SOCIAL LIFE ON THE CANAL ZONE
From ocean to ocean the territory which is called the Canal Zone is
about forty-three miles long, ten miles wide and contains about 436
square miles, about ninety-five of which are under the waters of the
Canal, and Miraflores and Gatun Lakes. It is bounded on the north by the
Caribbean Sea, on the south by the Pacific Ocean, and on the east and
west by the Republic of Panama. It traverses the narrowest part of
Panama, the waist so to speak, and has been taken out of that body
politic by the diplomatic surgeons as neatly as though it had been an
obnoxious vermiform appendix. Its territory does not terminate at low
water-mark, but extends three marine miles out to sea, and, as I write,
a question of jurisdiction has arisen between the two Republics--hardly
twin Republics--of Panama and the United States concerning jurisdiction
over three malefactors captured by the Zone police in a motor boat out
at sea. It may be noted in passing that Panama is properly tenacious of
its rights and dignity, and that cases of conflicting jurisdiction are
continually arising when any offender has only to foot it a mile or two
to be out of the territory in which his offense was committed. The
police officials of the Zone affect to think that the Panama authorities
are inclined to deal lightly with native offenders who commit robbery or
murder on the Zone and then stroll across the line to be arrested in
their native State.
[Illustration: A SQUAD OF CANAL ZONE POLICE OFFICERS]
There was a quarrel on while I was on the Zone over the custody of a
Panamanian who killed his wife, with attendant circumstances of
peculiar brutality, and then balked the vengeance of the Zone criminal
authorities by getting himself arrested in Panama. “We want to show
these fellows”, remarked a high police official of the Zone, “that if
they do murder in our territory we are going to do the hanging”. That
seemed a laudable purpose--that is if hanging is ever laudable--but the
Panama officials are quite as determined to keep the wheels of their
criminal law moving. The proprietors of machines like to see them
run--which is one of the reasons why too many battleships are not good
for a nation.
[Illustration: A PRIMITIVE SUGAR MILL]
To return, however, to the statistics of the Zone. Its population is
shifting, of course, and varies somewhat in its size according to the
extent to which labor is in demand. The completion of a part of the work
occasionally reduces the force. In January, 1912, the total population
of the Zone, according to the official census, was 62,810; at the same
time, by the same authority, there were employed by the Canal Commission
and the Panama Railroad 36,600 men. These figures emphasize the fact
that the working force on the Zone is made up mainly of unmarried men,
for a working population of 36,600 would, under the conditions existing
in the ordinary American community, give a population of well over
100,000. Though statistics are not on hand, and would probably be
impossible to compile among the foreign laborers, it is probable that
not more than one man in four on the Zone is married. From this
situation it results that the average maiden who visits the Zone for a
brief holiday goes rushing home to get her trousseau ready before some
young engineer’s next annual vacation shall give him time to go like a
young Lochinvar in search of his bride. Indeed, the life of the Zone for
many reasons has been singularly conducive to matrimony, and as a game
preserve for the exciting sport of husband-hunting, it has been
unexcelled.
[Illustration: VINE-CLAD FAMILY QUARTERS]
[Illustration: QUARTERS OF A BACHELOR TEACHER]
Perhaps it may be as well to turn aside from the orderly and informative
discussion of the statistics of the Zone to expand a little further here
upon the remarkable matrimonial phenomena it presented in its halcyon
days--for it must be remembered that even as I am writing, that society,
which I found so hospitable and so admirable, has begun to disintegrate.
Marriage, it must be admitted, is a somewhat cosmopolitan passion. It
attacks spiggotty and gringo alike. In an earlier chapter I have
described how the low cost of living enabled Miguel of the Chagres
country to set up a home of his own. Let us consider how the benevolent
arrangements made by the Isthmian Canal Commission impelled a typical
American boy to the same step.
