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ZONE POLICEMAN 88
A CLOSE RANGE STUDY OF THE PANAMA CANAL AND ITS WORKERS
BY
HARRY A. FRANCK
Author of "A Vagabond Journey Around the World" and "Four Months Afoot
in Spain"
TO A HOST OF GOOD FELLOWS THE ZONE POLICE
Quito, December 31, 1912
CHAPTER I
Strip by strip there opened out before me, as I climbed the "Thousand
Stairs" to the red-roofed Administration Building, the broad panorama
of Panama and her bay; below, the city of closely packed roofs and
three-topped plazas compressed in a scallop of the sun-gleaming
Pacific, with its peaked and wooded islands to far Taboga tilting
motionless away to the curve of the earth; behind, the low, irregular
jungled hills stretching hazily off into South America. On the
third-story landing I paused to wipe the light sweat from forehead and
hatband, then pushed open the screen door of the passageway that leads
to police headquarters.
"Emm--What military service have you had?" asked "the Captain," looking
up from the letter I had presented and swinging half round in his
swivel-chair to fix his clear eyes upon me.
"None."
"No?" he said slowly, in a wondering voice; and so long grew the
silence, and so plainly did there spread across "the Captain's" face
the unspoken question, "Well, then what the devil are you applying here
for?" that I felt all at once the stern necessity of putting in a word
for myself or lose the day entirely.
"But I speak Spanish and--"
"Ah!" cried "the Captain," with the rising inflection of awakened
interest, "That puts another face on the matter."
Slowly his eyes wandered, with the far-away look of inner reflection,
to the vacant chair of "the Chief" on the opposite side of the broad
flat desk, then out the wide-open window and across the shimmering
roofs of Ancon to the far green ridges of the youthful Republic, ablaze
with the unbroken tropical sunshine. The whirr of a telephone bell
broke in upon his meditation. In sharp, clear-cut phrases he answered
the questions that came to him over the wire, hung up the receiver, and
pushed the apparatus away from him with a forceful gesture.
"Inspector:" he called suddenly; but a moment having passed without
response, he went on in his sharp-cut tones, "How do you think you
would like police work?"
"I believe I should."
"The Captain" shuffled for a moment one of several stacks of unfolded
letters on his desk.
"Well, it's the most thankless damned job in Creation," he went on,
almost dreamily, "but it certainly gives a man much touch with human
nature from all angles, and--well, I suppose we do some good.
Somebody's got to do it, anyway."
"Of course I suppose it would depend on what class of police work I
got," I put in, recalling the warning of the writer of my letter of
introduction that, "You may get assigned to some dinky little station
and never see anything of the Zone,"--"I'm better at moving around than
sitting still. I notice you have policemen on your trains, or perhaps
in special duty languages would be--"
"Yes, I was thinking along that line, too," said "the Captain."
He rose suddenly from his chair and led the way into an adjoining room,
busy with several young Americans over desks and typewriters.
"Inspector," he said, as a tall and slender yet muscular man of Indian
erectness and noticeably careful grooming rose to his feet, "Here's one
of those rare people, an American who speaks some foreign languages.
Have a talk with him. Perhaps we can arrange to fix him up both for his
good and our own."
"Ever done police duty?" began the Inspector, when "the Captain" had
returned to the corner office.
"No."
"Military ser--"
"Nor that either."
"Well, we usually require it," mused the Inspector slowly, flashing his
diamond ring, "but with your special qualifications perhaps--
"You'd probably be of most use to us in plain clothes," he continued,
after a dozen questions as to my former activities; "We could put you
in uniform for the first month or six weeks until you know the Isthmus,
and then--
"Our greatest trouble is burglary," he broke off abruptly, rising to
reach a copy of the "Canal Zone Laws"; "If you have nothing else on
hand you might run these over; and the 'Police Rules and Regulations,'"
he added, handing me a small, flat volume bound in light brown
imitation leather.
