THE PANAMA CANAL
Probably most pilgrims to Panama think of the Canal as the outstanding
feature of the American tropics, and in one way such it is. The traveler
will probably want to see the Canal first, and he will find it well worthy
of preferential position.
The story of construction days and engineering problems has been ably told
elsewhere and does not belong here. Every intelligent traveler will secure
some good account of the work and read it as something that every man
should know. It is the romance de luxe of engineering achievement. The
author of the Arabian Nights Tales would have dug the Canal by the sweep
of a wand, or the rubbing of an old lamp, but the American method is
vastly more interesting and is much more likely to remain in working
order. Aladdin's engineering feats had a way of failing to stay put, if
the wrong man got hold of the lamp, but the present Canal shows no signs
of disappearing overnight.
Before war conditions put a wall around everything, seeing the Canal was
one of the pleasantest and easiest of touring tasks. All was in plain
view, or could readily be found by asking, and most of the men on duty
thought it a pleasure to answer questions. Of camera fiends and sketchers
and notebook makers there were aplenty. But the war stopped all that for a
time. Anybody could look at the Canal from almost any point along its
survey, but the locks and docks were strictly private affairs. There are
statistics in abundance to be had for the asking concerning the Big Ditch.
Experts take pleasure in supplying us with entertainment by compiling and
translating figures into interesting statements. For instance, enough
excavating was done on the Canal to dig a tunnel fourteen feet in diameter
through the center of the earth, eight thousand miles of boring. It takes
a little time to comprehend the meaning of a tunnel from Valparaiso,
Chile, to Peking, China, or straight through from the north pole to the
southern tip of the world.
Enough concrete was used to build a wall four feet thick and twenty-five
feet high clear around the State of Delaware. Probably by walking the two
hundred and sixty-six miles represented by this wall, one might understand
the amount of concrete involved in the Canal construction.
The enormous size of the locks can only be understood by walking their
length through the underground tunnels and passageways in which is located
the marvelous machinery of their operation. To stand on the floor of a dry
lock and look up at a lock gate eighty feet high, seven feet thick and
sixty-five feet wide is an impressive experience, but to see a pair of
such gates swing open and shut at the touch of the finger is something to
be remembered. The emergency dams look like a steel girder bridge, which,
indeed, they are, and provide against accidents by as ingenious a piece of
mechanism as the entire system affords. Enormous iron chains with
hydraulic springs are stretched across the entrance to the locks to stop
any reckless ship which might otherwise strike the gates. The Gatun Dam
alone may be classed as one of the world's greatest achievements.
The builders of the Canal may be pardoned for taking pride in the fact
that the entire construction cost, down to the present day--three years
after the opening of the Canal--is still within the original estimate of
$375,000,000, which figure included the $40,000,000 paid to the French for
the work of the earlier construction. This means that the cost of the
Canal was a little less than four dollars apiece for every inhabitant of
the United States. The national prestige alone gained by the successful
completion of the work has repaid this four-dollar investment many times
over. Before the European war $400,000,000 seemed like a good deal of
money. To-day we think of it as a very small sum.
It is easy to find numerous compilations of figures which astonish and
perplex us, even though they do help us to understand the magnitude of the
work. And nothing is more disappointing than to try to understand the
Canal by looking at it from any point along the bank. You can't see the
Canal for the water! It is no different from a great Western irrigating
ditch and looks like any quiet river. There are no marks of effort or
strain anywhere, and when one looks about on the verdant and peaceful
landscape he half believes that the tales of the stirring times back in
construction days must have been dreams.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION DAYS IN CULEBRA-GAILARD CUT]
Culebra Cut looks like the Hudson palisades, and Gatun Lake is like any
other beautiful inland sea in a rolling country. The famous Gatun Dam is
merely a dyke at the end of the lake and the marvelous spillway is only a
picturesque waterfall in the middle of a dam. As for the locks, they are
big concrete chambers looking very much like a paved street on top and
revealing nothing of the complicated mechanism below; and the germ-proof
towns are like any other spotlessly clean villages with screened houses,
and show nothing to cause us astonishment.
