Roosevelt and the Renegade (Panama Disaster 2)
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Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. Behind every successful business is a vision. Bringing it to life takes more than effort. It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in. With convenient digital tools, helpful resources, and personalized guidance, they can help your business forge ahead confidently. Learn more at chase.com backslash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours.

The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA member FDIC. Copyright 2025, JPMorgan Chase & Company. This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record. The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring all the new summer songs that come out, and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks.

Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now. A mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry-flavored pearls, it's light, vibrant, and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having. So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone from creamy cold brews to ice-cold refreshers. Your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks.

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President Theodore Roosevelt sits in the Oval Office reading his mail. It's early in 1907. Roosevelt is a commanding figure. A reformer at home, a visionary in foreign policy, arguably the most popular and powerful president there'd ever been. He's not expecting to be let down and insulted. He opens a letter from Panama. It's from the chief engineer on the Panama Canal Project.

John Stevens is the project's second chief engineer. The first one had quit after barely a year. That was embarrassing for Roosevelt. The Panama Canal was his pet project, central to his vision of connecting US naval power across the Atlantic and Pacific. The letter is long. Six typewritten pages. I never sought this position, John Stevens writes to Roosevelt. I accepted it against my better judgment,

Oh, oh dear. It is true that Stevens never sought the position. When the first chief engineer quit, Roosevelt asked around, who is the best civil engineer in the United States? John Stevens came the reply.

Stevens had grown up poor. He'd worked through tough manual jobs in the harshest of wilderness. He'd studied in the evenings and worked his way up. Now aged 52, he'd built bridges and tunnels and the Great Northern Railroad. Stevens wasn't keen to go to Panama. Roosevelt persuaded him. But now... The work, Stevens writes, on the whole, I do not like.

He could be earning a lot more back in the United States, he complains. I am losing more than $100,000 yearly. Roosevelt bristles. It's not supposed to be about the money. A canal across Panama is vital to the strategic interests of the United States. Does he not feel honoured to have such an important job? Nope. Stevens couldn't care less. To me, the canal is only a big ditch.

With every sentence he reads, Roosevelt grows more furious. From all of the above, writes Stevens, you will gather that I am not anxious to continue in the service. Roosevelt has indeed gathered that. You're listening to the second episode in a cautionary tale's two-parter on the building of the Panama Canal.

If you haven't heard the first episode on the catastrophic French attempt in the 1880s, you may want to do that now. In this episode, it's the Americans' turn to have a go. When Theodore Roosevelt persuaded the reluctant John Stevens to become his second chief engineer, he'd said, "'See it through. Don't quit on me, like the last guy.'" Stevens replied carefully,

That was just 18 months ago. Roosevelt puts the letter from Stevens down on his desk. Send a telegraph to Panama, he says. Tell Stevens his resignation has been accepted. The canal is nowhere near completion. Stevens has broken his promise.

Or has he? I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. It's 1904, the start of the American effort to build the Panama Canal. Sixteen years have passed since the dramatic collapse of the French Panama Canal Company. C'est impossible. C'est indigne.

The impossible, undignified collapse of the most expensive peacetime project the world had ever seen. It left hundreds of thousands of French investors financially ruined. In those 16 years, some things have changed.

The French company's remaining assets have been sold on to the United States. President Roosevelt has been elected, and he's keen for the US government to pick up where the failed French company left off. No single great material work, Roosevelt tells Congress, is of such consequence to the American people. Panama has a new government too. It had been part of Colombia.

Then, a revolution. The people of the Isthmus rose up to declare their independence. That was suspiciously convenient for Roosevelt's canal plans. What was it the president liked to say about his foreign policy? Speak softly and carry a big stick. No sooner had the Republic of Panama declared itself than Roosevelt's big stick arrived on the scene.

US warships to dissuade Colombia from trying to take the Isthmus back. Panama's new government gave the US control over a sizeable chunk of the country, a zone that spanned from coast to coast. Roosevelt set up a seven-man commission to oversee the canal work and gave his first chief engineer some clear instructions. Make the dirt fly.

