(Three paragraphs of quoted matter follow.)
III. Interview in which direct quotation is varied with indirect. From the Chicago _Evening Post_:
“The Panama Canal will be completed at least a year sooner than the time set for the official opening, Jan. 1, 1915,” said Ray L. Smith, employment agent of the Isthmian Canal Commission, to-day.
Mr. Smith is in Chicago attempting to enlist boiler-makers to take the places of the hundred men who resigned after being refused an increase in wage.
“I attribute the reduction in time to the efficiency which has been attained by the men,” he continued. “When the work began laborers were imported from the West Indian Islands and from Italy and Spain. The European laborers accomplished nearly three times as much a man as the West Indians at first, and they were paid twice as much.
“Now the efficiency of the West Indian has been so increased that the European is only twice as effective.”
According to Mr. Smith, the personnel of the workers on the canal includes representatives from nearly every country in the world. There are 45,000 employés of the commission in Panama. Of them, 5,000 are Americans. The remaining 40,000 represent perhaps more tongues than were gathered around the Tower of Babel. The bulk of the laborers are negroes from the Barbados, from Trinidad and from Jamaica. Besides the negroes from these islands there are Spaniards from most of the islands except Cuba.
“The death rate in the canal zone is only 4.05 a thousand persons,” said Mr. Smith. “This is lower than in any American city. The low rate is the result of the careful supervision exercised by the government. For example, there is a hospital at Culebra, the headquarters of the commission, which has 2,200 beds. All the houses are screened against mosquitoes, and in other ways the greatest attention is paid to sanitation....”
(The rest of the interview is in direct quotation.)
(Note that the writer drops direct quotation in the fifth paragraph. Making it clear that the speaker is his authority, he puts his information in the third person. This may be done with a plain statement of facts and figures in which there is no expression of opinion. Nothing would be gained by putting in the speaker’s words the statistical matter here given. On the other hand the reporter should be careful to quote anything of a controversial nature.)