I sat down in an arm-chair against the wall and fell to reading, amid
the clickity-click of typewriters, telephone calls even from far-off
Colon on the Atlantic, and the constant going and coming of a negro
orderly in shiningly ironed khaki uniform. By and by the Inspector
drifted into the main office, where his voice blended for some time
with that of "the Captain," At length he came back bearing a copy of
the day's Star and Herald, turned back to the "Estrella de Panama"
pages so rarely opened in the Zone.
"Just run us off a translation of that, if you don't mind," he said,
pointing to a short paragraph in Spanish.
Some two minutes later I handed him the English version of the account
of a near-duel between two Panamanians, and took once more to reading.
It was more than an hour later that I was again interrupted.
"You'll want to catch the 5:25 back to Corozal?" inquired the
Inspector; "Mr. ----, give him transportation to Culebra and back, and
an order for physical examination.
"You might fill out this application blank," he added, handing me a
long legal sheet, "then in case you are appointed that much will be
done."
The document began with the usual, "Name----, Birthplace----, and so
on." There followed the information that the appointee "must be at
least five feet eight; weigh one hundred and forty, chest at least
thirty-four inches--" Then suddenly near the bottom of the back of the
sheet my eyes caught the startling words;--"Unless you are sure you are
a man of physical appearance far above the average do not fill out this
application."
I was suddenly aware of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach; the
blank all but slipped from my nerveless fingers. Then all at once there
came back to me the words of some chance acquaintance of some far-off
time and place, words which were the only memory that remained to me of
the speaker, except that he had lived long and gathered much
experience, "Bluff, my boy, is what carries a man through the world.
Act as if you're sure you are and can and you'll generally make the
other fellow think so." I sat down at a desk and filled out the
application in my most self-confident flourish.
"Go to Culebra to-morrow," said the Inspector, as I bade the room
good-day and stepped forth with my most military stride and bearing,
"and report back here Friday morning."
I descended to the world below, not by the long perspective of stairs
that leads down and across the gully to the heart of Ancon, but by a
short-cut that took me quickly into a foreign land. The graveled
highway at the foot of the hill I might not have guessed was an
international boundary had I not chanced to notice the instant change
from the trim, screened Zone buildings, each in its green lawn, to the
featureless architecture of a city where grass is all but unknown; for
the formalities of crossing this frontier are the same as those of
crossing any village street. It was my first entrance into the land of
the panamenos, technically known on the Zone as "Spigoties," and
familiarly, with a tinge of despite, as "Spigs"; because the first
Americans to arrive in the land found a few natives and cabmen who
claimed to "Speaga dee Eng-leesh."
To Americans direct from the States Panama city ranks still as rather a
miserable dawdling village. But that is due chiefly to lack of
perspective. Against the background of Central America it seemed almost
a great, certainly a flourishing, city. Even to-day there are many who
complain of its unpleasant odors; to those who have lived in other
tropical cities its scent is like the perfumes of Araby; and none but
those can in any degree realize what "Tio Sam" has done for the place.
Toward sunset I passed through a gateway with scores of
fellow-countrymen, all as composedly at home as in the heart of their
native land. Across the platform stood a train distinctively American
in every feature, a bilious-yellow train divided by the baggage car
into two sections, of which the five second-class coaches behind the
engine, with their wooden benches, were densely packed in every
available space with workmen and laborer's wives, from Spaniards to
ebony negroes, with the average color decidedly dark. In the
first-class cars at the Panama end were Americans, all but exclusively
white Americans, with only here and there a "Spigoty" with his long
greased hair, his finger rings, and his effeminate gestures, and even a
negro or two. For though Uncle Sam may permit individual states to do
so, he may not himself openly abjure before the world his assertion as
to the equality of all men by enacting "Jim Crow" laws.
We were soon off. Settled back in the ample seat of the first real
train I had boarded in months, with the roar of its length over the
smooth and solid road-bed, the deep-voiced, masculine whistle instead
of the painful, puerile screech that had recently assailed my ear, I
all but forgot I was in a foreign land. The fact was recalled by the
passing of the train-guard,--an erect and self-possessed young American
in "Texas" hat, khaki uniform, and leather leggings, striding along the
aisle with a jerking, half-arrogant swing of the shoulders. So,
perhaps, might I too soon be parading across the Isthmus! It was not,
to be sure, exactly the role I had planned to play on the Zone. I had
come rather with the hope of shouldering a shovel and descending into
the canal with other workmen, that I might some day solemnly raise my
right hand and boast, "I helped dig IT." But that was in the callow
days before I had arrived and learned the awful gulf that separates the
sacred white American from the rest of the Canal Zone world. Besides,
had I not always wanted to be a policeman and twirl a club and stalk
with heavy, law-compelling tread ever since I had first stared
speechless upon one of those noble beings on my first trip out into the
world twenty-one years before?