Probably it was more a desire for experience and adventure than any idea
of increased financial returns that led young Jack Maxon to seek a job
in engineering on the Canal. Graduated from the engineering department
of a State university, with two years or so of active experience in the
field, Jack was a fair type of young American--clean, wholesome,
healthy, technically trained, ambitious for his future but quite
solicitious about the pleasures of the present, as becomes a youth of
twenty-three.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET AT GORGONA]
The job he obtained seemed at the outset quite ideal. In the States he
could earn about $225 a month. The day he took his number on the Canal
Zone he began to draw $250 a month. And that $250 was quite as good as
$300 at home. To begin with he had no room-rent to pay, but was assigned
comfortable if not elegant quarters, which he shared with one other man;
carefully screened and protected from all insects by netting, lighted by
electricity, with a shower-bath handy and all janitor or chambermaid
service free. Instead of a boarding-house table or a cheap city
restaurant, he took his meals at a Commission hotel at a charge of
thirty cents a meal. People say that the fare could not be duplicated in
the States for seventy-five cents, but I prefer to quote that statement
rather than to make it on my own authority. By taking two meals a day
and making the third of fruit, or a sandwich at a Y. M. C. A. clubhouse,
he would cut his restaurant charges to $18 a month; the whole three
meals would come to $27.80, so however voracious his appetite Bachelor
Jack’s charges for food are light and for shelter nothing. Clothing
troubles him little; his working clothes of khaki, and several suits of
white cotton duck will cost him less than one woolen suit such as he
must have “up home”. All seasons are alike on the Zone, and there is no
need of various types of hats, overcoats and underwear.
All in all Bachelor Jack thinks he has come in for a good thing.
Moreover, he gets a vacation of forty-two days on pay, a sick leave of
thirty days on pay--and the sanitarium on the Island of Taboga being a
very pleasant resort few fail to have slight ailments requiring
precisely thirty days’ rest--and nine holidays also with pay. All in all
Jack is neither overworked nor underpaid. His letters to his chums at
home tell no stories of adversity but rather indicate that he is
enjoying exceedingly good times. With reasonable care he will have ample
means for really lavish expenditures on his vacation. Indeed it would
require rather unreasonable effort to spend an engineer’s salary on the
zone unless it went in riotous living in Panama City or Colon.
But a vision of better things opens before him--is always spread out
before his enraptured vision. His friend who came down a year or two
before him and who is earning only a little bit more money sets a
standard of living which arouses new ambitions in Jack’s mind. His
friend is married. Instead of one room shared with one or more tired
engineers subject to grouches, he has a four-room apartment with
bath--really a five-room flat, for the broad sheltered balconies shaded
by vines form the real living room. Instead of eating at the crowded,
noisy hotels, he has his quiet dining-room, and menus dictated by
individual taste instead of by the mechanical methods of a Chief of
Subsistence. Practically everything that can be done for the household
by official hands is done free by the Commission--free rent, free light,
free janitor service, free distilled water, free fuel for cooking--the
climate saves that bugbear of married life at home, the annual coal
bill. Moreover the flat or house comes to its tenant freely furnished.
The smallest equipment supplied consists of a range, two kitchen chairs,
a double bed, a mosquito bar, two pillows, a chiffonier, a double
dresser, a double mattress, a dining table, six dining chairs, a
sideboard, a bed-room mat, two center tables and three wicker porch
chairs. This equipment is for the moderately paid employees who live in
four-family quarters. The outfit is made more comprehensive as salaries
increase.
[Illustration: IN THE LOBBY OF A Y. M. C. A. CLUB]
Housekeepers must buy their own tableware, bedclothes, light furniture
and bric-à-brac. But here again the paternal Commission comes to the
rescue, for these purchases, and all others needful for utility, comfort
or beauty, are made at the Commissary stores, where goods are sold
practically at cost. Moreover, there is no protective tariff collected
on imported goods and it would take another article to relate the
rhapsodies of the Zone women over the prices at which they can buy
Boulton tableware, Irish linen, Swiss and Scandinavian delicatessen, and
French products of all sorts. And finally, to round out the privileges
of married life on the Zone, medical service is free and little Tommy’s
slightest ill may be prescribed for without fear of the doctor’s
bill--though, indeed, the children you see romping in the pleasant
places do not look as though they ever needed a prescription or a pill.
So Jack looks from his bachelor quarters over toward Married Row and it
looks good to him. His amusements are but limited and his life does
verge on the monotonous. His only place of recreation is the Y. M. C.
