COL. GOETHALS AT THE THROTTLE
The visitor to the Canal Zone about 1913 could hardly spend a day in
that bustling community without becoming aware of some mighty potentate
not at all mysterious, but omnipresent and seemingly omniscient, to whom
all matters at issue were referred, to whom nothing was secret, whose
word was law and without whose countenance the mere presence of a
visitor on the Zone was impossible. The phrases most in use were “see
the Colonel,” “ask the Colonel” and “the Colonel says”. If there had
been a well-conducted newspaper on the Zone these phrases would have
been cast in slugs in its composing room for repeated and ready use. No
President of the United States, not even Lincoln in war times, exerted
the authority he daily employed in the zenith of his power. The
aggrieved wife appealed to his offices for the correction of her marital
woes, and the corporation with a $600,000 steam crane to sell talked
over its characteristics with the Colonel.
He could turn from a vexed question of adjusting the work of the steam
shovels to a new slide in the Culebra Cut, to compose the differences of
rival dancing clubs over dates at the Tivoli Hotel ball-room. On all
controverted questions there was but one court of last resort. As an
Isthmian poetaster put it:
“See Colonel Goethals, tell Colonel Goethals,
It’s the only right and proper thing to do.
Just write a letter, or even better
Arrange a little Sunday interview”.
Engineer Stevens in a speech made at the moment of his retirement before
a local club of workers said:
“You don’t need me any longer. All you have to do now is to dig a ditch.
What you want is a statesman”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COL. GOETHALS AT HIS DESK]
A statesman was found and his finding exemplifies strikingly the fact
that when a great need arises the man to meet it is always at hand,
though frequently in obscurity. Major George W. Goethals of the General
Staff, stationed at Washington was far from being in the public eye.
Anyone who knows his Washington well knows that the General Staff is a
sort of general punching bag for officers of the Army who cannot get
appointments to it, and for newspaper correspondents who are fond of
describing its members as fusty bureaucrats given to lolling in the Army
and Navy Club while the Army sinks to the level of a mere ill-ordered
militia. But even in this position Major Goethals had not attained
sufficient eminence to have been made a target for the slings and arrows
of journalistic criticism. As a member of the Board of Fortifications,
however, he had attracted the attention of Secretary Taft, and through
him had been brought into personal relations with President Roosevelt.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
RAILWAY STATION AT GATUN
The Panama Railroad is being equipped with stations and rolling stock of
the first-class]
Of course when a man has “made good” everybody is quick to discern in
him the qualities which compel success. But Roosevelt must have been
able to discover them in the still untested Goethals, for when the
Stevens resignation reached Washington the President at once turned to
him with the remark, “I’ve tried two civilians in the Canal and they’ve
both quit. We can’t build the canal with a new chief engineer every
year. Now I’m going to give it to the Army and to somebody who can’t
quit.”
John F. Stevens resigned April 1, 1907, and on the same day Col.
Goethals became Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal, and the supreme
arbiter of the destinies of all men and things on the Canal Zone.
Everybody with a literary turn of mind who goes down there describes him
as the Benevolent Despot, and that crabbed old philosopher Thomas
Carlyle would be vastly interested could he but see how the benevolent
despotism which he described as ideal but impossible is working
successfully down in the semi-civilized tropics.
Before describing in detail Col. Goethals’ great work, the digging of
the canal, let me relate some incidents which show what manner of man it
was that took the reins when the Americans on the ditch swung into their
winning stride.
This is the way they tell one story on the Isthmus:
A somewhat fussy and painfully perturbed man bustled into the office of
Col. Goethals one morning and plunged into his tale of woe.
“Now I got that letter of yours, Colonel”, he began but stopped there
checked by a cold gaze from those quiet blue eyes.
“I beg your pardon”, said the Colonel suavely, “but you must be
mistaken. I have written you no letter”.
“Oh, yes, Colonel, it was about that work down at Miraflores”.