It was not without effort that I rose in time next morning to continue
on the 6:37 from Corozal across another bit of the Zone. Exactly thus
should one first see the Great Work, piece-meal, slowly; unless he will
go home with it all in an undigested lump. The train rolled across a
stretch of almost uninhabited country, with a vast plain of broken rock
on the right, plunged unexpectedly through a short tunnel, and stopped
at a station perched on the edge of a ridge above a small Zone town
backed by some vast structure, above which here and there a huge crane
loomed against the sky of dawn. Another mile and the collectors were
announcing as brazenly as if they challenged the few "Spigs" on board
to correct them, "Peter M'Gill! Peter M'Gill!" We were already moving
on again before I had guessed that by this noise they designated none
other than the famous Pedro Miguel. The sun rose suddenly as we swung
sharply to the left and rumbled across a girderless bridge. Barely had
I time to discover that we were crossing the great canal itself and to
catch a brief glimpse of the jagged gulf in either direction, before
the train had left it behind, as if the sight of the world-famous
channel were not worth a pause, and was roaring on through a hilly
country of perpetual summer. A peculiarly shaped reservoir sped past on
the left, twice or thrice more the green horizon rose and fell, and at
7:30 we drew up at the base of Culebra, the Zone capital.
On the screened veranda of a somewhat sooty and dismal building high up
near the summit of the town, another and I were pacing anxiously back
and forth when, well on in the morning, an abrupt and rather
gloomy-faced American dashed into the building and one of the rooms
thereof, snapping over his shoulder as he disappeared, "One of you!"
The other had precedence. Then soon from behind the wooden shutters
came a growl of "Next!" and two moments later I was standing in the
reputed costume of Adam on the scales within. At about ten-second
intervals a monosyllable fell from the lips of the morose American as
he delved into my personal make-up from crown to toe with all the
instrumental circumspection known to his secret-discovering profession.
Then with a gruff "Dress!" he sat down at a table to scratch a few
fantastic marks on the blank I had brought, and hand it to me as I
caught up my last garment and turned to the door. But, alas--tight
sealed! and all the day, though carrying the information in my pocket,
I must live in complete ignorance of whether I had been found lacking
an eye or a lung. For sooner would one have asked his future of the
scowling Parques than venture to invoke a hint thereof from that
furrow-browed being from the Land of Bruskness.
Meanwhile, as if it had been thus planned to give me such opportunity,
I stood at the very vortex of canal interest and fame, with nearly an
entire day before the evening train should carry me back to Corozal. I
descended to the "observation platform." Here at last at my very feet
was the famous "cut" known to the world by the name of Culebra; a
mighty channel a furlong wide plunging sheer through "Snake Mountain,"
that rocky range of scrub-wooded hills; severing the continental
divide. At first view the scene was bewildering. Only gradually did the
eye gather details out of the mass. Before and beyond were pounding
rock drills, belching locomotives, there arose the rattle and bump of
long trains of flat-cars on many tracks, the crash of falling boulders,
the snort of the straining steam-shovels heaping the cars high with
earth and rock, everywhere were groups of little men, some working
leisurely, some scrambling down into the rocky bed of the canal or
dodging the clanging trains, all far below and stretching endless in
either direction, while over all the scene hovered a veritable
Pittsburg of smoke.
All long-heralded sights--such is the nature of the world and man--are
at first glimpse disappointing. To this rule the great Culebra "cut"
was no exception. After all this was merely a hill, a moderate ridge,
this backbone of the Isthmus the sundering of which had sent its echoes
to all corners of the earth. The long-fed imagination had led one to
picture a towering mountain, a very Andes.
