Just found out that NARA has a new URL, and they have some Panama Canal records: http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/185.html That's all for now ! Enjoy your weekend ! Betty (near Lowell, MA, USA)