THE REPUBLIC OF PANAMA
The Republic of Panama has an area of from 30,000 to 35,000 square
miles, roughly approximating that of the state of Indiana. No complete
survey of the country has ever been made and there is pending now a
boundary dispute with Costa Rica in which the United States is
arbitrator. The only other boundary, not formed by the sea, is that at
which Panama and Colombia join. But Colombia says there is no boundary
at all, but that Panama is one of her provinces in a state of rebellion.
So the real size and bounds of the Republic must be set down as somewhat
indeterminate.
The circumstances under which Panama became an independent nation have
been set forth in an earlier chapter. It is safe to say that with the
heavy investment made by the United States in the Canal Zone, on the
strength of a treaty with the infant republic, the sovereignty of Panama
will be forever maintained against all comers--except the United States
itself. There are political philosophers who think that the Isthmus
state may yet be the southern boundary of the Great Republic of the
North. For the present however Uncle Sam is quite content with the Canal
Zone and a certain amount of diplomatic influence over the government of
Panama.
[Illustration: THE GORGE OF SALAMANCA]
Panama is divided into seven provinces, Bocas del Toro, Cocle, Colon,
Chiriqui, Los Santos, Panama and Veragua. Its total population by the
census of 1911 was 386,749, a trifle more than the District of Columbia
which has about one five-thousandth of its area, and almost precisely
the same population as Montana which has less than half its size. So it
is clearly not over-populated. Of its population 51,323 are set down by
its own census takers as white, 191,933 as mestizo, or a cross between
white and Indian, 48,967 as negro; 2313 Mongol, and 14,128 Indian. The
census takers estimated that other Indians, living in barbarism remote
from civilization and unapproachable by the enumerators, numbered
36,138.
[Illustration: NATIVE FAMILY IN CHORRERA]
All these figures have to be qualified somewhat. The mestizos are
theoretically a cross between whites and Indians, but the negro blood is
very generally present. It is doubtful, too, whether those classed as
white are not often of mixed blood.
A singularly large proportion of the population lives in the towns. In
12 towns, exceeding 7000 inhabitants each, are more than 150,000 people.
More than one-third of the people therefore are town dwellers, which is
to say they are unproductive citizens. Meanwhile more than five-eighths
of the arable land in the country is not under cultivation.
The five chief towns of Panama with their population in 1911 are:
Panama 37,505
Colon 17,748
David 15,059
Santiago 13,081
Bocas del Toro 9,759
Of these towns David is the capital of the Chiriqui province, the
portion of the republic in which cattle growing and agriculture have
been most developed. Bocas del Toro is a banana port, dependent upon
that nutritious fruit for its very existence, and the center of the
business of the United Fruit Company in Panama. At present the former
town is reached by a 300 mile water trip from Panama City; the latter by
boat from Colon. The government has under way plans for a railroad from
Panama to David which give every indication of being consummated.
[Illustration: A STREET IN PENENOME]
The soil of the Republic differs widely in its varying sections, from
the rich vegetable loam of the lowlands along the Atlantic Coast, the
outcome of years of falling leaves and twigs from the trees to the swamp
below, to the high dry lands of the savannas and the hillsides of the
Chiriqui province. All are undeniably fertile, that is demonstrated by
the rapid and rank growth of the jungle. But opinions differ as to the
extent to which they are available for useful agriculture. Some hold
that the jungle soil is so rich that the plants run to wood and leaves
to the exclusion of fruits. Others declare that on the hillsides the
heavy rains of the rainy seasons wash away the surface soil leaving only
the harsh and arid substratum. This theory seems to be overthrown by the
fact that it is rare to see a hillside in all Panama not covered with
dense vegetation. A fact that is well worth bearing in mind is that
there has never been a systematic and scientific effort to utilize any
part of the soil of Panama for productive purposes that has not been a
success. The United Fruit Company in its plantations about Bocas del
Toro has developed a fruitful province and created a prosperous town. In
the province of Cocle a German company has set out about 75,000 cacao
trees, 50,000 coffee bushes and 25,000 rubber trees, all of which have
made good progress.
[Illustration: THE HOTEL AT DAVID]
The obstacles in the path of the fuller development of the national
resources of Panama have sprung wholly from the nature of its
population. The Indian is, of course, not primarily an agriculturist,
not a developer of the possibilities of the land he inhabits. The
Spanish infusion brought to the native population no qualities of
energy, of well-directed effort, of the laborious determination to build
up a new and thriving commonwealth. Spanish ideals run directly counter
to those involved in empire building. Such energy, such determination as
built up our great northwest and is building in British Columbia the
greatest agricultural empire in the world, despite seven months annually
of drifting snow and frozen ground, would make of the Panama savannas
and valleys the garden spot of the world. That will never be
accomplished by the present agrarian population, but it is incredible
that with population absorbing and overrunning the available
agricultural lands of other zones, the tropics should long be left
dormant in control of a lethargic and indolent people.
[Illustration: VIEW OF BOCAS DEL TORO]
[Illustration: _Photo by Critchlow_
VISTA ON THE RIO GRANDE]
Benjamin Kidd, in his stimulative book, “Social Evolution”, says on this
subject:
“With the filling up to the full limit of the remaining territories
suitable for European occupation, and the growing pressure of population
therein, it may be expected that the inexpediency of allowing a great
extent of territory in the richest region of the globe--that comprised
within the tropics--to remain undeveloped, with its resources running
largely to waste under the management of races of low social efficiency,
will be brought home with ever-growing force to the minds of the Western
(Northern) peoples. The day is probably not far distant when, with the
advance science is making, we shall recognize that it is in the tropics
and not in the temperate zones we have the greatest food-producing and
material-producing regions of the earth; that the natural highways of
commerce in the world are those which run north and south; and that we
have the highest possible interest in the proper development and
efficient administration of the tropical regions, and in an exchange of
products therewith on a far larger scale than has yet been attempted or
imagined.... It will probably be made clear, and that at no distant
date, that the last thing our civilization is likely to permanently
tolerate is the wasting of the resources of the richest regions of the
earth through lack of the elementary qualities of social efficiency in
the races possessing them”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
AT THE CATTLE PORT OF AGUADULCE
This is one of the chief shipping points for the cattle ranches of
Chiriqui. The industry is one little developed]
Some of the modern psychologists who are so expert in solving the
riddles of human consciousness that they hardly hesitate to approach the
supreme problem of life after death may perhaps determine whether the
indolence of the Panamanian is racial, climatic, or merely bred of
consciousness that he does not have to work hard in order to get all the
comforts of which he has knowledge. The life-story of an imaginary
couple will serve as the short and simple annals of tens of thousands of
Panama’s poor:
[Illustration: THE ROYAL ROAD NEAR PANAMA]
Miguel lived on the banks of the Chagres River, about half way between
Cruces and Alhajuela. To him Cruces was a city. Were there not at least
thirty huts of bamboo and clay thatched with palmetto like the one in
which he lived? Was there not a church of sawn boards, with an altar to
which a priest came twice a month to say mass, and a school where a
gringo taught the children strange things in the hated English tongue?