Any superficial view of the Canal is disappointing. It is like trying to
understand a deep mine by looking at the mouth of the shaft. The channel
is full of water, the machinery is out of sight, the great achievements of
sanitation have been largely removals of materials, microbes, and
conditions that have left no trace behind to tell their tale. In one way
it is a negative result.
The idea of the Canal across the Isthmus is nearly as old as the discovery
of the Isthmus by white men, but it remained for the intrepid builder of
the Suez Canal to really undertake in earnest the project of a waterway
between the two oceans. DeLesseps was both engineer and promoter and never
really understood the size of his project. He had succeeded at Suez, but
that was a farmer's ditch beside the Culebra Cut and the Gatun Dam, and
the famous engineer was a very old man when he began on the Panama
project. The high prestige of his name brought him money on a stock
investment basis, and when unprincipled schemers got control of the
company the crash and scandal were immense. DeLesseps himself became
insane as the result of the worry and disgrace and died in a hospital.
The French attempt began on January 1, 1880, with a great deal of oratory
and champagne, also the official blessing of the Bishop of Panama, which
seems to have been something of a Jonah on the enterprise.
In striking contrast was the beginning of the American work when a few men
climbed out of a boat into water waist-deep and began cutting down jungle
brush.
The actual construction and excavation work begun on the Isthmus by the
French was of a very high order, and much of it was used by the Americans.
The two causes which defeated the French were reckless financing at home
and tropical diseases on the Isthmus. So bad did the disease conditions
become that in the fall months of 1884 fifty-five thousand people died,
and in the single month of September, 1885, the total rate reached the
high-water mark of one hundred and seventy-seven per thousand of
population. The total of lives lost on the enterprise will never be known,
but is far greater than that of many wars which have received a
conspicuous notice on the historical page. The collapse of the DeLesseps
undertaking was followed by the organization of the New Canal Company,
upon which followed a chapter of bargainings and treaties and negotiations
and bickerings with the object of selling out the rights and holdings of
the company to the highest bidder. In all of these the Panama Railroad
figured very largely, and the Republic of Colombia kept a watchful eye on
the main chance for herself.
The story of President Roosevelt's large part in the American undertaking
of the independence of Panama and the organization of the American effort
is one of the romances of American history. On November 18, 1903,
Washington recognized the new Republic of Panama, and later paid
$10,000,000 for the Canal Zone and entered into a treaty guaranteeing the
peace and perpetuity of the Isthmian Republic. Thus ended a half-century
of riot and revolution and rebellion which was stated to have included
fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years. Relations between the early
officials on the Canal Zone and the rulers of Panama were not ideal; some
of the Americans seemed to have had a real genius for offending the finer
sensibilities of the natives.
The beginning of the American attempt is not a chapter of which anybody is
very proud. The effort to dig the Canal from Washington under a mass of
red tape which tied the hands of the men on the Isthmus proved an
impossible undertaking. The President succeeded in effecting a
reorganization which helped some, but not until all red tape was cut and
Army engineers were put in charge, was anything like real efficiency
obtained. Three great engineers were connected with the work--Wallace,
Stevens, and Goethals--and to each of these belongs credit for the very
high order of work done. While the man who finished the job bears the
outstanding name in connection with the Canal, without exception the
engineers who worked under the first two men speak in the highest terms of
the work that they accomplished.
No snapshot resume of the building days, nor tourist instantaneous
exposure of visits can reveal, nor appreciate, the big problems that
confronted the engineers. It all looks easy enough now, but it was very
different then.