But when the Americans moved in, they found the last 16 years had ravaged what the French had left behind. A camp for workers was marked on the maps, but in reality, gone. The jungle had completely taken over. Rusted locomotives were entwined with creeping vines on tracks overgrown with brush.

Dredging machines toppled over. Gears and axles strewn all around. Rotted buildings were infested with termites. Trees with 10-inch trunks grew up through the roofs. The Americans found curious things in some of those buildings. A dozen unopened crates that turned out to be full of pen nibs. Thousands and thousands of pen nibs. Was that corruption? Mismanagement?

The French in Panama had become notorious for both. It made the seven-man American Commission determined to keep tighter hold of the purse strings. But that created problems of its own. If a carpenter wanted to cut a piece of wood that was longer than 10 feet, he needed written permission. If a worker wanted to borrow a handcart, he needed six approvals.

Or suppose a worker's wife gave birth in a hospital in the Canal Zone and the baby needed a bottle. The nurse would ask her superior, who'd fill out a form, and submit it to the chief sanitary officer. He'd stamp the form and pass it on to the chief of the Bureau for Materials and Supply. He'd dispatch a messenger to buy the bottle.

Count up all the hours spent on these clerical tasks, and the wages cost more than 20 times the price of the bottle. And bottles at least could be sourced locally. When supplies had to be ordered from the US, the bureaucracy was unfathomable.

Your only hope of getting what you needed was to ask for far more than that, and far in advance, what actually arrived and when seemed essentially random. Pipes, requested urgently in August, turned up in January, not on a steamboat but a sailing ship. An order for 15,000 doors and pairs of hinges inexplicably yielded

12,000 doors, but 240,000 pairs of hinges. They could store them with the pen nibs. The first chief engineer was waiting for some new digging machines to arrive from America. But Roosevelt had said to make the dirt fly. So he found some old French excavators that could still be made to function.

He got them digging a trench by a hillside. They dumped the dirt into old French railroad trucks to be carried away, but the trucks kept toppling off the rails. After a month of digging, the hillside slid into the trench and they were back where they started. But the first chief engineer had another worry on his mind.

He'd moved into a grand house, once occupied by his French predecessor, Jules Danglay. Danglay's old butler was still on the payroll, so the chief engineer heard in gruesome detail how Danglay's wife and son and daughter had all died from yellow fever.

He conceived a mortal fear that he and his own wife were doomed. Rumour spread that he'd had two fancy metal caskets shipped over in morbid preparation. But since the agonising demise of the Dongle family, something important had changed, something that should have given hope to the Americans.

We heard in another episode of Cautionary Tales how a team of US Army doctors discovered the cause of yellow fever through an ingenious series of experiments in Cuba. It wasn't lack of hygiene or immorality as the French had believed, but mosquitoes. The man in charge of sanitation in Cuba, William Gorgas, had put these new discoveries to the test.

He set about ridding Havana of every last bit of standing water where mosquitoes could breed. It was a painstaking, laborious task, with teams of workers going house to house. And it succeeded. No more yellow fever. That discovery should have been a godsend for the US effort to build the canal, especially because the newly appointed chief sanitary officer for the canal project

was none other than William Gorgas himself. He'd wiped out yellow fever in one country, he could do it in another. Gorgas had an even more ambitious plan. He wanted to tackle malaria too. An English doctor had recently discovered that malaria is also spread by mosquito, but a different breed. This mosquito would be even harder to get rid of. It laid its eggs not in standing water near where humans live,

but in swamps in the countryside. Gorgas came up with a plan to drain the swamps by building dams and digging ditches. The English doctor came to Panama and said to Gorgas, your plan is sound. But the Englishman had a warning for Gorgas. The world requires at least ten years to understand a new idea, he said, however important or simple it may be. He was right.

The idea that mosquitoes spread disease was simple, important, and breezily dismissed by members of Roosevelt's Canal Commission. They watched Gorgas struggling to drain ponds and fumigate houses with nowhere near enough workers and woefully inadequate supplies. It was hopeless, and they thought he was mad for trying.