Where he lived there was no other hut within two or three hours poling
up the river, but down at Cruces the houses were so close together you
could almost reach one while sitting in the shade of another. At home
after dark you only heard the cry of the whippoorwill, or occasionally
the wail of a tiger cat in the jungle, but at Cruces there was always
the loud talk of the men in the cantina, and a tom-tom dance at least
once a week, when everybody sat up till dawn dancing to the beat of the
drums and drinking the good rum that made them all so jolly.
But greater than Cruces was the Yankee town of Matachin down on the
banks of the river where the crazy Americans said there was going to be
a lake that some day would cover all the country, and drown out Cruces
and even his father’s house. They were paying all the natives along the
river for their lands that would be sunken, and the people were taking
the pesos gladly and spending them gaily. They did not trouble to move
away. Many years ago the French too said there would be a lake, but it
never came and the French suddenly disappeared. The Americans would
vanish the same way, and a good thing, too, for their thunderous noises
where they were working frightened away all the good game, and you could
hardly find an iguana, or a wild hog in a day’s hunting.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE MEETING PLACE OF THE CAYUCAS]
Once a week Miguel’s father went down to market at Matachin, and
sometimes the boy went along. The long, narrow cayuca was loaded with
oranges, bananas and yams, all covered with big banana leaves, and with
Miguel in the bow and his father in the stern the voyage commenced.
Going down stream was easy enough, and the canoists plied their paddles
idly, trusting chiefly to the current to carry them along. But coming
back would be the real work, then they would have to bend to their poles
and push savagely to force the boat along. At places they would have to
get overboard and fairly carry the boat through the swift, shallow
rapids. But Miguel welcomed the work for it showed him the wonders of
Matachin, where great iron machines rushed along like horses, drawing
long trains of cars; where more people worked with shovels tending queer
machines than there were in ten towns like Cruces; where folk gave pesos
for bananas and gave cloth, powder and shot, things to eat in cans, and
rum in big bottles for the pesos again. It was an exciting place this
Matachin and made Miguel understand what the gringoes meant when they
talked about New York, Chicago and other cities like it.
[Illustration: BANANA MARKET AT MATACHIN]
When he grew older Miguel worked awhile for the men who were digging
away all this dirt, and earned enough to buy himself a machete and a gun
and a few ornaments for a girl named Maria who lived in another hut near
the river. But what was the use of working in that mad way--picking up
your shovel when a whistle blew and toiling away until it blew again,
with a boss always scolding at you and ready with a kick if you tried to
take a little siesta. The pesos once a week were good, that was true. If
you worked long enough you might get enough to buy one of those boxes
that made music, but _quien sabe?_ It might get broken anyway, and the
iguanas in the jungle, the fish in the river and the yams and bananas in
the clearing needed no silver to come to his table. Besides he was
preparing to become a man of family. Maria was quite willing, and so one
day they strolled off together hand in hand to a clearing Miguel had
made with his machete on the river bank. With that same useful tool he
cut some wooden posts, set them erect in the ground and covered them
with a heavy thatch of palmetto leaves impervious to sun or rain. The
sides of the shelter were left open during the first months of wedded
life. Later perhaps, when they had time they would go to Cruces at the
period of the priest’s regular visit and get regularly married. When the
rainy season came on and walls were as necessary as a roof against the
driving rain, they would build a little better. When that time came he
would set ten stout uprights of bamboo in the ground in the shape of an
oblong, and across the tops would fasten six cross pieces of girders
with withes of vine well soaked to make them pliable. This would make
the frame of the first floor of his house. The walls he would make by
weaving reeds, or young bamboo stalks in and out betwixt the posts until
a fairly tight basketwork filled the space. This was then plastered
outside with clay. The dirt, which in time would be stamped down hard,
formed the floor. For his second story a tent-shaped frame of lighter
bamboo tightly tied together was fastened to the posts, and cane was
tied to each of the rafters as we nail laths to scantling. Thus a strong
peaked roof, about eight feet high from the second floor to the
ridgepole was constructed, and thatched with palm leaves. Its angle
being exceedingly steep it sheds water in the fierce tropic rain storms.
The floor of the second story is made of bamboo poles laid transversely,
and covered heavily with rushes and palmetto. This is used only as the
family sleeping apartment, and to give access to it Miguel takes an
8-inch bamboo and cuts notches in it, into which the prehensile toes of
his family may fit as they clamber up to the land of Nod. Furniture to
the chamber floor there is none. The family herd together like so many
squirrels, and with the bamboo climbing pole drawn up there is no danger
of intrusion by the beasts of the field.
[Illustration: IN THE CHIRIQUI COUNTRY]
In the typical Indian hut there is no furniture on the ground floor
other than a rough hewn bench, a few pieces of pottery and gourds, iron
cooking vessels and what they call a kitchen, which is in fact a large
flat box with raised edges, about eight square feet in surface and about
as high from the floor as a table. This is filled with sand and slabs of
stone. In it a little fire is built of wood or charcoal, the stones laid
about the fire support the pots and pans and cooking goes on as gaily as
in any modern electric kitchen. The contrivance sounds primitive, but I
have eaten a number of excellent meals cooked on just such an apparatus.
[Illustration: BANANA PLANT; NOTE SIZE OF MAN]
Now it will be noticed that in all this habitation, sufficient for the
needs of an Indian, there is nothing except the iron pots and possibly
some pottery for which money was needed, and there are thousands of
families living in just this fashion in Panama today. True, luxury
approaches in its insidious fashion and here and there you will see a
$1.25 white iron bed on the main floor, real chairs, canned goods on the
shelves and--final evidence of Indian prosperity!--a crayon portrait of
the head of the family and a phonograph, of a make usually discarded at
home. But when Miguel and Maria start out on the journey of life a
machete, a gun and the good will of their neighbors who will lend them
yams until their own planting begins to yield forms a quite sufficient
capital on which to establish their family. Therefore, why work?
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
A TYPICAL NATIVE HUT
While native architecture is not stately it is artistic in that it
harmonizes with its natural surroundings and is eminently adapted to the
needs of the people who inhabit the huts.]
It is beyond doubt to the ease with which life can be sustained, and the
torpidity of the native imagination which depicts no joys to spur one on
to effort that the unwillingness of the native to do systematic work is
due. And from this difficulty in getting labor follows the fact that
not one quarter of the natural resources of Panama are developed.