Good health on the Canal Zone seems a very simple matter now, and such it
is; but when the doctors and sanitary engineers began work it was an
exceedingly serious situation that they undertook to cure, and without
their work there could be no Canal to-day. The complete elimination of the
last case of yellow fever has made entirely harmless the mosquito carriers
where they occasionally appear on the Isthmus. The best test of the work
of the Sanitary Department is the fact that the Zone and terminal cities
have remained clean and that there is no indication of relapse. Before
work could begin, a whole system of transportation had to be organized, a
steamer line put into operation, and an immense purchasing department
gotten into working order. Before men could be brought to the Isthmus to
do the work some provision had to be made for housing and feeding, and the
question of materials, supplies, food, fuel, recreation, and education was
no small matter.
To dig the Canal required not only engineers and officials, but an army of
common laborers, and the labor question was not easy. The Panamanian might
have dug the Canal, but he did not do it; he did not want to do it, and
the probability is that he never could have done it. Employers on the Zone
refused to hire Panamanians for Canal work.
Chinese coolies might have been imported from Canton or Amoy, but Panama
is a long way from southern China and still further from India, and no
intelligent man ever seriously proposed importing Hindus. If enough
Panamanian Indians could have been found, they might have done the work,
but the native Indian is a very uncertain and fragmentary factor of life
on the Isthmus.
At this juncture the West Indian filled the breach and supplied the labor
for the job. Up to forty-five thousand of them were employed at one time,
and with the ebb and flow of the human tide between the Isthmus and the
Caribbean Islands several times that number came to the Isthmus. Somebody
else _might_ have supplied the labor, but the fact is West Indian _did_ do
the work, and at least deserves proper recognition therefor.
The problems of suitable construction machinery were in a way simple.
Given a definite task, it remained to devise mechanical means to meet the
conditions. In practice, however, the case was not so simple as this
sounds, and some very difficult knots were untangled before the work was
well under way. Some of the old French machinery was used clear through
the construction period, but the jungle was sown with scrap iron of the
old French equipment that has only recently been removed.
The electrical and mechanical equipment for the operation of the locks is
a marvel of adaptation and invention and nothing short of a technical
description can do the subject justice. To see the locks in operation is
to wonder at the mechanical contrivances which seem almost intelligent,
and some of the design work is the result of real genius.
Of engineering problems, proper, it is better to let the engineer speak
with intelligence, but any layman can stand on Gold Hill and by vigorous
use of the imagination see something of the tremendous work that has been
done since the first shovelful of earth was turned on that New Year's Day
in 1880. Whether the French engineers anticipated landslides at Culebra is
not clear, but the American engineers knew from the start that the porous
soil would cave in more or less at that point. What it actually did do
surpassed the expectations of those who surveyed the work. When the banks
began to cave north of Gold Hill the surrounding country got the idea and
followed suit so fast that it looked as though the ten-mile strip would
all be needed.
[Illustration: GATUN SPILLWAY, KEY TO THE CANAL]
I spent a day in the big cut in January, 1917, and noted the rapid crumble
of the historic bank at this troubled point. The following night the
channel filled up for a length of eight hundred feet and shipping was
suspended. Then the dredgers went at it hammer and tongs, and in three
days and nights they had cleared a channel through that enormous mass of
material and on the fourth day ships were again passing in safety. It was
a fine illustration of the way dirt was made to fly in the old days.
Some otherwise intelligent people have utterly failed to comprehend the
size of the task involved in the mere digging of the Canal. One high
official advocated the cure of slides by digging back a mile on each side
of the bank. Verily, he knew not what he said, and a member of Congress on
visiting the Canal reported that he was still in favor of a sea-level
route. Competent engineers assured him that to construct a sea-level canal
from ocean to ocean would require at least fifty years of continuous
labor. The wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas has been forever
vindicated by experience. Some practical man has said that no man can know
how great is the task of making the earth until he tries to move a little
of it. The congressman needed a little pick-and-shovel experience.