A., which, while filling the want admirably week days, is a bit solemn
Sundays--his only day off. The only theaters on the Zone are at Colon
and Panama, and those are in the main only exhibitions of “movies.”
Moreover, the Panama Railroad has thoughtfully arranged its schedule so
that no Zone employee can go to the theater save on Saturday or Sunday
night without staying out all night. As Jack smokes in his half a room
(perhaps only a quarter) or wrangles with his roommate for place at the
table lighted by one electric light his mind naturally turns toward the
comforts enjoyed by his married friends, and he sees himself greeted on
his return from toil in the jungle or the “Cut” by a cool, trim divinity
in white, instead of by a lumbering giant in muddy khaki, as weary,
hungry and grouchy as he.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE IN CULEBRA]
Were he at home prudence would compel the consideration of cost. Here
the paternal Commission puts a premium on matrimony. Very often, so
often, indeed, that it is almost the rule, Jack returns from his first
vacation home with a wife, or else coming alone is followed by the girl,
and all goes merry as a marriage bell. But the time comes when Jack, a
bachelor no longer, but a husband and perhaps a father, must leave the
Isthmus. That time must come for all of them when the work is done.
Enough, however, have already gone home to tell sad tales of the
difficulty of readjusting themselves to normal conditions. Down comes
the salary at least twenty-five per cent, up go living expenses at least
thirty per cent. Nothing at home is free--coal, light, rent, and medical
service least of all. Where Jack used to be lordly, he must be
parsimonious; where he once bought untaxed in the markets of the world,
he must buy in the most expensive of all market places, the United
States. He absolutely cannot maintain at home the standard of life he
adopted here, and the change with the endless little economies and
pettinesses it entails gets on the nerves of both husband and wife. To
start life thriftily and learn to be free-handed as prosperity increases
is the natural line of development and does not mar happiness. But to be
forced to pinch after a long period of lavishness is wearing. Back to
the Zone come so many stories of romances begun by the Canal and ended
in the divorce courts that one wonders if the paternalism of the
Commission has been good for those who enjoyed it.
But it has been good for the supreme purpose of digging the Canal and
that was the one end sought.
[Illustration: YOUNG AMERICA AT PLAY]
Let me return from this excursion into the domain of matrimonial
philosophy and take up once again the account of the population of the
Zone and its characteristics. It must be remembered that a very large
part of the unskilled labor on the Canal is done by negroes from Jamaica
and Barbadoes. But not all of it. The cleavage was not so distinct that
the skilled labor could be classed as white, and the unskilled black,
for among the latter were many Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians and the
peoples of Southwestern Europe. The brilliant idea occurred to someone
in the early days of the American campaign that as the West Indians,
Panamanians and Latin-Americans generally were accustomed to do their
monetary thinking in terms of silver all day labor might be put on the
silver pay roll; the more highly paid workers on a gold pay roll.
Thenceforward the metal line rather than the color line was drawn. The
latter indeed would have been difficult as the Latin-American peoples
never drew it very definitely in their marital relations, with the
result that a sort of twilight zone made any very positive
differentiation between whites and blacks practically impossible. So
despite Bobby Burns’ historic dictum--
“the gowd is but the guinea’s stamp
The man’s the man for a’ that”,
on the Zone the man is silver or gold according to the nature of his
work and the size of his wages. Of gold employees there were in 1913,
5362, of silver 31,298, so it is easy to see which pay roll bore the
names of the aristocracy.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
HINDOO MERCHANTS AT A ZONE TOWN]
Practically all of the gold force are Americans. It is for them, in the
main, that the cool, dark green houses with white trimmings, and all
carefully screened in, are built. For them the buyers of the Commissary
ransack the markets of the world, buying only the best. For them the
Hotel Tivoli at Ancon and the Washington Hotel at Colon were built,
though it is true that tourist trade rather than the patronage of the
Canal workers supports them. For them are eighteen hotels,
so-called--really only eating houses--scattered along the line, serving
excellent meals for thirty cents each. Indeed, most of the features of
Isthmian life which catch the eye of the tourist and make him think
existence there quite ideal are planned to make the place attractive
enough to keep the gold employees on the job. To him that hath shall be
given, and it required greater inducements to anchor to a desk in Panama
the man capable of earning a good salary at home than it did to hold the
negro from Jamaica or Martinique, or the Spaniard or Italian steady to
his job.