Whether the labor problem will be solved by the distribution throughout
the republic of the Caribbean blacks who have worked so well on the Zone
is yet to be seen. It may be possible that because of this the fertile
lands of Panama, or the savannas so admirably fitted for grazing, can
only be utilized by great corporations who will do things on so great a
scale as to justify the importation of labor. Today the man who should
take up a large tract of land in the Chiriqui country with a view to
tilling it would be risking disaster because of the uncertainty of the
labor supply.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF ROOF OF A NATIVE HOUSE
The photograph is taken looking directly upward from the ground floor]
Another obstacle in the way of foreign settlement of Panama has been the
uncertainty of land titles. Early surveyors seem to have been in the
habit of noting as the identification marks of their lines such volatile
objects as a blackbird in a tree, or such perishable ones as an ant hill
or a decaying stump. Facilities for recording titles also have been ill
arranged. One of the first tasks of the new Republic was to take up this
matter and it has been reduced to fairly systematic form. The Republic
is offering for sale great quantities of public lands long held as
commons by various municipalities. Much of this land lies along the line
of the railroad from Panama to David, and is of varying grades suitable
for grazing, forestry or agriculture. A fixed price of 50 cents per
hectare is charged, a hectare being practically 2¹⁄₂ acres. The
government has gone quite efficiently into the task of disposing of
these lands, and pamphlets explanatory of methods of securing titles,
terms, etc., can be obtained by addressing the Administrator-General at
Panama. The Pan-American Union, of Washington, D. C., has issued a
pamphlet giving a summary in English of the Panamanian law bearing upon
the subject.
[Illustration: A NATIVE LIVING ROOM AND STAIRWAY
By pulling up the bamboo ladder, or turning it, communication with the
upper floor is closed]
With the lack of labor, and the uncertainty of land titles, the final
impediment to the general development of the interior of Panama is to be
found in the lack of roads. It is not that the roads are bad--that is
the case in many of our own commonwealths. But in a great part of Panama
there are literally no roads at all. Trails, choked by the jungle and so
washed by the rains that they are merely lanes floored with boulders,
are the rule. The heavy ox-cart is the only vehicle that will stand the
going, and our light American farm wagons would be speedily racked to
pieces. In the Canal Zone the Commission has built some of the best
roads in the world, utilizing the labor of employees convicted of minor
offenses. Stimulated by this example the Panama government has built one
excellent road from the chief city across the savannas to Old Panama and
thence onward into the interior. It is hoped that the spectacle of the
admirable roads in the Zone will encourage the authorities of the
Republic to go into road building on a large scale in their own country.
In no other way can its possibilities be realized. At present the rivers
afford the surest highways and land abutting them brings higher prices.
[Illustration: RUBBER PLANTATION NEAR COCLE
The planter’s original hut in the foreground. The board cabin with
corrugated iron roof shows prosperity]
David, the largest interior town of Panama, is the central point of the
cattle industry. All around it are woods, or jungles, plentifully
interspersed with broad prairies, or llanos, covered with grass, and on
which no trees grow save here and there a wild fig or a ceibo. Cattle
graze on the llanos, sleek reddish beasts with spreading horns like our
Texas cattle. There are no huge herds as on our western ranges. Droves
of from ten to twenty are about the average among the small owners who
rely on the public range for subsistence. The grass is not sufficiently
nutritious to bring the cattle up to market form, so the small owners
sell to the owners of big ranches who maintain potreros, or fattening
ground sown with better grasses. A range fed steer will fetch $15 to
$18, and after six or eight months on the potrero it will bring $30 to
$35 from the cattle shipper at David. Since the cost of feeding a beeve
for that period is only about one dollar, and as the demand is fairly
steady the profit of the ranchman is a good one. But like all other
industries in Panama, this one is pursued in only a retail way. The
market is great enough to enrich ranchmen who would go into the business
on a large scale, but for some reason none do.
[Illustration: BOLIVAR PARK AT BOCAS DEL TORO]
Passing from llano to llano the road cuts through the forest which
towers dense and impenetrable on either side, broken only here and
there by small clearings made by some native with the indispensable
machete. These in the main are less than four acres. The average
Panamanian farmer will never incur the scriptural curse laid upon them
that lay field unto field. He farms just enough for his daily needs, no
more. The ambition that leads our northern farmer to always covet the
lands on the other side of his boundary fence does not operate in
Panama. One reason is, of course, the aggressiveness of the jungle.
Stubborn to clear away, it is determined in its efforts to regain the
land from which it has been ousted. Such a thing as allowing a field to
lie fallow for two or three years is unknown in Panama. There would be
no field visible for the new jungle growth.
[Illustration: A FORD NEAR ANCON]
Agriculture therefore is conducted in a small way only, except for the
great corporations that have just begun the exploitation of Panama.
Whether the country affords a hopeful field for the individual settler
is at least doubtful. Its climate is excellent. The days are warm but
never scorchingly hot as are customary in Washington and frequent in New
York. The nights are cool. From December to May a steady trade wind
blows over the Isthmus from north to south, carrying away the clouds so
that there is no rain. In this dry season the fruits mature, so that it
corresponds to the northern summer; on the other hand such vegetation as
sheds its leaves, or dies down annually, does so at this season, giving
it a seeming correspondence to the northern winter. In a temperature
sense there is neither summer nor winter, and the variation of the
thermometer is within narrow limits. The highest temperature in years at
Culebra, a typical inland point, was 96 degrees; the lowest 61.
The list of natural products of the Isthmus is impressive in its length
and variety, but for most of them even the home demand is not met or
supplied by the production. Only where some stimulating force from the
outside has intervened, like the United Fruit Company with the banana,
has production been brought up to anything like its possibility. In the
Chiriqui country you can see sugar cane fields that have gone on
producing practically without attention for fifteen seasons. Cornfields
have been worked for half a century without fertilizing or rotation of
crops. The soil there is volcanic detritus washed down during past ages
from the mountainsides, and lies from six to twenty feet thick. It will
grow anything that needs no frost, but the province supports less than
four people to the square mile, nine-tenths of the land is unbroken and
Panama imports fruit from Jamaica, sugar from Cuba and tobacco and food
stuffs from the United States.
[Illustration: OLD BANANA TREES]
[Illustration: PINEAPPLES IN THE FIELD]
The fruits of Panama are the orange, which grows wild and for the proper
cultivation of which no effort has been made, which is equally the case
with the lemon and the lime; the banana, which plays so large a part in
the economic development of the country that I shall treat of it at
length later; the pineapple, cultivated in a haphazard way, still
attains so high an order of excellence that Taboga pines are the
standard for lusciousness; the mango, which grows in clusters so dense
that the very trees bend under their weight, but for which as yet little
market has been found, as they require an acquired taste; the mamei,
hard to ship and difficult to eat because of its construction but withal
a toothsome fruit; the paypaya, a melon not unlike our cantaloupe which
has the eccentricity of growing on trees; the sapodillo, a fruit of
excellent flavor tasting not unlike a ripe persimmon, but containing no
pit. With cultivation all of these fruits could be grown in great
quantities in all parts of the Republic, but to give them any economic
importance some special arrangement for their regular and speedy
marketing would have to be made, as with the banana, most of them being
by nature extremely perishable.