Administrative problems are not especially acute on the Zone, but the
completed task gives room for a world of appreciation of the general
efficiency with which the whole work was carried out, and the
smooth-running machinery of the executive to-day attests the thoroughness
with which the departmental system was organized and initiated by the men
whose names will always be associated with the work. The task of operating
the Canal to-day would not be very great, nor would it require a very
large army of employees, but without any preconceived plan various related
industries to the number of six or seven have grown up about the Canal
administration and operation, and the Canal Zone government to-day is
doing a number of things never contemplated in the original plans. The
routing of ships is directly connected with the coal supply, and a great
coaling plant stands at Cristobal. A large cold storage plant makes
possible the supplying of refrigerated goods to shipping countries. While
the trans-shipping business at Colon is yet in its infancy, the docks
there are already a very considerable factor in Canal activities.
Sanitation and public health, of course, require a trained force of
specialists. The Canal employees must eat, and the commissary hotel and
restaurant are a very important branch of the service. The quartermaster
looks after the housing problem, and where there are five thousand
Americans, most of them living with families, the educational problem
necessitates a department by itself. The Balboa Docks employ hundreds of
men at high wages.
In connection with the food problem come the large farming operations
conducted on the Canal Zone. An army of laborers is employed, and the
proceeds of the plantations and poultry yards is sold through the
commissary's stores.
From the beginning much attention has been paid to the social life and
recreation needs of these exiles from home. A chain of government
clubhouses runs across the Isthmus, one in each town, where reading rooms,
games, gymnasiums, refreshment counters, discussion clubs, concerts,
dances, cigar stores, and motion-picture programs are provided for young
and old. During the dry season baseball is widely indulged in and plays an
important part in the social and recreational life of the Zone.
[Illustration: CRISTOBAL STREETS]
Next to the "spotless town" features of the Zone the visitor is impressed
by the smooth-running system through which everything is done. There may
be officials who are grouchy and will not take time to answer questions,
but I have never met one. The routine of operation and maintenance has
succeeded the drive of construction days when Governor Goethals
established the famous open house on Sunday morning and received anybody
who had anything to say to him. The last black laborer could see the
governor if he wished, and many of them did so. The public-be-hanged
attitude of occasional small executives in the States is delightfully
absent. The machinery of administration outwardly works as smoothly as do
the great gates of the locks. On the inner circle there are, of course,
problems and sometimes personalities, but they rarely escape from the
closets where ghosts are supposed to remain.
[Illustration: FAT CATTLE OF COCLE]
When the visitor begins to look about and beyond the Canal he becomes
aware of the conquered wilderness. Where once was dense and impassable
jungle now sweep smooth and verdant hills. One-time fever swamps are now
drained meadows, and the never-failing drip from the sanitary oil barrel
induces a very high mortality among the mosquitoes. Broad acres of rich
jungle lands have been cleared and are now model farms. Over the
grassgrown hills wander thousands of fat cattle, increasing in number
every year. The jungle of the Canal Zone is a very tame and conquered
jungle. The real article lies beyond the line where there is plenty.
It was once thought that the best thing to do with the jungle was to let
it run wild after its kind, as a barrier to invasion. A little
experimenting proved that an army could cut its way through the jungle so
fast that the brush was nothing more than a screen for the advance of the
enemy.
If the visitor stays long enough and gets close enough, he will learn of
things which might have been done differently on a second trial, but
regulation and adjustment have pretty well cleared up the points in
question, and, taking it all through, the Canal is as satisfactory and
complete a job as the world has ever seen.
The Americans who live on the Zone are an interesting social experiment
without knowing it. They form one of the unique communities of the world.
Somebody has said that the Zone situation is described by the word
"suburban," but that does not express it. Every man lives in a
government-furnished house, rent free. Free also is his electric light and
a ration of fuel for cooking. Ice is so cheap that it is practically free.
He buys everything that he eats and wears in the commissary's stores,
where goods are sold to him at cost. So they are--at what they cost _him_.