[Illustration: THE NATIVE MILLS GRIND SLOWLY]
In endeavoring to make things pleasant and easy for the gold employee
the Isthmian Commission has made so many provisions for his comfort that
many timid souls at home raised the cry of “socialism” and professed to
discern in the system perfected by Col. Goethals the entering wedge that
would split in pieces the ancient system of free competition and the
contract system for public work. While I was on the Zone a very
distinguished financier of New York, a banker of the modern type with
fingers in a host of industrial enterprises, delivered himself of this
interesting forecast of the results of the education in collectivism
which the United States government is giving to some thousands of men
upon the Isthmus:
“The big thing is the spirit of paternalism, of modern socialism, of
governmental parenthood, if you will, which is being engendered and
nursed to full strength by Federal control of the Canal. This is no idle
dream, and within five years, yes, within three years, it will begin to
be felt in the United States.
[Illustration: COMMISSION ROAD NEAR EMPIRE]
“Quietly large corporations are studying this feature of the unloading
of the skilled, highly intelligent Canal workers on the industries of
the United States. There are thousands of trained employees of the
Panama Canal Commission--which is to say of the United States
government. When these well paid, lightly worked, well and cheaply fed
men return to their native land they will form a powerful addition to
the Socialist party.
“These workmen will take up tasks for private corporations. They will
find lower salaries, longer hours and a greatly increased cost of
living. The conveniences and amusements which they have found either
free or very cheap in the Canal Zone will be beyond the reach of many of
them, and they are going to chafe under the changed conditions.
“They will compare private or corporate ownership with government
control as manifested in the Canal works, and the comparison will
inevitably result to the detriment of the methods followed in the United
States. This will be in no sense an array of capital against labor. It
will be a psychological and political movement for the betterment of the
conditions of the trained worker irrespective of party or class or union
affiliations. That is one reason that it will be so powerful.
“These men will be engaged in industries subject to strikes and other
industrial and sociological disturbances. They will give their fellow
workmen, who have always been employed in the United States, a new and
logical idea of the value of government ownership and its advantages to
the workingman as shown on the Canal Zone.
“Around them will gather the socialists, the union men who think for
themselves and all other upper class workingmen. Do not mistake my
meaning. This will be no Coxey’s army movement, no gathering of the
riffraff of failures seeking to rob the toiler of his gains or the
investor of his dollars, but earnest men, whose weapon will not be the
torch and the dynamite bomb, but the ballot. By their votes and the
enormous following they can rally to their standard they will force the
government to take over the public utilities, if not all the large
corporations, of the country. They will force the adoption of government
standards of work, wages and cost of living as exemplified in the work
on the Canal. In other words the influx of workers will lead directly to
paternalism”.
Let us, however, consider this bogy of socialism fairly. Before
proceeding to a more detailed account of the manner of life upon the
Canal Zone let me outline hastily the conditions which regarded
superficially seem socialistic, and with a line or two show why they are
not so at all.
[Illustration: THE FIRE FORCE OF CRISTOBAL]
Our Uncle Sam owns and manages a line of steamships plying between New
York and Panama, carrying both passengers and freight and competing
successfully with several lines of foreign-built ships. The largest
vessels are of ten thousand tons and would rank well with the lesser
transatlantic liners. On them Congressmen and Panama Zone officials are
carried free, while employees of the Isthmian Canal Commission get an
exceedingly low rate for themselves and their families. The government
also owns and conducts the Panama Railroad, which crosses in less than
three hours from the Atlantic to the Pacific, while the privately owned
railroads of the United States take about seven days to pass from one
ocean to the other. This sounds like a mighty good argument for
government ownership and it is not much more fallacious than some others
drawn from Isthmian conditions. The President of the Panama Railroad is
Col. George W. Goethals. The government caught him young, educated him
at its excellent West Point school, paying him a salary while he was
learning to be useful, and has been employing and paying him ever since.