Shouldn't the chief sanitation officer be tackling the filth in the streets instead? I'm your friend, Gorgas, one told him, and I'm trying to set you right. On the mosquito, you are simply wild. All who agree with you are wild. Get the idea out of your head. Then, in 1905, with Gorgas still fighting a losing battle, a fresh wave of yellow fever took hold.

As the deaths mounted, Americans panicked. The steamships back home filled up with fleeing workers, including the first chief engineer. He decided not to hang around and risk making use of those metal caskets. The Americans then had been in Panama for a year. They'd wrapped themselves up in red tape,

They'd failed to back the man who could end the disease that terrified them. And as for making the dirt fly, what they'd achieved, as one engineer put it, was little more than hen scratches. And yet, the Panama Canal did get built. So what went right? Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. Behind every successful business is a vision.

Bringing it to life takes more than effort. It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in. Boost productivity with all the banking tools and resources you need, all in one place, and always just a few taps away. They're driven to simplify your workday and help you find the answers you need so your business can forge ahead confidently.

Plus, Chase's team of experts is ready to offer personalized guidance, helping you tackle challenges and make informed decisions every step of the way. With Chase for Business on your side, you can grow stronger and go farther than you imagined. Learn more at chase.com backslash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank. NA member FDIC.

Copyright 2025, JPMorgan Chase & Company.

Plus, they're certified by organisations such as EWG and GOTS, so you know they're the real deal. Speaking of deals, you can save 20% on organic sleep for your whole family when you shop Naturepedic's Memorial Day Sale. Use code MEMORIAL20 at naturepedic.com slash tails to save today and sleep better tonight. This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record.

What's summer without new music? And what's the hottest new summer song without a refreshing iced coffee in hand? Especially the new iced horchata oat milk shake and espresso, available now at Starbucks. A blonde espresso combined with rich horchata syrup that delivers a wonderful hint of cinnamon, vanilla, and rice flavors. Topped with oat milk, it delivers a flavor inspired by the Mexican-style horchata for a refreshing and creamy pick-me-up.

As an LA native, I've had my fair share of horchata, and this blend is delicious. Not only does it taste like authentic horchata, but you still get a great coffee flavor. It's perfectly balanced, a little something for everyone. You can savor your coffee at the same time you kick out your summer jams this year thanks to Starbucks' new summer menu featuring everything from creamy cold brews to ice-cold refreshers. Your iced horchata oat milk shake and espresso is ready at Starbucks.

John Stevens arrived in Panama in July 1905, Roosevelt's second chief engineer, who'd promised to stay on the job until success was guaranteed or failure was unavoidable. What Stevens found, he later wrote, was "...as discouraging a proposition as was ever presented to a construction engineer." There was no organisation worthy of the name.

No cooperation between what might charitably be called the departments. The workers were all scared out of their boots, and nobody seemed to be doing much actual work, except, of course, for the endless form-filling. The only busy ones here are ants and typists, said Stevens. Was there anything positive to report? No.

Why yes, someone told him. An improving safety record on the railroad. There'd been no collisions for quite some time. Stephen's reply was acidic. A collision has its good points as well as its bad ones. It indicates there is something moving on the railroad. In his first few weeks, Stephen's didn't say much. In the words of his biographer, Clifford Faust...

He pioneered a practice that business gurus would later call MBWA, management by wandering around. Every day he'd be somewhere on the canal route, trudging through the mud in his rubber boots and overalls, puffing on a big cigar. He watched, he thought, he asked questions, and he saw something that nobody else had seen. Something simple.

that would change everything. We'll come back to what that was later in the episode. In the first part of this Panama Canal two-parter, we heard all about the charismatic, larger-than-life Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lessep, a man who seemed to think he could will the Panama Canal into being through sheer force of personality.