Northern companies are finding some profit in exploiting such natural
resources of Panama as are available in their wild state. Of these the
most promising is rubber, the tree being found in practically every part
of the country. One concern, the Boston-Panama Company, has an estate
approximating 400 square miles on which are about 100,000 wild rubber
trees, and which is being further developed by the planting of bananas,
pineapples, cocoanuts and other tropical fruits.
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE BOAT]
Coffee, sugar and cacao are raised on the Isthmus, but of the two former
not enough to supply the local demand. The development of the cacao
industry to large proportions seems probable, as several foreign
corporations are experimenting on a considerable scale. Cocoanuts are
easily grown along both coasts of the Isthmus. A new grove takes about
five years to come into bearing, costing an average of about three
dollars a tree. Once established the trees bring in a revenue of about
one dollar each at present prices and, as the demand for Panama
cocoanuts is steady, the industry seems to offer attractive
possibilities. The groves must be near the coast, as the cocoanut tree
needs salt air to reach its best estate. Given the right atmospheric
conditions they will thrive where no other plant will take root. Growing
at the edge of the sea, water transportation is easy.
[Illustration: COUNTRY HOUSE OF A CACAO PLANTER AT CHORIA
This industry is in its infancy in Panama, but promises to be a
considerable resource]
[Illustration: STARTED FOR MARKET]
There is still much land available for cocoanut planting, though but
little of it is government land. Both coasts are fit for this industry,
unlike the banana industry, which thrives only on the Atlantic shore.
Panama is outside of the hurricane belt, which gives an added advantage
to the cocoanut planter. Elsewhere in the Caribbean the trees suffer
severely from the high winds.
The lumber of Panama will in time come to be one of its richest assets.
In the dense forests hardwoods of a dozen varieties or more are to be
found, but as yet the cost of getting it out is prohibitive in most
sections. Only those forests adjacent to streams are economically
valuable and such activity as is shown is mainly along the Bayano,
Chucunaque, and Tuyra Rivers. The list of woods is almost interminable.
The prospectus of one of the companies with an extended territory on the
Bayano River notes eighteen varieties of timber, commercially valuable
on its territory. Among those the names of which are unfamiliar are the
espavé (sometimes spelled espevé), the cocobolo, the espinosa cedar, the
zoro and the sangre. All are hard woods serviceable in cabinet making.
The espavé is as hard as mahogany and of similar color and marking. The
trees will run four to five feet thick at the stump with saw timber 60
to 70 feet in length. Espinosa trees are of the cedar type, growing to
enormous size, frequently exceeding 16 feet in circumference. The
cocobolo is a hard wood, but without the beauty to fit it for cabinet
work. The sangre derives its name from its red sap which exudes from a
gash like blood. It takes a high polish, and is in its general
characteristics not unlike our cherry.
For the casual tourist the lumber district most easy of access is that
along the Bayano River reached by a motor boat or steam launch in a few
hours from Panama. The trip is frequently made by pleasure seekers, for
perhaps nowhere in the world is the beauty of a phosphorescent sea at
night so marvelously shown, and few places easily found by man show such
a horde of alligators or crocodiles, as are seen in Crocodile Creek, one
of the affluents of the Bayano. This river, which empties into the Gulf
of Panama, is in its lower reaches a tide-water stream and perhaps
because of the mingling of the salt and the fresh the water is densely
filled with the microscopic infusoria which at night blaze forth in
coldly phosphorescent gleams suggestive of the sparkling of a spray of
diamonds. Put your hand into the stream, lift it and let the water
trickle through your fingers. Every drop gleams and glistens as it falls
with a radiance comparable with nothing in nature unless it be the great
fire-flies of the tropics. Even diamonds have to pass through the hands
of the cutter before they will blaze with any such effulgence as the
trickling waters of this tropical stream. One who has passed a night
upon it may well feel that he has lived with one of the world’s marvels,
and can but wonder at the matter-of-fact manner in which the natives go
about their tasks unmoved by the contact with so much shining glory.
[Illustration: LOADING CATTLE AT AGUADULCE]
There is always controversy on the Isthmus over the question whether the
gigantic saurians of Crocodile Creek are in fact crocodiles or
alligators. Whether expert scientific opinion has ever been called upon
to settle the problem I do not know, but I rather suspect that crocodile
was determined upon because it gave to the name of Crocodile Creek in
which they are so plentifully found “apt alliteration’s artful aid” to
make it picturesque. Whatever the precise zoological classification
given to the huge lizards may be is likely to be relatively unimportant
before long, because the greatest joy of every tourist is found in
killing them. The fascination which slaughter possesses for men is
always hard to understand, but just what gives the killing of alligators
its peculiar zest I could never understand. The beasts are slow, torpid
and do not afford a peculiarly difficult test of marksmanship, even
though the vulnerable part of their bodies is small. They are timid and
will not fight for their lives. There is nothing of the sporting
proposition in pursuing them that is to be found in hunting the tiger or
the grizzly. They are practically harmless, and in the Bayano region
wholly so, as there are no domestic animals upon which they can prey. It
is true their teeth and skins have a certain value in the market, but it
is not for these the tourist kills them. Most of those slain for “sport”
sink instantly and cannot be recovered.
[Illustration: DOLEGA IN THE CHIRIQUI PROVINCE]
However if you visit Crocodile Creek with a typical party you will be
given a very fair imitation of a lively skirmish in actual war. From
every part of the deck, from the roof of the cabin, and from the pilot
house shots ring out from repeating rifles in a fierce desire to kill.
The Emersonian doctrine of compensation is often given illustration by
the killing of one of the hunters in the eagerness to get at the quarry.
In fact that is one of the commonest accidents of the tourist season in
Panama.
[Illustration: MAHOGANY TREES WITH ORCHIDS]
Crocodile Creek is a deep, sluggish black stream, almost arched over by
the boughs of the thick forest along the shores. Here and there the
jungle is broken by a broad shelving beach on which the ungainly beasts
love to sun themselves, and to which the females resort to deposit their
eggs. At the sound of a voice or a paddle in the stream the awkward
brutes take to the water in terror, for there are few animals more
timid than they. When in the water the crocodile floats lazily,
displaying only three small bumps above the surface--the nostrils and
the horny protruberances above the eyes. Once the pool in which they
float is disturbed they sink to the bottom and lurk there for hours.
Alligator hunting for business purposes is not as yet generally pursued
on the Isthmus, though one hunter and trapper is said to have secured as
many as 60,000 in a year. But as the demand for the skins, and to a
lesser degree for the teeth, of the animals is a constant one, it is
probable that with the aid of the tourists they will be exterminated
there as thoroughly as they have been in the settled parts of Florida.