“Oh, I see. You spoke a little inaccurately. You meant you received my
orders, not a letter. You have the orders, so that matter is settled.
Was there anything else you wished to talk with me about”?
But the visitor’s topic of conversation had been summarily exhausted
and, somewhat abashed, he faded away.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT TAFT ARRIVES]
And again: A high official of the Isthmian Commission had been somewhat
abruptly translated from the Washington office to Ancon. There was no
house suitable for his occupancy and the Colonel ordered one built to be
ready, let us say, October first. Meanwhile the prospective tenant and
his family abode at the Tivoli Hotel which, even to one enjoying the
reduced rates granted to employees, is no inexpensive spot. Along about
the middle of August he began to get apprehensive. A few foundation
pillars were all that was to be seen of the twelve-room house, of the
type allotted to members of the Commission, which was to be his. He
spoke of his fears to the Colonel at lunch one day.
[Illustration: COL. GOETHALS REVIEWING THE MARINES AT CAMP ELLIOTT]
“Let’s walk over to the site and see”, remarked that gentleman calmly.
It may be noted in passing that walking over and seeing is one of the
Colonel’s favorite stunts. There are mighty few, if any, points on the
Canal Zone which he has not walked over and seen, with the result that
his knowledge of the progress of the work is not only precise but
personal. But to return to the house a-building. On arrival there three
or four workmen were found plugging away in a leisurely manner under the
eye of a foreman to whom the Colonel straightway addressed himself, “You
understand the orders relative to this job”? he said to the foreman,
tentatively.
“Oh, yes, Colonel”, responded that functionary cheerfully, “it is
ordered for October first, and we are going to do our very best”.
“Pardon me”, blandly but with a suspicion of satire, “I was afraid you
did not understand the order and I see I was right. Your order is to
have this house ready for occupancy October first. There isn’t anything
said about doing your best. The house is to be finished at the time
fixed”.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT TAFT AND “THE COLONEL”]
Turning, the Colonel walked away, giving no heed to the effort of the
foreman to reopen the conversation. Next day that individual called on
the prospective tenant.
“Say”, he began ingratiatingly, “you don’t really need to be in that
house October first, do you? Would a few days more or less make any
difference to you”?
“Not a bit”.
“Well, then”, cheering up, “won’t you just tell the Colonel a little
delay won’t bother you”?
“Not I! I want to stay on this Isthmus. If you want to try to get the
Colonel’s orders changed you do it. But none of that for me”.
And the day before the time fixed the house was turned over complete.
It is fair to say however that peremptory as is Col. Goethals in his
orders, and implacable in his insistence on literal obedience, he yields
to the orders of those who rank him precisely what he exacts from those
whom he commands. The following dialogue from a hearing before the House
Committee on Appropriations will illustrate my point. The subject matter
was the new Washington Hotel at Colon.
“_The Chairman:_ Did you ever inquire into the right of the Panama
Railroad Company, under the laws of the State of New York, to go into
the hotel business?
“_Col. Goethals:_ No sir; I got an order from the President of the
United States to build that hotel and I built it”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BIG GUNS FOR CANAL DEFENCE
The upper part shows a 16-inch rifle being tested at Sandy Hook. The
gun, which is of the type adopted for the Canal defenses, throws a 2,400
pound shell to an extreme range of 22 miles. It could drop a shell into
Wall Street from Sandy Hook. One shell striking a battleship fairly
would put her out of business. The lower part of picture shows
comparative size of the gun]
[Illustration: COL. GOETHALS ENCOURAGES THE NATIONAL GAME]
This military habit of absolute command and implicit obedience is not
attended in Col. Goethals’ case with any of what civilians are
accustomed to call “fuss and feathers”. On the Zone he was never seen in
uniform, and it is said, indeed, that he brought none to Panama. His
mind in fact is that of the master, not of the martinet. If he compels
obedience, he commands respect and seems to inspire real affection. In a
stay of some weeks at Panama during which time I associated intimately
with men in every grade of the Commission’s service I heard not one word
of criticism of his judgment, his methods or even his personality. This
is the more remarkable when it is considered how intimately his
authority is concerned with the personal life of the Isthmian employees.