But as I looked longer, noting how little by comparison were the trains
I knew to be of regulation U. S. size, how literally tiny were the
scores upon scores of men far down below who were doing this thing, its
significance regained bit by bit its proper proportions. Train after
train-load of the spoil of the "cut" ground away towards the Pacific;
and here man had been digging steadily, if not always earnestly, since
a year before I was born. The gigantic scene recalled to the mind the
"industrial army" of which Carlyle was prone to preach, with the same
discipline and organization as an army in the field; and every now and
then, to bear out the figure, there burst forth the mighty cannonade,
not of war, but of peace and progress in the form of earth-upheaving
and house-rocking blasts of dynamite, tearing away the solid rock below
at the very feet of the town.
I took to the railroad and struck on further into the unknown country.
Almost before I was well started I found myself in another town, yet
larger than Culebra and with the name "Empire" in the station building;
and nearly every rod of the way between had been lined with villages of
negroes and all breeds and colors of canal workers. So on again along a
broad macadamized highway that bent and rose through low bushy ridges,
past an army encamped in wood and tin barracks on a hillside, with
khaki uniformed soldiers ahorse and afoot enlivening all the roadway
and the neighboring fields. Never a mile without its town--how
different will all this be when the canal is finished and all this
community is gone to Alaska or has scattered itself again over the face
of the earth, and dense tropical solitude has settled down once more
over the scene.
Panama, they had said, is insupportably hot. Comparing it with other
lands I knew I could not but smile at the notion. Again it was the lack
of perspective. Sweat ran easily, yet so fresh the air and so
refreshing the breeze sweeping incessantly across from the Atlantic
that even the sweating was almost enjoyable. Hot! Yes, like June on the
Canadian border--though not like July. It is hot in St. Louis on an
August Sunday, with all the refreshment doors tight closed--to
strangers; hot in the cotton-fields of Texas, but with these plutonic
corners the heat of the Zone shows little rivalry.
The way led round a cone-shaped hill crowned by another military camp
with the Stars and Stripes flapping far above, until I came at last in
sight of the renowned Chagres, seven miles above Culebra, to all
appearances a meek and harmless little stream spanned by a huge new
iron bridge and forbidden to come and play in the unfinished canal by a
little dam of earth that a steam-shovel will some day eat up in a few
hours. Here, where it ends and the flat country begins, I descended
into the "cut," dry and waterless, with a stone-quarry bottom. A sharp
climb out on the opposite side and I plunged into rampant jungle, half
expecting snake-bites on my exposed ankles--another pre-conceived
notion--and at length falling into a narrow jungle trail that pitched
down through a dense-grown gully, came upon a fenced compound with
several Zone buildings on the banks of the Chagres, down to which
sloped a broad green lawn.
Here dwells hale and ruddy "Old Fritz," for long years keeper of the
fluviograph that measures and gives warning of the rampages of the
Chagres. Fritz will talk to you in almost any tongue you may choose, as
he can tell you of adventures in almost any land, all with a
captivating accent and in the vocabulary of a man who has lived long
among men and nature. Nor are Fritz' opinions those gleaned from other
men or the printed page. So we fell to fanning ourselves this January
afternoon on the screened and shaded veranda above the Chagres, and
"Old Fritz," lighting his pipe, raised his slippered feet to the screen
railing and, tossing away the charred remnant of a match, began:--
"Vidout var dere iss no brogress. Ven all der vorld iss at peace, all
der vorld goes to shleep."
Police headquarters looked all but deserted on Friday morning. There
had been "something doing" in Zone criminal annals the night before,
and not only "the Captain" but both "the Chief" and the Inspector were
"somewhere out along the line." I sat down in the arm-chair against the
wall. A half-hour, perhaps, had I read when "Eddie"--I am not entitled,
perhaps, to such familiarity, but the solemn title of "chief clerk" is
far too stiff and formal for that soul of good-heartedness striving in
vain to hide behind a bluff exterior--"Eddie," I say, blew a last cloud
of smoke from his lungs to the ceiling, tossed aside the butt of his
cigarette, and motioned to me to take the chair beside his desk.