We heard how de Lesseps refused to entertain any negative news about his Panama project. The canal will be built, he said, again and again. Ferdinand de Lesseps and Theodore Roosevelt were remarkably similar characters, a point made by the historian David McCulloch in his book The Path Between the Seas. Both, he says, were the products of cultivated worldly families –

Both loved riding horses and being out of doors. They shared a boundless love of life and animal vitality. Both had a great capacity for self-glorification and self-deception. It was self-deception that did for Ferdinand de Lesseps. The experts warned that his plan to build a sea-level canal through Panama was never going to work.

They'd have to slice through too many hills. There'd be landslides. When the storms brought floods, the mighty river Chagris would pummel the passing ships. Instead, a canal needed locks, a system of gates controlling the flow of water that would raise ships up from one ocean, across the hills in the middle of the isthmus, and down again on the other side.

De Lesseps would not listen. He hated locks. Roosevelt initially assumed that America would build the canal De Lesseps had envisaged. He asked a committee to sense-check that assumption. The committee couldn't agree. Some insisted on the same romantic vision that had captivated De Lesseps,

An open, free passage from ocean to ocean. The dignity and power of this great nation demanded it. Others said, it's clearly crazy. The canal needs locks. Roosevelt had to decide. So he called John Stevens back to Washington to ask his advice. Stevens had been in Panama for just a few months, but he'd lived through a rainy season. He'd seen enough.

I talked to Teddy like a Dutch uncle, he said. It had to be a canal with locks, he explained to the president. And Roosevelt listened, as Ferdinand de Lesseps never had. A canal with locks it would be. Roosevelt had another decision to make, about William Gorgas, that crank of a chief sanitation officer who was weirdly obsessed with mosquitoes.

"'Get rid of Gorgas,' said members of his canal commission. "'Appoint someone else, someone practical who'd get on with the important stuff, dealing with the smells and the filth.' Roosevelt called in an old friend, a doctor who was up to speed with the medical research. "'Smells and filth,' missed the president, the doctor friend told him, "'have nothing to do with either malaria or yellow fever.'

you are facing one of the greatest decisions of your career. Again, Roosevelt listened to the expert. Gorgas stays, he said, and you must give him all the workers and supplies he needs. Roosevelt streamlined his commission so things could actually get done. Gorgas attacked every source of standing water he could find, even the font in the cathedral in Panama City. Before long...

Yellow fever was gone. There were other problems too, of course. Sensationally reported in the New York Independent by a journalist who went to Panama late in 1905, black workers from Jamaica were quitting en masse in disgust at how their American bosses were treating them. The food was exorbitant and inedible. The housing would disgrace the most unworthy sections of a shantytown.

Was it true? It certainly had been true in the early days. But as 1906 went by, other reports reached Roosevelt that the situation in Panama was improving. John Stevens was turning things around. And again, the American newspapers complained that Stevens wasn't making the dirt fly. He'd apparently stopped digging. What was really happening?

Roosevelt decided there was only one way to find out. He'd go to Panama to see for himself. In November 1906, the biggest warship in the US fleet docked off the coast of Panama with Theodore Roosevelt on board. It was the first time a sitting president had ever travelled outside the United States and American newspapers debated what to make of it. Was this wise?

Would he be safe, or was this a sign of things to come? Perhaps in the future, mused the Washington Star, presidents might even visit Europe. Roosevelt had timed his visit deliberately. He wanted to see Panama at the height of the rainy season, with conditions at their most challenging.

That was a far cry from Ferdinand de Lesseps, who'd only ever visited Panama in the dry season, when the sun shone and the work looked easy. Lesseps had come to Panama to drink champagne and go to parties. Roosevelt had come to investigate. At 7.30 in the morning, the welcome committee assembled at the end of the pier. The president of Panama, John Stevens, a choir of Panamanian schoolchildren,

They looked expectantly at the great warship. But where was President Roosevelt? Good morning. The voice came not from the ship, but from the shore. They turned to see Roosevelt in a white suit and a sou'esta hat striding towards them. He'd been rowed ashore two hours ago, he explained. He'd been exploring. They put him in a carriage to his hotel. But when the carriage arrived, it was empty.