Prices now do not differ materially from retail figures in the States on
the same goods. If housekeeping tires, there are the commissary
restaurants, clean and wholesome, always available for good meals at
reasonable prices. Good schools are furnished free, of course, for the
children. There is a free dispensary where all minor ailments are treated
and medicine furnished free. The government hospitals are among the best
in the world, and employees' rates are less than the cost of living at
home. The Zone man is under Civil Service rules, receives a generous
vacation, with a steamer rate to New York so low that it covers little
more than his meals en route. The scale of his wages is based on an
increase of twenty per cent over the pay for the same class of service in
the United States. Cheap household service abounds and is about as
satisfactory as household service is anywhere. If he is lonesome, the
government clubhouse, with its community life, good recreation, and
well-stocked reading room, is always open to him practically without cost;
and if he gets tired of the Zone, there is always Panama and the interior
country with its never-failing places of interest and exploration.
Here are all the advantages of the socialized state and no workingmen or
clerks in all the world are so well paid, or taken care of, as these
Americans on the Zone. It is a fine, efficient piece of provision for the
men who do the work. Therefore the Zone dweller should be a satisfied and
happy man, dreading nothing but the day when he must return to the States.
[Illustration: ENCHANTED ISLANDS IN GATUN LAKE]
In practice, however, the American on the Canal Zone is not so contented
as the external features of his lot would lead one to suppose. There is an
undercurrent of petty complaint, directed at everything in general, and
indicative of a state of mind as much as of actual evils existent. These
complaints are the results of too much community life without room for
individual ownership or initiative. The followers of Bellamy should come
to the Zone and stay long enough to get a few pointers.
The trouble is that there is necessarily much of uniformity of housing,
commissary, social, and living conditions. The American people are, after
all, strong individualists, and every man likes to have something that is
distinctively his own.
When people work all day together, play ball together till meal time, all
eat the same things at the same price from the same store, on exactly
similar tables, with identical dishes; when they go to the movies together
and walk home down the same street together and sleep in houses and beds
all alike, they sometimes develop cases of nerves.
On the testimony of one of the efficient medical men of the Zone a lot of
nervousness disappeared when war work absorbed the attention and energies
of the patriotic Americans, who enthusiastically devoted their spare time
to various forms of win-the-war industry.
The problem of raising children on the Zone is admittedly beset with
difficulties. Health conditions are good enough, but many people are prone
to regard life on the Zone as a general vacation from the standards and
disciplines of the homeland, and children are often allowed to do very
much as they please. Many families employ a servant, and there is no
economic need for children doing any useful act of work. An unusual degree
of irresponsibility results. "It will be time enough to correct them when
we get back to the States," is a common remark.
Of course there are many families where the highest ideals are earnestly
maintained, and no more faithful fathers and mothers may be found anywhere
than here in this colony of voluntary exiles. But American life on the
Canal Zone is at present apt to be regarded more as a vacation experience
than as a serious attempt to face the whole problem of living.
Moral and religious safeguards are not absent. The early plan of providing
government-paid chaplains ended with construction days, and under the
leadership of a group of farsighted laymen the Union Church of the Canal
Zone was organized in February, 1914. All Protestant denominations except
two now cooperate with this piece of ecclesiastical statesmanship. A
centralized organization maintains work in all the civilian "gold" towns
along the Canal, employing four pastors, who must be ordained men of
evangelical churches. This Union Church does not regard itself as a
denomination but as a federation for Christian service. No attempt is made
to establish a doctrinal position, and members are not asked to sever
their relations with their home churches. The excellent results attained
under this management speak volumes for the wisdom of the plan and the
earnestness and ability of the men who have fostered the enterprise from
the start. The Union Church has devoted its benevolent moneys to opening a
mission station at David in Western Panama, in cooperation with the Panama
Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Morally, the Canal Zone is as clean as any place on earth. The improvement
of moral conditions in Colon and Panama has done much to make the lives of
Americans wholesome and to decrease the dangers to childhood that have
existed in the past. There will always be Americans on the Canal Zone, and
a few of them will exercise the great American prerogative of speaking
their minds, but most of them will be better off here than at any other
time in their lives.