"It's all off!" said a voice within me. For the expression on "Eddie's"
face was that of a man with an unpleasant duty to perform, and his
opening words were in exactly that tone of voice in which a man begins,
"I am sorry, but--" Had I not often used it myself?
"The Captain," is how he really did begin, "called me up from Colon
last night, and--"
"Here's where I get my case nol prossed," I found myself whispering. In
all probability that sealed document I had sent in the day before
announced me as a physical wreck.
"--and told me," continued "Eddie" in his sad, regretful tone, "to tell
you we will take you on the force as a first-class policeman. It
happens, however, that the department of Civil Administration is about
to begin a census of the Zone, and they are looking for any men that
can speak Spanish. If we take you on, therefore, the Captain would
assign you to the census department until that work is done--it will
probably take something over a month--and then you would be returned to
regular police duty. The Chief says he'd rather have you learn the
Isthmus on census than on police pay.
"Or," went on "Eddie," just as I was about to break in with, "All
right, that suits me,"--"or, if you prefer, the census department will
enroll you as a regular enumerator and we'll take you on the force as
soon as that job is over. The--er--pay," added "Eddie," reaching for a
cigarette but changing his mind, "of enumerators will be five dollars a
day, and--er--five a day beats eighty a month by more than a nose."
We descended a story and I was soon in conference with a slender,
sharp-faced young man of mobile features and penetrating eyes behind
which a smile seemed always to be lurking. On the Canal Zone, as in
British colonies, one is frequently struck by the youthfulness of men
in positions of importance.
"I'll probably assign you to Empire district," the slender young man
was saying, "there's everything up there and almost any language will
sure be some help to us. This time we are taking a thorough, complete
census of all the Zone clear back to the Zone line. Here's a sample
card and list of instructions."
In other words kind Uncle Sam was about to give me authority to enter
every dwelling in the most cosmopolitan and thickly populated district
of his Canal Zone, and to put questions to every dweller therein,
note-book and pencil in hand; authority to ramble around a month or
more in sunshine and jungle--and pay me for the privilege. There are
really two methods of seeing the Canal Zone; as an employee or as a
guest at the Tivoli, both of them at about five dollars a day--but at
opposite ends of the thermometer.
There remained a week-end between that Friday morning and the last day
of January, set for the beginning of the census. Certainly I should not
regret the arrival of the day when I should become an employee, with
all the privileges and coupon-books thereunto appertained. For the Zone
is no easy dwelling-place for the non-employee. Our worthy Uncle of the
chin whiskers makes it quite plain that, while he may tolerate the mere
visitor, he does not care to have him hanging around; makes it so
plain, in fact, that a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone
implies an adamantine financial backing. In his screened and
full-provided towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished
comfort, the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold
in the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for the night;
and while he may eat a meal in the employees' hotels--at near twice the
employee's price--the very attitude in which he is received says openly
that he is admitted only on suffrance--permitted to eat only because if
he starved to death our Uncle would have the bother of burying him and
his Zone Police the arduous toil of making out an accident report.
Meanwhile I must change my dwelling-place. For the quartermaster of
Corozal had need of all the rooms within his domain, need so imperative
that seventeen bona fide and wrathy employees were even then bunking in
the pool-room of Corozal hotel. Work on the Zone was moving steadily
Pacificward and the accommodations refused to come with it--at least at
the same degree of speed.
Nor was I especially averse to the transfer. The room-mate with whom
fate had cast me in House 81 was a pleasant enough fellow, a youth of
unobjectionable personal manners even though his "eight-hour graft" was
in the sooty seat of a steam-crane high above Miraflores locks. But he
had one slight idiosyncrasy that might in time have grown annoying. On
the night of our first acquaintance, after we had lain exchanging
random experiences till the evening heat had begun a retreat before the
gentle night breeze, I was awakened from the first doze by my companion
sitting suddenly up in his cot across the room.
"Say, I hope you're not nervous?" he remarked.
"Not immoderately."