If one wishes to write a magazine article pertaining to the Canal Zone
the manuscript must be submitted to the Colonel. If complaint is to be
made of a faulty house, or bad commissary service, or a negligent
doctor, or a careless official in any position it is made to the
Colonel. He is the Haroun al Raschid of all the Zone from Cristobal to
Ancon. To his personal courts of complaint, held Sunday mornings when
all the remainder of the canal colony is at rest, come all sorts and
conditions of employees with every imaginable grievance. The court is
wholly inofficial but terribly effective. There is no uniformed bailiff
with his cry of “Hear ye! Hear ye”! No sheriff with jingling handcuffs.
But the orders of that court, though not registered in any calf-bound
law books for the use of generations of lawyers, are obeyed, or, if not
obeyed, enforced. Before this judge any of the nearly 50,000 people
living under his jurisdiction, speaking 45 different languages, and
citizens in many cases of nations thousands of miles away, may come with
any grievance however small. The court is held of a Sunday so as not to
interfere with the work of the complainants, for you will find that on
the Zone the prime consideration of every act is to avoid interference
with work. The Colonel hears the complaints patiently, awards judgment
promptly and sees that it is enforced. There is no system of
constitutional checks and balances in his domain. He is the legislative,
judicial and executive branches in one--or to put it less technically
but more understandably, what the Colonel says goes. It is, I think,
little less than marvelous that a man in the continual exercise of such
a power should awaken so little criticism as he. It is true that those
who displease him he may summarily deport, thus effectually stilling any
local clamor against his policy, but I am unable to discover that he has
misused, or even often used, this power.
A young man comes in with an important problem affecting the social life
of the Zone. His particular dancing club desires to use the ball room at
the Tivoli Hotel on a certain night, but the room was engaged for that
date and the other nights suggested did not fit the convenience of the
club, so there was nothing to do but to put it up to the Colonel, who
put aside the responsibilities of the head of a $400,000,000 canal job
and President of the Panama Railway to fix a date whereon the young folk
of that aspiring social club might Turkey trot and Tango to their
hearts’ content. So far as I know the Colonel has not yet been appealed
to by the moralists of the Zone to censor the dances.
[Illustration: OLD FRENCH LADDER DREDGES STILL USED]
Troubles between workmen and their bosses of course make up a
considerable share of the business before the court. Once a man came in
with an evident air of having been ill-used. He had been discharged and
the Colonel promptly inquired why.
“Because I can’t play baseball”, was the surprising response of the
discharged one, who had been a steamshoveler.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE COLONEL’S DAILY STROLL]
It appeared on inquiry that the drill men had challenged the
steamshovelers to a match at the national game, and dire apprehensions
of defeat filled the minds of the latter because they had no pitcher. At
this juncture there providentially appeared a man seeking a job who was
a scientific twirler whether he knew much about steamshoveling or not.
The American sporting spirit was aroused. The man with the job who
couldn’t pitch lost it to the man who could but had no job. So he came
to the Colonel with his tale of woe.
Now that sagacious Chief Engineer knows that the American sporting
spirit is one of the great forces to be relied upon for the completion
of the canal. The same sentiment which led the shovelers to use every
device to down the drillers at baseball would animate them when they
were called to fight with the next slide for possession of Culebra Cut.
Some employers would have sent the man back to his boss with a curt
order of reinstatement--and the shovelers would have lost the game and
something of their spirit. So after a moment of reflection the Colonel
said quietly to the man:
“They want shovelers on the Pacific end. Go over there in the morning
and go to work”.