Where was Roosevelt? He'd slipped out, grabbed William Gorgas and got Gorgas to take him to a hospital where they weren't expecting him. The hotel put on a sumptuous lunch in Roosevelt's honour. But where'd he gone? The president and first lady, it transpired, had snuck off into an employee's mess hall and were tucking into the same 30-cent meal as the American workers.

He seemed obsessed with the idea that someone was trying to hide something from him, said one exasperated canal official. He was continually stopping some black man and asking if he had any complaint or grievance. The next day saw Panama's worst rain in years, three inches in two hours. Roosevelt was thrilled.

It would have been impossible to see the work going on under more unfavourable weather conditions. They put him on a train which chugged past one of the new 95-tonne steam-powered shovels that John Stevens had ordered in. They could dig up eight tonnes in a single scoop. Stop the train! Roosevelt jumped off, tramped through the mud and clambered up onto the huge machine.

Move over, he said to the man at the controls. Now, show me how it works. For the next 20 minutes, the president happily learned how to operate the steam shovel, while photographers snapped away below. The pictures became iconic. But if this was an image-savvy politician's cynical photo op, it wasn't just that. Roosevelt had come to Panama with a genuine desire to understand.

Where Ferdinand de Lesseps had always tried to wish problems away, Roosevelt sought out hard truths and changed course when needed. That difference between the two boosterish characters is one big reason the US succeeded where the French had failed. But it's not the only reason. Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment.

Behind every successful business is a vision. Bringing it to life takes more than effort. It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in. Boost productivity with all the banking tools and resources you need all in one place, and always just a few taps away. They're driven to simplify your workday and help you find the answers you need so your business can forge ahead confidently.

Plus, Chase's team of experts is ready to offer personalized guidance, helping you tackle challenges and make informed decisions every step of the way. With Chase for Business on your side, you can grow stronger and go farther than you imagined. Learn more at Chase.com.

at chase.com backslash business. Chase for business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. member FDIC. Copyright 2025. JPMorgan Chase & Company.

There are so many mattresses out there and for ethical shoppers it's not always clear what exactly you're buying. Naturepedic makes it simple. They use real, natural materials such as organic cotton and wool instead of polyfoams and fibreglass.

Plus, they're certified by organizations such as EWG and GOTS, so you know they're the real deal. Speaking of deals, you can save 20% on organic sleep for your whole family when you shop Naturepedic's Memorial Day Sale. Use code MEMORIAL20 at naturepedic.com slash tails to save today and sleep better tonight. This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record.

What's summer without new music? And what's the hottest new summer song without a refreshing iced coffee in hand? Especially the new iced horchata oat milk shake and espresso, available now at Starbucks. A blonde espresso combined with rich horchata syrup that delivers a wonderful hint of cinnamon, vanilla, and rice flavors. Topped with oat milk, it delivers a flavor inspired by the Mexican-style horchata for a refreshing and creamy pick-me-up.

As an LA native, I've had my fair share of horchata, and this blend is delicious. Not only does it taste like authentic horchata, but you still get a great coffee flavor. It's perfectly balanced, a little something for everyone. You can savor your coffee at the same time you kick out your summer jams this year thanks to Starbucks' new summer menu featuring everything from creamy cold brews to ice-cold refreshers. Your iced horchata oat milk shake and espresso is ready at Starbucks.

In 1981, the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky discovered a quirk of the human mind. Our decisions change depending on how a problem is presented to us. Would you prefer a treatment for a disease that will save a third of patients? Or a treatment that will result in the death of two-thirds? They're the same thing, of course, but we see them differently.

Kahneman and Tmersky called this the framing effect. It's a metaphor that draws on how a photographer composes a shot, what to have in focus and what to leave blurred, what should be in the centre of the scene and what at its margins. In 2021, the authors Ken Kukie, Victor Meyer-Schönberger and Francis de Vodicor took the idea further in a book called Framers.

This isn't just a quirk of the human mind, they said. It's a powerful feature. We can choose how we frame a problem, just as a photographer can rotate their lens to bring a different part of the scene into focus or move to another spot to get a different angle. Reframe a problem and sometimes the solution jumps right out at you.