"One of my stunts is night-mare," he went on, rising to switch on the
electric light, "and when I get 'em I generally imagine my room-mate is
a burglar trying to go through my junk and--"
He reached under his pillow and brought to light a "Colt's" of 45
caliber; then crossing the room he pointed to three large irregular
splintered holes in the wall some three or four inches above me, and
which I had not already seen simply because I had not chanced to look
that way.
"There's the last three. But I'm tryin' to break myself of 'em," he
concluded, slipping the revolver back under his pillow and turning off
the light again.
Which is among the various reasons why it was without protest that,
with "the Captain's" telephoned consent on the ground that I was now
virtually on the force, I took up my residence in Corozal police
station. 'T is a peaceful little building of the usual Zone type on a
breezy knoll across the railroad, with a spreading tree and a little
well-tended flower plot before it, and the broad world stretching away
in all directions behind. Here lived Policeman T---- and B----.
"First-class policemen" perhaps I should take care to specify, for in
Zone parlance the unqualified noun implies African ancestry. But it
seems easier to use an adjective of color when necessary. Among their
regular duties was that of weighing down the rocking-chairs on the airy
front veranda, whence each nook and cranny of Corozal was in sight, and
of strolling across to greet the train-guard of the seven daily
passengers; though the irregular ones that might burst upon them at any
moment were not unlikely to resemble a Moro expedition in the
Philippines. B---- and I shared the big main room; for T----, being the
haughty station commander, occupied the parlor suite beside the office.
That was all, except the black Trinidadian boy who sat on the wooden
shelf that was his bed behind a huge padlocked door and gazed dreamily
out through the bars--when he was not carrying a bundle to the train
for his wardens or engaged in the janitor duties that kept Corozal
station so spick and span. Oh! To be sure there were also a couple of
negro policemen in the smaller room behind the thin wooden partition of
our own, but negro policemen scarcely count in Zone Police reckonings.
"By Heck! They must use a lot o' mules t' haul aout all thet dirt,"
observed an Arkansas farmer to his nephew, home from the Zone on
vacation. He would have thought so indeed could he have spent a day at
Corozal and watched the unbroken deafening procession of dirt-trains
scream by on their way to the Pacific,--straining Moguls dragging a
furlong of "Lidgerwood flats," swaying "Oliver dumps" with their side
chains clanking, a succession as incessant of "empties" grinding back
again into the midst of the fray. On the tail of every train lounged an
American conductor, dressed more like a miner, though his "front" and
"hind" negro brakemen were as apt to be in silk ties and
patent-leathers. To say nothing of the train-loads that go Atlanticward
and to jungle "dumps" and to many an unnoticed "fill." Then when he had
thus watched the day through it would have been of interest to go and
chat with some of the "Old Timers" who live here beside the track and
who have seen, or at least heard, this same endless stream of rock and
earth race by six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for six years, as
constant and heavily-laden to-day as in the beginning. He might
discover, as not all his fellow-countrymen have as yet, that the little
surgical operation on Mother Earth we are engaged in is no mule job.
The week-end gave me time to get back in touch with affairs in the
States among the newspaper files at the Y. M. C. A. building. Uncle Sam
surely makes life comfortable for his children wherever he takes hold.
It is not enough that he shall clean up and set in order these tropical
pest-holes; he will have the employee fancy himself completely at home.
Here I sat in one of the dozen big airy recreation halls, well stocked
with man's playthings, which the government has erected on the Zone; I,
who two weeks before had been thankful for lodging on the earth floor
of a Honduranean hut. The Y. M. C. A. is the chief social center on the
Isthmus, the rendezvous and leisure-hour headquarters of the thousands
that inhabit bachelor quarters--except the few of the purely barroom
type. "Everybody's Association" it might perhaps more properly be
called, for ladies find welcome and the laughter of children over the
parlor games is rarely lacking. It is not the circumspect place that
are many of its type in the States, but a real man's place where he can
buy his cigarettes and smoke his pipe in peace, a place for men as men
are, not as the fashion plates that mama's fond imagination pictures
them. With all its excellences it would be unjust to complain that the
Zone "Y. M." is a trifle "low-brow" in its tastes, that the books on
its shelves are apt to be "popular" novels rather than reading matter,
that its phonographs are most frequently screeching vaudeville noises
while the Slezak and Homer disks lie tucked away far down near the
bottom of the stack.