The feudal authority, the patriarchal power which Col. Goethals
possesses over the means of livelihood of every man on the Zone, nay
more, over their very right to stay on the Zone at all, gives to his
decisions more immediate effect than attends those of a court. The man
who incurs his displeasure may lose his job, be ousted from his lodgings
and deported from the Isthmus if the Colonel so decrees. A Jamaican
negress came in to complain that her husband took her earnings away from
her; would not work himself but lived and loafed on the fruits of her
industry. The Colonel ordered the man to allow her to keep her earnings.
The man demurred saying sullenly that the English law gave a husband
command over his wife’s wages.
[Illustration: A SIDE DRILL CREW AT WORK]
“All right,” said the Colonel, “you’re from Jamaica. I’ll deport you
both and you can get all the English law you want”.
The husband paid back the money he had confiscated and the pair stayed.
Family affairs are aired in the Colonel’s court to a degree which must
somewhat abash that simple and direct warrior. What the dramatists call
“the eternal triangle” is not unknown on the Zone, nor is the
unscriptural practice of coveting your neighbor’s wife wholly without
illustration. For such situations the Colonel’s remedy is specific and
swift--deportation of the one that makes the trouble. Sometimes the
deportation of two has been found essential, but while gossip of these
untoward incidents is plentiful in the social circles of Culebra and
Ancon the judge in the case takes no part in it.
It is not in me to write a character sketch of Col. Goethals. That is
rather a task for one who has known him intimately and has been able to
observe the earlier manifestations of those qualities that led President
Roosevelt to select him as the supreme chief of the canal work. All his
life he has been an army engineer, having a short respite from active
work in the field when he was professor of engineering at West Point.
Fortifications and locks were his specialties and fortifications and
locks have engaged his chief attention since he undertook the Panama
job. Perhaps it is due to his intensely military attitude that the
public has insensibly come to look upon the canal in its quality as an
aid to national defense rather than a stimulus to national commerce. For
the Colonel any discussion of the need for fortifying the canal was the
merest twaddle, and he had his way. He begged long for a standing army
of 25,000 men on the Zone, but it is doubtful whether he will win this
fight. Moreover he would so subordinate all considerations to the
military one that he urges the expulsion from the Zone of all save canal
employees that the danger of betrayal may be less. How far that policy
shall be approved by Congress is yet to be determined. Thus far however
the Colonel has handled Congress with notable success and even there his
dominant spirit may yet triumph.
[Illustration: THE COLONEL’S FIRE WORKS
A big blast in Culebra Cut. In one year 27,252 tons of dynamite were
used]
Power on the Zone, however, autocratic and absolute, Col. Goethals
possesses. It was conferred on him formally by the order of Jan. 6,
1908, giving the Chairman authority to reorganize the service at his own
discretion, subject of course to review by the President or Secretary of
War. The first effect of this was the abolition of a large list of
departments with high sounding names, and concentration of their
functions in the quartermaster’s department with Major C. A. Devol at
its head. The Colonel developed in fact a rage for abolishing and
concentrating departments. He did not go quite as far as Nero who wished
that Rome had but one neck that he might strike off its head at a blow,
but he certainly reduced the number of responsible chiefs to such a
point that it was easy to place the fault if work lagged or blunders
multiplied.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A HEAVY BLAST UNDER WATER]
Col. Goethals’ first annual report was issued after he had been in
command only three months, covering therefore nine months of the Stevens
administration, and was dated at the end of the fiscal year, June 30,
1907. He reported that 80 per cent. of the plant necessary for
completing the work was on the ground or had been ordered. When he
arrived the high water-mark for excavating in Culebra Cut was 900,000
cubic yards a month, and since his rule began it has never fallen below
the million mark, except in May, 1908. It may be noted in passing, that
during the first two years of his administration the average for
excavation along the whole line exceeded three million cubic yards a
month. During the whole administration of Messrs. Wallace and Stevens