Like a citizen of the ideal Co-operative Commonwealth he has never had
to worry about a job. The State has always employed him and paid him.
While he has done his work better than others of equal rank, he has only
recently begun to draw any more pay than other colonels. Sounds very
socialistic, doesn’t it? And he seems to make a very good railroad
president too, though the shuffling of shares in Wall Street had nothing
to do with his appointment, and he hasn’t got a director on his board
interlocked with J. P. Morgan & Co., or the City National Bank.
[Illustration: ORCHIDS ON GOV. THATCHER’S PORCH]
The government which runs this railroad and steamship line doesn’t
confine its activity to big things. It will wash a shirt for one of its
Canal employees at about half the price that John Chinaman doing
business nearby would charge, press his clothing, or it will send a man
into your home--if you live in the Zone--to chloroform any stray
mosquitoes lurking there and convey them away in a bottle. It will house
in an electric-lighted, wire-screened tenement, a Jamaica negro who at
home lived in a basket-work shack, plastered with mud and thatched with
palmetto leaves. It is very democratic too, this government, for it
won’t issue to Mrs. Highflyer more than three wicker arm-chairs, even if
she does entertain every day, while her neighbor Mrs. Domus who gets
just exactly as many never entertains at all. It can be just too mean
for anything, like socialism, which we are so often told “puts everybody
on a dead level.”
The dream of the late Edward Bellamy is given actuality on the Zone
where we find a great central authority, buying everything imaginable in
all the markets of the world, at the moment when prices are lowest--an
authority big enough to snap its fingers at any trust--and selling again
without profit to the ultimate consumers. There are no trust profits, no
middleman’s profits included in prices of things bought at the
Commissary stores. There are eighteen such stores in the Zone. The total
business of the Commissary stores amounts to about $6,000,000 annually.
Everything is sold at prices materially less than it can be bought in
the United States, yet the department shows an actual profit, which is
at once put back into the business. A Zone housewife told me that a
steak for her family that would cost at least ninety cents in her home
in Brooklyn cost her forty here. Shoddy or merely “cheap” goods are not
carried and the United States pure food law is strictly observed. That
terrible problem of the “higher cost of living” hardly presents itself
to Zone dwellers except purchasers of purely native products; those,
thanks to the tourists, have doubled in price several times in the last
five years. But articles purveyed by Uncle Sam are furnished to his
nephews and nieces here for about one-third less than the luckless ones
must pay who are sticking to the old homestead instead of faring forth
to the tropics.
I have already enumerated the valuable privileges, like free quarters,
light, furniture, medical service, etc., supplied to the Zone worker
without charge. If all these apparent gratuities were accompanied by a
rate of pay lower than that in force for like occupations in the States
it might be fair to say, as one of the most careful writers on Isthmian
topics says, “these form part of the contract the employee makes with
the government, and are just as much part of his pay as his monthly
salary”. But that pay averages twenty-five per cent higher than at home.
The things enumerated are looked upon by those who receive them as
gratuities, and rightly so. They are, in fact, extra inducements offered
by Uncle Sam to persuade men to come and work on his Canal and to keep
them happy and contented while doing so.
Now the chief material argument for the socialistic state, the
co-operative commonwealth, is that it will secure for every citizen
comfort and contentment, so far as contentment is possible to restless
human minds; that it will abolish at a stroke monopoly and privilege,
purge society of parasites, add to the efficiency of labor and
proportionately increase its rewards. All of which is measurably
accomplished on the Canal Zone and the less cautious socialists--the
well-grounded ones see the difference--are excusable for hailing the
government there as an evidence of the practicability of socialism.
But it isn’t--at least not quite. The incarnation of the difference
between this and socialism is Col. George W. Goethals. Nobody on the
Zone had part in electing Goethals; nobody can say him nay, or abate or
hinder in any degree his complete personal control of all that is done
here. This is not the co-operative commonwealth we long have sought.
Rather is it like the commonwealth of old with Oliver Cromwell as Lord
Protector--and at that Goethals has no parliament to purge.