I said earlier that when John Stevens arrived in Panama, he saw something nobody else had seen. Something simple, that would change everything. This is what he saw. The problem is simply one of transportation. Make the dirt fly, Roosevelt had said. But what do you do with that dirt once you've dug it up? If you dump it next to the ditch, the next storm will wash it back in again.

You have to move it somewhere. Stevens had watched the excavation efforts as they'd been organised by his predecessor, the first chief engineer. The diggers put spoil in trucks, which often toppled off the tracks. The railroad was primitive. The trucks were old and there weren't enough of them. The diggers were often stood idle because they had no trucks to take the spoil away. The problem was simply one of transportation.

It's an obvious insight, yet Stevens was the first to have it. The French in the 1880s, and America's first chief engineer, had all framed the canal as a "digging stuff up" problem, and try as they might, they'd never been able to dig at anywhere near the rate required. Stevens reframed it as a "moving stuff around" problem. Once he'd done that, it was clear what had to change.

"'Stop digging,' said Stevens, "'until I've figured out the transport problem. "'Ignore the idiotic howl of the newspapers. "'There's an old proverb about a woodcutter given five minutes to fell a tree. "'He spends the first three minutes sharpening his axe.' "'Stevens wanted to sharpen his axe.'"

He gave the workers other tasks to keep them busy, helping Gorgas attack the mosquitoes, laying water pipes, sewage systems, storm drains, constructing better houses for themselves, building kitchens, bakeries, mess halls, even baseball fields. Life in Panama slowly got better. Stevens, meanwhile, designed a whole new railroad system. In his book Hell's Gorge, the author Matthew Parker described that system as...

fantastically skilful and intricate, like the assembly line in one of the new mechanised US factories, but also engineering at its simplest and most brilliant. We should start to dig, said Stevens, on either side of the hills in the middle of the route and work upwards to the highest point.

That way, it would always be the empty trains chugging up the hill. The trains full of spoil would have gravity to help them down. When they got to a place to dump the spoil, another simple but brilliant idea, the new trucks were open-ended, bridged by flat panels and with only one side, so they formed a single long surface on which the mud was piled.

The steam engine then dragged a three-tonne plough along that flat surface, sweeping all the mud off the open side. It took just ten minutes to empty a 20-truck train, far quicker than the old French system of men shoveling mud from each truck by hand. The problem was simply one of transportation, and Stevens had solved it,

By the end of 1906, when Roosevelt came to visit, the new railroad was up and running and the dirt was beginning to fly again. It would take another eight years, Stevens reckoned, to finish the canal, an estimate that proved exactly right. The canal would eventually open in 1914. By then, Stevens was long gone.

Two months after Roosevelt had gone back to Washington in January 1907, Stevens sat down in his office in Panama to write the President that fateful six-page letter. Mr President, you have been kind enough to instruct me to address you directly and personally, as man to man, and I will do so, even at the risk of incurring your displeasure.

Historians debate to this day what Stevens was thinking. Some reckon he didn't actually intend to resign. He never said, I quit, in as many words, just, I am not anxious to continue in the service. Was he merely letting off steam? Angling for a pay rise, perhaps? But Stevens must have known how Roosevelt would react.

The President had just been in Panama, making stirring speeches to the workers about duty and honour, comparing them to soldiers in a patriotic war. Stevens had evidently been completely unmoved. The honour, which is continually being held up as an incentive for this work, appeals to me but slightly. Neither do I consider patriotism can compensate for the necessary sacrifice.

Roosevelt insisted in his speeches that the canal was critical to America's long-term strategic interests. Stevens dismissed that too. To me, the canal is only a big ditch. Its great utility when completed has never been so apparent to me as it seems to be to others. Stevens must have known that Roosevelt would reply, your resignation has been accepted.

When news reached the isthmus, nobody could understand it. Things were going well. Stevens was popular. Why would he walk away? Had he had some bitter disagreement? Uncovered a scandal? There must be something else going on. Speculation ran riot, and all Stevens would say was, don't talk, dig. But when you read Stevens' letter, it's hard to see any mystery.