With the new week I moved to Empire, the "Rules and Regulations" in a
pocket and the most indispensable of my possessions under an arm. Once
more we rumbled through Miraflores tunnel through a mole-hill, past her
concrete light-house among the astonished palms, and her giant hose of
water wiping away the rock hills, across the trestleless bridge with
its photographic glimpse of the canal before and behind for the
limber-necked, and again I found myself in the metropolis of the Canal
Zone. At the quartermaster's office my "application for quarters" was
duly filed without a word and a slip assigning me to Room 3, House 47,
as silently returned. I climbed by a stone-faced U. S. road to my new
home on the slope of a ridge overlooking the railway and its buildings
below.
It was the noon-hour. My two room-mates, therefore, were on hand for
inspection, sprawlingly engrossed in a--quite innocent and legal--card
game on a table littered with tobacco, pipes, matches, dog-eared wads
of every species of literature from real estate pamphlets to locomotive
journals, and a further mass of indiscriminate matter that none but a
professional inventory man would attempt to classify. About the room
was the usual clutter of all manner of things in the usual unarranged,
"unwomaned" Zone way, which the negro janitor feels it neither his duty
nor privilege to bring to order; while on and about my cot and bureau
were helter-skeltered the sundry possessions of an absent employee, who
had left for his six-weeks' vacation without hanging up his
shirt--after the fashion of "Zoners." So when I had wiped away the dust
that had been gathering thereon since the days of de Lesseps and
chucked my odds and ends into a bureau drawer, I was settled,--a
full-fledged Zone employee in the quarters to which every man on the
"gold roll" is entitled free of charge.
Just here it may be well to explain that the I. C. C. has very
dexterously dodged the necessity of lining the Zone with the offensive
signs "Black" and "White." 'T would not be exactly the distinction
desired anyway. Hence the line has been drawn between "Gold" and
"Silver" employees. The first division, paid in gold coin, is made up,
with a few exceptions, of white American citizens. To the second belong
any of the darker shade, and all common laborers of whatever color,
these receiving their wages in Panamanian silver. 'T is a deep and
sharp-drawn line. The story runs that Liza Lawsome, not long arrived
from Jamaica, entering the office of a Zone dentist, paused suddenly
before the announcement:
Crownwork. Gold and Silver Fillings.
Extractions wholly without Pain.
There was deep disappointment in face and voice as she sat down with a
flounce of her starched and snow-white skirt, gasping:
"Oh, Doctah, does I HAVE to have silver fillings?"
My room-mates, "Mitch" and "Tom," sat respectively at the throttle of a
locomotive that jerked dirt-trains out of the "cut" and straddled a
steam-shovel that ate its way into Culebra range. Whence, of course,
they were covered with the grease and grime incident to those
occupations. Which did not make them any the less companionable--though
it did promise a distinct increase in my laundry bill. When they had
descended again to the labor-train and been snatched away to their
appointed tasks, I sat a short hour in one of the black "Mission"
rocking-chairs on the screened veranda puzzling over a serious problem.
The quarters of the "gold" employee is as completely furnished as any
reasonable man could demand, his iron cot with springs and mattress
unimpeachable--but just there the maternal generosity of the government
ceases. He must furnish his own sheets and pillow--MUST because
placards on the wall sternly warn him not to sleep on the bare
mattress; and the New York Sunday edition that had served me thus far I
had carelessly left behind at Corozal police station. To be sure there
were sheets for sale in Empire, at the Commissary--where money has the
purchasing-power of cobble-stones, and coupon-books come only to those
who have worked a day or more on the Zone. Then the Jamaican janitor,
drifting in to potter about the room, evidently guessed the cause of my
perplexity, for he turned to point to the bed of the absent "Mitch" and
gurgled:
"Jes' you make lub to dat man what got dat bed. Him got plenty ob
sheets." Which proved a wise suggestion.