While on the subject of slaughter and the extermination of game it may
be noted that the Canal Commission has already established very
stringent game laws on the Zone, particularly for the protection of
plumed birds like the egret, and it is seriously proposed to make of
that part of Gatun Lake within the Zone a refuge for birds in which no
shooting shall be permitted. Such action would stop mere wanton
slaughter from the decks of passing steamers, and in the end would
greatly enhance the beauty and interest of the trip through the lake
which would be fairly alive with birds and other animal life.
[Illustration: BAYANO CEDAR, EIGHT FEET DIAMETER]
[Illustration: THE CACAO TREE]
[Illustration: STREET IN DAVID]
The Bayano River region beside being the center of such lumbering
activities as the Zone knows at present is the section in which are
found the curious vegetable ivory nuts which, though growing wild, have
become one of the principal products of Panama. Only a few years ago
they were looked upon merely as curiosities but are now a useful new
material. They are gathered by the natives and sold to dealers in
Panama who ship them north to be made into buttons and other articles
of general use. Nobody has yet experimented with the cultivation of the
tree, and there is reason to believe that with cultivation larger nuts
could be obtained, and, by planting, considerable groves established.
The trees grow well in every part of the Darien, and the demand, with
the rapid diminution in the supply of real ivory, should be a growing
one.
Indeed, the more one studies Panama and its resources the more one is
convinced that all that is necessary to make the country a rich and
prosperous one, or at any rate to cause it to create riches and
prosperity for investors, is the application of capital, labor and
systematic management to the resources it already possesses. In its 400
years of Spanish and mestizo control these three factors have been
continuously lacking. There are men in Panama, of native birth and of
Spanish origin, who have undertaken to develop certain of the land’s
resources and have moderately enriched themselves. But the most striking
evidence of the success to be obtained from attacking the industrial
problem in Panama systematically and in a big way is that furnished by
the operations of the United Fruit Company, the biggest business fact in
the tropics.
Panama is, of course, only one link in the colossal chain of the
operations of this company in the tropics. The rapidly increasing
prosperity of many of the Central Republics is due largely to the
sweeping scope of the United Fruit Company, and its impress is in
evidence all along the north coast of South America and throughout the
West Indies. Its interests in Jamaica are enormous. Cuba put Jamaica off
the sugar map, but the United Fruit Company came to her rescue with an
offer to purchase all the bananas her planters could furnish, and
Jamaica now leads the American tropics with 17,000,000 bunches annually,
of which the United Fruit Company obtains nearly half, the balance being
handled by its competitors. The company also owns the famous Titchfield
Hotel of Port Antonio, and operates the Myrtle Bank Hotel of Kingston.
In Cuba the company owns 60,000 acres of sugar plantations and its two
great sugar mills will this year add to the world’s product an amount
with a market value in excess of $10,000,000. Its scores of white
steamships, amazingly well contrived and fitted for tropical service,
constitute one of the pleasantest features of travel on these sunlit
seas.
[Illustration: IN THE BANANA COUNTRY]
[Illustration: MARKET PLACE AT ANCON]
[Illustration: FRUIT COMPANY STEAMER AT WHARF]
The United Fruit Company is by far the greatest agricultural enterprise
the world has ever known. Its fruit plantations constitute a farm half a
mile wide and more than seven hundred miles long. All of its farm lands
exceed in area the 1332 square miles which constitute the sovereign
State of Rhode Island. On these farms are more than 25,000 head of live
stock. This agricultural empire is traversed by nearly 1000 miles of
railroad. To carry the fruits from the plantations to the seaports there
are employed 100 locomotives and 3000 freight cars. An army of nearly
40,000 men is employed in this new and mammoth industry. The republics
of Central America were inland nations before the United Fruit Company
made gardens of the low Caribbean coast lands and created from the
virgin wilderness such ports as Barrios, Cortez, Limon and Bocas del
Toro.
[Illustration: UNITED FRUIT COMPANY TRAIN
This narrow gauge railroad carries no freight except bananas. Nearly
1000 miles of such road are maintained]
[Illustration: SANITARY OFFICE, BOCAS DEL TORO]
This Yankee enterprise has erected and maintains at its own expense many
of the lighthouses which serve its own great fleet and the ships of all
the world. It has dredged new channels and marked them with buoys. It
has installed along the Central and South American coasts a wireless
telegraph service of the highest power and efficiency. It has
constructed hundreds of miles of public roads, maintains public schools,
and in other ways renders at its own expense the services which are
presumed to fall on governments. The American financiers associated with
it are now pushing to completion the Pan-American railroad which soon
will connect New York with Panama by an all-rail route, and thus realize
what once was esteemed an impractical dream.
But it is the United Fruit Company’s activities in Panama only that are
pertinent to this book. They demonstrate strikingly how readily one
natural opportunity afforded by this land responded to the call of
systematic effort, and there are a dozen products beside the banana
which might thus be exploited.
[Illustration: A PILE OF REJECTED BANANAS
The fruit is thrown out by the company’s inspectors for scarcely visible
flaws]
On the Atlantic coast, only a night’s sail from Colon, is the port of
Bocas del Toro (The Mouths of the Bull), a town of about 9000
inhabitants, built and largely maintained by the banana trade. Here is
the largest and most beautiful natural harbor in the American tropics,
and here some day will be established a winter resort to which will
flock people from all parts of the world. Almirante Bay and the Chiriqui
Lagoon extend thirty or forty miles, dotted with thousands of islands
decked with tropical verdure, and flanked to the north and west by
superb mountain ranges with peaks of from seven to ten thousand feet in
height.
[Illustration: A PERFECT BUNCH OF BANANAS]
The towns of Bocas del Toro and Almirante are maintained almost entirely
by the banana trade. Other companies than the United Fruit raise and buy
bananas here, but it was the initiative of the leading company which by
systematic work put the prosperity of this section on a firm basis.
Lands that a few years ago were miasmatic swamps are now improved and
planted with bananas. Over 4,000,000 bunches were exported from this
plantation in 1911, and 35,000 acres are under cultivation there. A
narrow gauge railway carries bananas exclusively. The great white
steamships sail almost daily carrying away little except bananas. The
money spent over the counters of the stores in Bocas del Toro comes from
natives who have no way of getting money except by raising bananas and
selling them, mostly to the United Fruit Company. It has its
competitors, but it invented the business and has brought it to its
highest development. At this Panama town, and for that matter in the
other territories it controls, the company has established and enforces
the sanitary reforms which Col. Gorgas applied so effectively in Colon
and Panama. Its officials proudly claim that they were the pioneers in
inventing and applying the methods which have conquered tropical
diseases. At Bocas del Toro the company maintains a hospital which lacks
nothing of the equipment of the Ancon Hospital, though of course not so
large. It has successfully adopted the commissary system established on
the Canal Zone. Labor has always been the troublesome factor in
industrial enterprises in Central America. The Fruit Company has joined
with the Isthmian Commission in the systematic endeavor to keep labor
contented and therefore efficient.