This is a man who's been working 18-hour days and has a sense of his own limits. I feel I would not be able to bear up under the strain for the next eight years. My desire is to take a rest. This is a man who really doesn't care what people think. I am not a seeker after notoriety. Being constantly before the public, whether in a favourable or unfavourable light, is extremely distasteful to me.

And this is a man with a keen sense of his own worth. He knows what he's done in Panama. I am proud of what we've accomplished and confident from now on the prospects of speedy completion of the canal will become brighter and brighter. As Stevens later put it, in 18 months he'd built a machine. All it needed now was someone to turn the crank.

Roosevelt decided to put the army in charge. It had two civilian chief engineers walk out on him in just three years. He needed an actual soldier, someone who understood the meaning of duty and would stick it out till the end. When Colonel George Goerfels arrived in Panama as the new chief engineer, his impressions were very different to those of Stevens when he had first arrived in the country.

Mr Stevens has perfected such an organisation, Gerthals reported, that there is nothing left for us to do but just have the organisation continue in the good work it is doing. Gerthals did indeed understand the concept of duty. He saw the job through. In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt was fulsome in his praise.

Colonel Gerthals proved to be the man of all others to do the job. It would be impossible to overstate what he has done. William Gorgas gets a shout-out too. Dr Gorgas performed an inestimable service by making the Isthmus as safe as a health resort. And John Stevens? Roosevelt doesn't mention him once. It's quite the snub.

Stevens doesn't seem to have minded much. After Roosevelt died, he kept a photo of the president on his mantelpiece. One of the only men, he said, who'd ever influenced my life. Stevens built more railroads. The Trans-Siberian. The Chinese Eastern. He became president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In the 1930s, as an old man, Stevens took a boat to Panama for a vacation with his teenage granddaughter. They got on a plane, the first flight for both of them. The Isthmian Airlines company flew them along the length of the completed canal. Stevens was captivated.

He looked down on the twelve locks, shuffling great ships up and down between the oceans and the vast artificial lake in the Panamanian hills, a lake they'd created by damming the River Chagris, with earth dug up from the ditch and transported by Stevens Railroad. "'I will stay,' Stevens had said, "'until I have made its success certain or proved it to be a failure.'"

Stevens had been true to his word, even if Roosevelt didn't realise it. By the time he left, success was certain. And if Roosevelt didn't give him the credit, John Stevens never did care much about that. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fiennes, with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Gemma Saunders and Rufus Wright.

The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilley, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. Tell your friends. And if you want to hear the show ad-free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. MUSIC PLAYS

There are so many mattresses out there and for ethical shoppers it's not always clear what exactly you're buying. Naturepedic makes it simple. They use real, natural materials such as organic cotton and wool instead of polyfoams and fibreglass.

Plus, they're certified by organisations such as EWG and GOTS, so you know they're the real deal. Speaking of deals, you can save 20% on organic sleep for your whole family when you shop Naturepedic's Memorial Day Sale. Use code MEMORIAL20 at naturepedic.com slash tails to save today and sleep better tonight. This is Justin Richmond from Broken Record.

The three things I love about summer are pool days, blaring all the new summer songs that come out, and endless refreshing iced drinks from Starbucks. Even better, my favorite summer drink has returned to Starbucks. The Summer Berry Refresher is available now. A mix of berry flavors shaken with ice and poured over raspberry-flavored pearls, it's light, vibrant, and just as refreshing as the summer fun you'll be having.

So queue up your playlist and head over to Starbucks to check out their summer menu. There's something for everyone from creamy cold brews to ice cold refreshers. Your summer berry refresher is ready at Starbucks.

You see the world differently. Where others see empty lots, you see blueprints. Where others sit in lecture halls, future leaders choose Ferris State University to build something real. Ready to dig in and learn through action? Ferris State gives you the tools, the team, and training to unleash your potential with paths to high-demand careers and in-state tuition for non-residents. At Ferris State, students don't just study. They build. They lead. They succeed.

Visit Ferris.edu. Ferris State University. We build champions. This is an iHeart Podcast.