Empire hotel sat a bit down the hill. There the "gold" ranks were again
subdivided. The coatless ate and sweltered inside the great
dining-room; the formal sat in haughty state in what was virtually a
second-story veranda overlooking the railroad yards and a part of the
town, where were tables of four, electric fans, and "Ben" to serve with
butler formality. I found it worth while to climb the hill for my coat
thrice a day. As yet I was jangling down a Panamanian dollar at each
appearance, but the day was not far distant when I should receive the
"recruits" hotel-book and soon grow as accustomed as the rest to having
a coupon snatched from it by the yellow negro at the door. Uncle Sam's
boarding scale on the Zone is widely varied. Three meals cost the
non-employee $1.50, the "gold" employee $.90, the white European
laborer $.40, and negroes in general $.30.
That afternoon, when the sun had begun to bow its head on the thither
side of the canal, I climbed to the newly labeled census office on the
knoll behind the police station, from the piazza of which all native
Empire lies within sweep of the eye. "The boss," a smiling youth only
well started on his third decade, whose regular duties were in the
sanitary department, had already moved bed, bag, and baggage into the
room that had been assigned the census, that he might be "always on the
job."
Not till eight that evening, however, did the force gather to look
itself over. There was the commander-in-chief of the census bureau,
sent down from Washington specifically for the task in hand, under whom
as chairmen we settled down into a sort of director's meeting, a wholly
informal, coatless, cigarette-smoking meeting in which even the chief
himself did not feel it necessary to let his dignity weigh upon him. He
had been sent down alone. Hence there had been great scrambling to
gather together on the Zone men enough who spoke Spanish--and with no
striking success. Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in
uniform, were three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working
Spanish they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and
flush-cheeked with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say
nothing of the $4.40 a day that would be added to their daily military
income of $.60. Then there were four of darker hue,--Panamanians and
West Indians; and how rare are Spanish-speaking, Americans on the Zone
was proved by the admittance of such complexions to the "gold" roll.
Of native U. S. civilians there were but two of us. Of whom Barter,
speaking only his nasal New Jersey, must perforce be assigned to the
"gold" quarters, leaving me the native town of Empire. At which we were
both satisfied, Barter because he did not like to sully himself by
contact with foreigners, I because one need not travel clear to the
Canal Zone to study the ways of Americans. As for the other seven, each
was assigned his strip of land something over a mile wide and five long
running back to the western boundary of the Zone. That region of
wilderness known as "Beyond the Canal" was to be left for special
treatment later. The Zone had been divided for census purposes into
four sections, with headquarters and supervisor in Ancon, Empire,
Gorgona, and Cristobal respectively. Our district, stretching from the
trestleless bridge over the canal to a great tree near Bas Obispo, was
easily the fat of the land, the most populous, most cosmopolitan, and
embracing within its limits the greatest task on the Zone.
Meanwhile we had fallen to studying the "Instructions to Enumerators,"
the very first article of which was such as to give pause and
reflection;
"When you have once signed on as an enumerator you cannot cease to
exercise your functions as such without justifiable cause under penalty
of $500 fine." Which warning was quickly followed by the hair-raising
announcement:
"If you set down the name of a fictitious person"--what can have given
the good census department the notion of such a possibility?--"you will
be fined $2,000 or sentenced to five years' imprisonment, or both."
From there on the injunctions grew less nerve-racking: "You must use a
medium soft black pencil (which will be furnished)"--law-breaking under
such conditions would be absurdity--"use no ditto marks and"--here I
could not but shudder as there passed before my eyes memories of
college lecture rooms and all the strange marks that have come to mean
something to me alone--"take pains to write legibly!"
Then we arose and swarmed upstairs to an empty court-room, where Judge
G----, throwing away his cigarette and removing his Iowa feet from the
bar of justice, caused us each to raise a right hand and swear an oath
as solemn as ever president on March fourth. An oath, I repeat, not
merely to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies, armed
or armless, but furthermore "not to share with any one any of the
information you gather as an enumerator, or show a census card, or keep
a copy of same." Yet, I trust I can spin this simple yarn of my Canal
Zone days without offense to Uncle Sam against the day when mayhap I
shall have occasion to apply to him again for occupation. For that
reason I shall take abundant care to give no information whatsoever in
the following pages.