1950–1953: (Magloire’s Development Push: Point Four, the Péligre Dam, 300 Miles of Roads, Reynolds Bauxite, and the $40 Million Five-Year Plan): If there was…

1950–1953: (Magloire’s Development Push: Point Four, the Péligre Dam, 300 Miles of Roads, Reynolds Bauxite, and the $40 Million Five-Year Plan): If there was to be a central plan, as Magloire believed there should be, it must focus on agriculture, efficient use of government revenue, and encouragement of foreign capital — and this is what the president set on foot. By July 1950, Magloire had negotiated a U.S. Point Four agreement covering soil conservation, cattle farming, irrigation, drainage, and sanitation. Picking up Estimé’s haphazard Artibonite Valley project, Magloire went to the Ex-Im Bank for $14 million, added to Haiti’s $6 million, for construction of a great dam 225 feet high and 1,075 feet wide at Péligre on the Artibonite — when completed, the dam would irrigate 80,000 acres and ultimately, nearly two decades later, provide 40,000 kilowatts of scarce power. Besides emphasis on agriculture, Magloire wanted to build or improve 300 miles of roads including blacktop from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haïtien with an asphalt extension to Fort Liberté, and he planned a $7 million modernization of wharves and harbor at the Cap. All these programs were incorporated in a five-year plan costing a staggering $40 million to be raised by stimulated revenue, U.S. loans, some United Nations aid, and the attraction of foreign capital — an augury of which was the 1953 opening at Miragoâne of the Reynolds Metals bauxite mines. One other attraction for foreign capital was Magloire’s short way with strikers and syndicalists: when in 1951 he found the Parti Socialiste Populaire fomenting strikes against American firms, he shut it down for good and Fignolé’s MOP to boot, also silencing the communist La Nation and the Fignolé mouthpiece Chantiers. The United Nations, which had little to show for its early rhetoric, now deployed more purposefully — coordinated by a UN resident representative permanently assigned to Haiti, a cadre of specialists provided advice and administered programs, while under U.S. aegis the SCISP launched a nationwide effort to wipe out malaria, parasites, and Haiti’s endemic yaws, which at any given moment infected ninety percent of the population. In December 1954, with encouragement from Magloire, Dr. and Mrs. William Larimer Mellon opened their Hôpital Albert Schweitzer at Deschapelles near Verrettes, a project that would earn world attention as the years went by.