[Illustration: THE ASTOR YACHT AT CRISTOBAL]
Probably it will be the policy which any corporation attempting to do
work on a large scale will be compelled to adopt.
To my mind the United Fruit Company, next to the Panama Canal, is the
great phenomenon of the Caribbean world today. Some day some one with
knowledge will write a book about it as men have written the history of
the British East India Company, or the Worshipful Company of Hudson Bay
Adventurers, for this distinctly American enterprise has accomplished a
creative work so wonderful and so romantic as to entitle it to equal
literary consideration. Its coöperation with the Republic of Panama and
the manner in which it has followed the plans formulated by the Isthmian
Commission entitles it to attention in a book treating of Panama.
[Illustration: THE BAY OF BOCAS
This harbor of the chief banana port of Panama would accommodate a navy]
The banana business is the great trade of the tropics, and one that
cannot be reduced in volume by new competition, as cane sugar was
checked by beet sugar. But it is a business which requires special
machinery of distribution for its success. From the day the banana is
picked until it is in the stomach of the ultimate consumer the time
should not exceed three weeks. The fruit must be picked green, as, if
allowed to ripen on the trees, it splits open and the tropical insects
infect it. This same condition, by the way, affects all tropical fruits.
All must be gathered while still unripe. The nearest wholesale market
for bananas is New Orleans, five days’ steaming. New York is seven days
away. That means that once landed the fruit must be distributed to
commission houses and agents all over the United States with the utmost
expedition lest it spoil in transit. There can be no holding it in
storage, cold or otherwise, for a stronger demand or a higher market.
This means that the corporation must deal with agents who can be relied
upon to absorb the cargoes of the ships as regularly as they arrive.
From its budding near the Panama Canal to its finish in the alimentary
canal of its final purchaser the banana has to be handled systematically
and swiftly.
[Illustration: BRINGING HOME THE CROCODILE]
[Illustration: A MORNING’S SHOOTING]
To establish this machinery the United Fruit Company has invested more
than $190,000,000 in the tropics--doubtless the greatest investment next
to the Panama Canal made in that Zone. How much of this is properly a
Panama investment can hardly be told, since for example the Fruit
Company’s ships which ply to Colon and Bocas del Toro call at other
banana ports as well. These ships are peculiarly attractive in design
and in their clothing of snowy white, and I do not think there is any
American who, seeing them in Caribbean ports, does not wonder at the
sight of the British flag flying at the stern. His astonishment is not
allayed when he learns that the company has in all more than 100 ships
of various sizes, and nearly all of British registry. The transfer of
that fleet alone to American registry would be a notable and most
desirable step.
[Illustration: ON CROCODILE CREEK
Each spot looking like a leaf on the water is the nose of a submerged
saurian]
From officials of the company I learned that they would welcome the
opportunity to transfer their ships to American registry, except for
certain requirements of the navigation laws which make such a change
hazardous. Practically all the ownership of the ships is vested in
Americans, but to fly the British flag is for them a business necessity.
Chief among the objections is the clause which would give the United
States authority to seize the vessels in time of war. It is quite
evident that this power might be employed to the complete destruction of
the Fruit Company’s trade; in fact to its practical extinction as a
business concern. A like power existing in England or Germany would not
be of equal menace to any single company flying the flag of that nation,
for there the government’s needs could be fully supplied by a proper
apportionment of requisitions for ships among the many companies. But
with the exceedingly restricted merchant marine of the United States the
danger of the enforcement of this right would be an ever-present menace.
It is for this reason that the Fruit Company steamers fly the British
flag, and the American in Colon may see, as I did one day, nine great
ocean ships in the port with only one flying the stars and stripes. The
opening of the canal will not wholly remedy this.
[Illustration: _Photo by Carl Hayden_
THE END OF THE CROCODILE]
In all respects save the registry of its ships, however, the Fruit
Company is a thoroughly American concern and to its operations in the
Caribbean is due much of the good feeling toward the United States which
is observable there. In 1912 it carried 1,113,741 tons of freight, of
which 359,686 was general freight, carried for the public in addition
to company freight. This is a notable public service, profitable no
doubt but vital to the interests of the American tropics. It owns or
holds under leases 852,650 acres, and in 1912 carried to the United
States about 25,000,000 bunches of bananas, and 16,000,000 bunches to
Great Britain and the Continent. Viewed from the standpoint of the
consumer its work certainly has operated to cheapen bananas and to place
them on sale at points where they were never before seen. The banana has
not participated in the high cost of living nor has one company
monopolized the market, for the trade statistics show 17,000,000 bunches
of bananas imported by rival companies in 1912. As for its stimulation
of the business of the ports of New Orleans, Galveston and Mobile, and
its revivifying of trade along the Caribbean, both are matters of common
knowledge.
[Illustration: ABOVE THE CLOUDS, CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
The banana thrives best in rich soil covered with alluvial deposits and
in a climate of great humidity where the temperature never falls below
75 degrees Fahrenheit. Once established the plantation needs little
attention, the plant being self-propagating from suckers which shoot off
from the “mat,” the tangled roots of the mother plant. It begins to bear
fruit at the age of ten or eleven months, and with the maturing of one
bunch of fruit the parent plant is at once cut down so that the strength
of the soil may go into the suckers that succeed it. Perhaps the most
technical work of the cultivator is to select the suckers so that the
plantation will not bring all its fruit to maturity in one season, but
rather yield a regular succession of crops, month after month. It was
interesting to learn from a representative of the United Fruit Company
at Bocas del Toro, that the banana has its dull season--not in
production but in the demand for it which falls off heavily in winter,
though one would suppose that summer, when our own fruits are in the
market, would be the period of its eclipse.
[Illustration: THE CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
[Illustration: NATIVE MARKET BOAT AT CHORRERA]
While most of the fruit gathered in the neighborhood of Bocas del Toro
is grown on land owned and tilled by the Company, there are hundreds of
small individual growers with plantations of from half an acre to fifty
acres or even more. All fruit is delivered along the railway lines, and
the larger growers have tramways, the cars drawn by oxen or mules, to
carry their fruit to the stipulated point. Notice is given the growers
of the date on which the fruit will be called for, and within twelve to
eighteen hours after it has been cut it is in the hold of the vessel. It
is subjected to a rigid inspection at the docks, and the flaws for which
whole bunches are rejected would often be quite undiscernible to the
ordinary observer.
