One of the largest mass suicides in the Americas was due to a budget cut.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the working conditions on the Panamanian Railroad were hellish. Besides heat, insects and difficult terrain, workers were affected by cholera, dysentery and malaria. Due to high death tolls, management decided to import Chinese laborers. At $25 each, they were a bargain.
At first, the Chinese made rapid progress because of their nightly dose of opium. When a company accountant in New York noticed that $150 per day were spent on the drug, this expense was cut without any thought to the consequences.
Chief Engineer George Totten intended to ignore the budget cut from New York, but he came down with malaria before making his intentions clear. Once the opium supply ran out, several hundred Chinese committed suicide by hanging, impaling, or paying Malay workers to slaughter them. Totten, barely able to stand, managed to round up the survivors and ship them to a Chinese community in Jamaica. Then he wrote to his employers: “Some anonymous, grubby, ink-stained bookkeeper in New York ... who had a head full of trash instead of brains, had decided to institute certain economies which had fatal results.”
George Totten paid dearly for his outrage, and his obituary never mentioned his work on the Panamanian Railroad. Nevertheless, we should recognize him for his courageous words directed to those who fail to see the shortsightedness of their budget cuts.
I'm Frances Jaeger, and this is my Perspective.