only six million yards had been removed. The contrasting figures are
given not as reflecting on the earlier engineers, but as indicating the
rapidity with which the equipment and efficiency of the canal
organization were increased when the battle of the levels was ended and
the civilian commission done away with.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE COLONEL’S DAILY MEAL]
In this report Col. Goethals argued vigorously against turning over the
canal work to private contractors--a matter which the President had
asked him to report upon in detail. He pointed out that the canal
required special equipment for which no contractor could find use after
the expiration of his contract and which therefore the government might
just as well buy and own itself. The force of this argument became
particularly apparent as the work approached completion. Projects for
the utilization of the plant were sent into Congress from every section
of the country. It was strongly urged that the plant be sent _en bloc_
to Alaska to build railroads and open that rich, but long shut-in
territory to settlement and development. Other friends of the
reclamation service urged that it be employed in draining semi-submerged
lands in the Mississippi Valley and digging irrigating ditches in the
Southwest. The floods of the spring of 1913 caused an active demand for
its employment on Ohio rivers. It is fair to note that Mr. Stevens made
the first energetic fight for the establishment of the system under
which the government owns this colossal and almost invaluable plant,
while Col. Goethals’ recommendation put upon it the final stamp of
official approval.
This act has importance which will long outlive the construction period
of the canal. By the time that work is completed it will have
demonstrated beyond doubt that the United States government is perfectly
capable of doing its own construction work without the intervention of
private contractors; that it not only can build the biggest dam in the
world, erect the mightiest locks that ever raised a ship, and dig a
channel through the backbone of a continent, but is quite able to
perform the lesser functions incident thereto. It can, and did,
successfully conduct hotels and a railroad and steamship line, maintain
eating-houses and furnish household supplies. After the Panama exhibit
it will take either a brave or a singularly stupid man to preach the
ancient dread of a paternalistic government.
[Illustration: “THE GOETHALS’ OWN” IN ACTION
Attacking a stronghold of the Culebra Slide with a regiment of men and a
battery of machines]
Early in Col. Goethals’ régime the great department of engineering and
construction was split into three subdivisions, namely,
_The Atlantic Division_, comprising the canal from deep water in the
Caribbean to, and including, the Gatun locks and dam. In all this
covered about seven miles of the canal only, but one of its most
difficult and interesting features.
_The Central Division_, including Gatun Lake and the Culebra Cut to the
Pedro Miguel lock, or about 32 miles of canal.
_The Pacific Division_, including the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks,
and the canal from the foot of the latter to deep water in the Pacific.
Under this classification will be described the construction work on the
canal, work which at the time of the author’s visit was clear to view,
impressive in its magnitude, appalling in the multiplicity of its
details, and picturesque in method and accomplishment. With the turning
of the water into the channel all this will be hidden as the works of a
watch disappear when the case is snapped shut. The canal, they say, and
rightly, will be Goethals’ monument--though there are those who think it
a monument to Col. Gorgas, while quite a few hold that the fame of
Theodore Roosevelt might be further exalted by this work. But whomsoever
it may commemorate as a monument it was even more impressive in the
building than in the completed form.
[Illustration: _Photo by S. H. Elliott_
BAS OBISPO END OF CULEBRA CUT]
One Sunday late in my stay on the Isthmus I was going over the line from
Ancon to Culebra. As we approached the little tunnel near Miraflores I
noticed an unusual stir for the day, for on the Canal Zone the day of
rest is almost religiously observed. Men were swarming along the line,
moving tracks, driving spikes, ramming ballast. I asked one in authority
what it all meant. “Oh”, said he, “we’re going to begin running dirt
trains through the tunnel, and that necessitates double tracking some of
the line. The Colonel said it must be done by tomorrow and we’ve got
more than 1000 men on the job this quiet Sunday. The Colonel’s orders
you know”.
Yes, I knew, and everybody on the Canal Zone knows.