[Illustration: IN BOUQUETTE VALLEY, THE MOST FERTILE PART OF CHIRIQUI]
The banana is one of the few fruits which are free from insect pests,
being protected by its thick, bitter skin. If allowed to ripen in the
open, however, it speedily falls a prey to a multitude of egg-laying
insects. The tree itself is not so immune. Lately a small rodent,
something like the gopher of our American states, has discovered that
banana roots are good to eat. From time immemorial he lived in the
jungle, burrowing and nibbling the roots of the plants there, but in an
unlucky moment for the fruit companies he discovered that tunneling in
soil that had been worked was easier and the roots of the cultivated
banana more succulent than his normal diet. Therefore a large
importation of scientists from Europe and the United States to find some
way of eradicating the industrious pest that has attacked the chief
industry of the tropics at the root, so to speak.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANT AT BOUQUETTE]
Baron Humboldt is said to have first called the attention of civilized
people to the food value of the banana, but it was one of the founders
of the United Fruit Company, a New England sea captain trading to Colon,
who first introduced it to the general market in the United States. For
a time he carried home a few bunches in the cabin of his schooner for
his family and friends, but, finding a certain demand for the fruit,
later began to import it systematically. From this casual start the
United Fruit Company and its hustling competitors have grown. The whole
business is the development of a few decades and people still young can
remember when bananas were sold, each wrapped in tissue paper, for five
or ten cents, while today ten or fifteen cents a dozen is a fair price.
The fruit can be prepared in a multitude of fashions, particularly the
coarser varieties of plantains, and the Fruit Company has compiled a
banana cook book but has taken little pains to circulate it, the demand
for the fruit being at times still in excess of the supply. There seems
every indication that the demand is constant and new banana territory is
being steadily developed.
[Illustration: DRYING THE COFFEE BEANS]
Several companies share with the United Fruit Company the Panama market.
The methods of gathering and marketing the crop employed by all are
practically the same, but the United Fruit Company is used as an
illustration here because its business is the largest and because it has
so closely followed the Isthmian Canal Commission in its welfare work.
The banana country lies close to the ocean and mainly on the Atlantic
side of the Isthmus. The lumber industry nestles close to the rivers,
mainly in the Bayano region. Cocoanuts need the beaches and the sea
breezes. Native rubber is found in every part of the Republic, though at
present it is collected mainly in the Darien, which is true also of
vegetable ivory. The only gold which is mined on a large scale is taken
from the neighborhood of the Tuyra River in the Darien. But for products
requiring cultivation like cacao and coffee the high lands in the
Chiriqui province offer the best opportunity.
[Illustration: DRYING CLOTHS FOR COFFEE
Where the planter has no regular drying floor, cloths are spread on
which the berries are exposed]
David is really the center of this territory. It is a typical Central
American town of about 15,000 people, with a plaza, a cathedral, a hotel
and all the appurtenances of metropolitan life in Panama. The place is
attractive in its way, with its streets of white-walled, red-tiled
dwellings, with blue or green doors and shutters. It seems to have grown
with some steadiness, for though the Panama census for 1912 gave it
15,000 inhabitants, travelers like Mr. Forbes Lindsay and Albert
Edwards, who visited it only a year or two earlier, gave it only from
5000 to 8000 people. Its growth, however, is natural and healthy, for
the country round it is developing rapidly. You reach David now by boats
of the Pacific Mail and the National Navigation Company from Panama. The
quickest trip takes thirty hours. When the government railroad is built,
about which there is some slight doubt, the whole country will be opened
and should be quickly settled. The road in all probability will be
continued to Bocas del Toro on the Atlantic coast.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BREADFRUIT TREE]
While the cattle business of the Chiriqui region is its chief mainstay,
it is far from being developed to its natural extent. The Commissary
officials of the Canal organization tried to interest cattle growers to
the extent of raising enough beef for the need of the Canal workers, but
failed. Practically all of the meat thus used is furnished by the
so-called “Beef Trust” of the United States. It is believed that there
are not more than 50,000 head of cattle all told in Panama. I was told
on the Isthmus that agents of a large Chicago firm had traveled through
Chiriqui with a view to establishing a packing house there, but
reported that the supply of cattle was inadequate for even the smallest
establishment. Yet the country is admirably adapted for cattle raising.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE SUGAR MILL]
The climate of this region is equable, both as to temperature and
humidity. Epidemic diseases are practically unknown among either men or
beasts. Should irrigation in future seem needful to agriculture the
multitude of streams furnish an ample water supply and innumerable sites
for reservoirs.
Westward from David the face of the country rises gently until you come
to the Caldera Valley which lies at the foot of the Chiriqui Peak, an
extinct volcano perhaps 8000 feet high. Nowhere in Panama do the
mountains rise very high, though the range is clearly a connection of
the Cordilleras of North and South America. The Chiriqui Peak has not in
the memory of man been in eruption, but the traces of its volcanic
character are unmistakable. Its crater is a circular plain about half a
mile in diameter surrounded by a densely wooded precipitous ridge. As
the ascent is continued the woods give way to grass and rocks. While
there is a distinct timber line, no snow line is attained. At the foot
of the mountain is El Bouquette, much esteemed by the Panamanians as a
health resort. Thither go Canal workers who, not being permitted to
remain on the Zone during their vacations, wish to avoid the long voyage
to North American ports.
[Illustration: CHIRIQUI NATIVES IN AN OX-CART]
This neighborhood is the center of the coffee-growing industry which
should be profitable in Panama if a heavy protective tariff could make
it so. But not even enough of the fragrant berries are grown to supply
home needs, and the industry is as yet largely prosecuted in an
unsystematic and haphazard manner. It is claimed that sample shipments
of coffee brought high prices in New York, but as yet not enough is
grown to permit exportation. Cacao, which thrives, is grown chiefly by
English and German planters, but as yet in a small way only. Cotton,
tobacco and fiber plants also grow readily in this region but are little
cultivated.
[Illustration: PROCLAIMING A LAW AT DAVID
There being a dearth of newspapers and readers, new laws are promulgated
by being read aloud]
A curious industry of the Chiriqui country, now nearly abandoned, was
the collection of gold ornaments which the Guaymi Indians formerly
buried with their dead. These images sometimes in human form, more often
in that of a fish, sometimes like frogs and alligators, jointed and
flexible, were at one time found in great quantities and formed a
conspicuous feature of the Panama curiosity shops. In seeking these the
hunters walked back and forth over the grounds known to be Indian burial
places, tapping the ground with rods. When the earth gave forth a hollow
sound the spade was resorted to, and usually a grave was uncovered. Jars
which had contained wine and food were usually found in the graves,
which were in fact subterranean tombs carefully built with flat stones.
The diggers tell of finding skulls perfectly preserved apparently but
which crumbled to pieces at a touch. Evidently the burial places which
can be identified through local tradition have been nearly exhausted,
for the ancient trinkets cannot longer be readily found in the Panama
shops.
[Illustration: THE CATTLE RANGE NEAR DAVID
In Chiriqui province there is much of this open savanna or prairie land
bordered by thick jungle]
Another Panamanian product which the tourists buy eagerly but which is
rapidly becoming rare is the pearl. In the Gulf of Panama are a group of
islands which have been known as Las Islas des Perlas--the Pearl
Islands. This archipelago is about thirty miles long, with sixteen big
islands and a quantity of small ones, and lies about sixty miles south
of Panama City. Balboa saw them from the shore and intended to visit
them but never did. Pizarro stopped there on his way to Peru and
plundered them to his heart’s content. Otherwise their history has been
uneventful. Saboga on the island of the same name is a beautiful little
tropical village of about 300 huts, on a high bluff bordering a bay
that affords excellent anchorage. Whales are plentiful in these waters
and Pacific whalers are often seen in port. San Miguel, the largest town
of the archipelago, is on Rey Island and has about 1000 inhabitants. The
tower of its old church is thickly inlaid with glistening, pearly shell.
[Illustration: DESPOILING OLD GUAYMI GRAVES]
The pearl fisheries have been overworked for years, perhaps centuries,
and begin to show signs of being exhausted. Nevertheless the tourist who
takes the trip to the islands from the City of Panama will find himself
beset by children as he lands offering seed pearls in quantities.
Occasionally real bargains may be had from “beach combers” not only at
Rey Island, but even at Taboga, where I knew an American visitor to pick
up for eleven dollars three pearls valued at ten or twelve times as much
when shown in the United States. There are stories of lucky finds among
divers that vie with the tales of nuggets among gold prospectors. Once a
native boy diving for sport in one of the channels near Naos Island
brought up an oyster in which was a black pearl that was sold in Panama
for $3000. The report does not say how much of this the boy got, but as
the pearl was afterward sold in Paris for $12,000 it is quite evident
that the share of the middleman, of whom political economists just now
talk so much, was heavy. The Panama pearls are sometimes of beautiful
colors, green, pale blue and a delicate pink. On the Chiriqui coast a
year or two ago a pearl weighing about forty-two carats, about the size
and shape of a partridge egg, greenish black at the base and shading to
a steel gray at the tip, was found. It was sold in Paris for $5000.
[Illustration: A DAY’S SHOOTING, GAME MOSTLY MONKEYS]
It is a curious fact that the use of mussels from our western rivers is
one cause for the decadence of the Panama pearl industry. For years the
actual expense of maintaining these fisheries was met by the sale of the
shell for use in making buttons and mother-of-pearl ornaments. The
pearls represented the profit of the enterprise, which was always
therefore more or less of a gamble--but a game in which it was
impossible to lose, though the winnings might be great or small
according to luck. Now that the demand for pearl oyster shells has
fallen off, owing to the competition of mussels, the chances in the game
are rather against the player and the sport languishes.
[Illustration: THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OF HAT MAKING]
[Illustration: BEGINNING A PANAMA HAT]
The authorities of the Republic are making some effort to establish a
system of industrial schools which may lead to the fuller utilization of
the natural resources of the country. Every tourist who visits the
Isthmus is immediately taught by one who has been there a day or two
longer than he that Panama hats are not made in Panama. This seems to
be the most precious information that anyone on the Zone has to impart.
Most of the hats there sold are indeed made in Ecuador and the name
“Panama” was first attached to them years ago, because their chief
market was found in Panama City, whence they were distributed to more
northern countries. The palm of which they are made however grows
generally in Panama and the government has established in the Chiriqui
province a school in which native boys are taught the art of hat making.
In the National Institute at Panama City there is also a government
trades school where boys are given a three years’ course in the elements
of the carpenters’ and machinists’ trades. Indeed the rulers of the
Republic, which was so abruptly created, deserve great credit for the
steps they are taking for the creation of a general system of public
education, both literary and practical. The school system is not yet on
a par with that of states of longer existence, nor will it in all
probability ever quite conform to more northern ideas of an educational
establishment. For example, the National Institute is closed to girls,
who for their higher education are limited to the schools maintained by
the church. A normal school, however, in which girls are prepared for
teaching in the primary grades is maintained with about 125 students.
The school system of Panama must be regarded merely as a nucleus from
which a larger organism may grow. Yet when one recalls the state of
society which has resulted from revolutions in other Central American
states, one is impelled to a certain admiration for the promptitude with
which the men who erected the Republic of Panama gave thought to the
educational needs of people. They were suddenly put in authority over an
infant state which had no debt, but, on the contrary, possessed a
capital of $10,000,000 equivalent to about $30 for every man, woman and
child of its population. Instead of creating an army, buying a navy and
thus wasting the money on mere militarism which appeals so strongly to
the Latin-American mind, they organized a civil government, equipped it
with the necessary buildings, established a university and laid the
foundation of a national system of education.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION AT BOUQUETTE]
The thoughtful traveler will concede to the Republic of Panama great
natural resources and a most happy entrance to the family of nations. It
is the especial protégé of the United States and under the watchful care
of its patron will be free from the apprehension of misuse, revolution
or invasion from without which has kept other Central American
governments in a constant state of unrest. About the international
morality of the proceedings which created the relations now existing
between the United States and Panama perhaps the least said the better.
But even if we reprobate the sale of Joseph by his brethren, in the
scripture story, we must at least admit that he did better in Egypt than
in his father’s house and that the protection and favor of the mighty
Pharaoh was of the highest advantage to him, and in time to his
unnatural brethren as well.
[Illustration: WORK OF INDIAN STUDENTS IN THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE]
At present the Republic suffers not only from its own checkered past,
but from the varied failings of its neighbors. Its monetary system
affords one illustration. The highest coin of the land is the peso, a
piece the size of our silver dollar but circulating at a value of fifty
cents. If a man should want to pay a debt of $500 he would have to
deliver 1000 pesos unless he was possessed of a bank account and could
settle by check. No paper money is issued. “Who would take paper money
issued by a Central American republic?” ask the knowing ones scornfully
when you inquire about this seeming lack in the monetary system. Yet the
Republic of Panama is the most solvent of nations, having no national
debt and with money in bank.
[Illustration: THE CRATER OF THE CHIRIQUI VOLCANO]
Probably the one obstacle to the progress of the Republic to greatness
is the one common to all tropical countries on which Benjamin Kidd laid
an unerring finger when he referred to the unwisdom of longer permitting
the riches of the tropics to “remain undeveloped with resources running
to waste under the management of races of low social efficiency”. The
Panamanian authorities are making apparently sincere endeavors to
attract new settlers of greater efficiency. In proportion to the success
that attends the efforts the future of Panama will be bright.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
VENDOR OF FRUIT AND POTTERY
Like all tropical towns Panama displays interesting bits of outdoor life
in its street markets and vendors. The sidewalks are the true shops and
almost the homes of the people.]