[Illustration: _Photo by H. Pittier_
_Courtesy National Geographic Magazine_
THE CATASETUM SCURRA
A curiously shaped orchid rediscovered by Mrs. H. H. Rousseau]
This is a benevolent despotism, the sort of government that philosophers
agree would be ideal if the benevolence of the despot could only be
assured invariably and eternally. The Czar of Russia could do what is
being done down there were he vested with Goethals’ intolerance of
bureaucracies, red-tape, parasites, grafters, disobedience and delay.
But Goethals is equally intolerant of opposition, argument, even advice
from below. His is the military method of personal command and personal
responsibility. I don’t believe he is over-fond even of the council of
war. In a socialistic community, where every man had a voice in the
government, he would last only long enough for a new election to be
called. Though his popularity there is universal, it would not withstand
the attacks of demagogues were there field for demagogy.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
MARRIED QUARTERS AT COROZAL]
But what has been done, and is still doing, on the Zone is not
socialistic, because it is done from the top, by the orders of an
autocrat, instead of by an act of a town meeting. One might as well say
that the patience, prudence, attention to detail, insistence on proper
sanitation which enabled Japan’s great General Nogi to keep his army in
the field with the minimum loss from preventable sickness was all
socialistic. Col. Goethals commanded an army. The Isthmus was the enemy.
The army must be fed and clothed, hence the Commissary. Its
communications must be kept open, hence the steamship line and the
railroad. The soldiers must be housed, and as it became early apparent
that the siege was to be a long one the camps were built of timber
instead of tents. There is nothing new about that. Back in the fifteenth
century Queen Isabella, concluding that it would take a long time to
starve the Moors out of Granada, kept her soldiers busy building a city
of stone and mortar before the walls of the beleaguered town. Culebra
has been a more stubborn fortress than was ever Granada.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE INDUSTRIOUS ANT]
No. The organization of the Zone has been purely military, not
socialistic. It was created for a purpose and it will vanish when that
purpose has been attained. Admirably adapted to its end it had many
elements of charm to those living under it. The Zone villages, even
those like Culebra and Gorgona which are to be abandoned, were beautiful
in appearance, delightful in social refinement. Culebra with its winding
streets, bordered by tropical shrubbery in which nestled the cool and
commodious houses of the engineers and higher employees, leading up to
the hill crested by the residence of the Colonel--of course there were
five colonels on the Commission, but only one “The Colonel”--Culebra was
a delight to the visitor and must have been a joy to the resident.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: FOLIAGE ON THE ZONE]
[Illustration]
Try to figure to yourself the home of a young engineer as I saw it. The
house is two storeys with a pent-house roof, painted dark green, with
the window frames, door casings and posts of the broad verandas, by
which it is nearly surrounded, done in shining white. Between the posts
is wire netting and behind is a piazza probably twelve feet wide which
in that climate is as good as a room for living, eating or sleeping
purposes. The main body of the house is oblong, about fifty feet long by
thirty to forty feet deep. A living-room and dining-room fill the entire
front. The hall, instead of running from the front to the back of the
house, as is customary with us, runs across the house, back of these two
rooms. It is in no sense an entry, though it has a door opening from the
garden, but separates the living-rooms from the kitchen and other
working rooms. The stairway ascends from this hall to the second floor
where two large bed-rooms fill the front of the house, a big bath-room,
a bed-room and the dry-room being in the rear. About that last apartment
let me go into some detail. The climate of the Zone is always rather
humid, and in the rainy season you can wring water out of everything
that can absorb it. So in each house is a room kept tightly closed with
two electric lights in it burning day and night. Therein are kept all
clothes, shoes, etc., not in actual use, and the combined heat and light
keep damp and mold out of the goods thus stored. Mold is one of the
chief pests of the Panama housekeeper. You will see few books in even
the most tastefully furnished houses, because the mold attacks their
bindings. Every piano has an electric light inserted within its case and
kept burning constantly to dispel the damp. By way of quieting the alarm
of readers it may be mentioned again that electric light is furnished
free to Isthmian Commission employees. “We always laugh”, said a hostess
one night, as she looked back at my darkened room in her house from the
walk outside, “at the care people from the States take to turn out the
lights. We enjoy being extravagant and let them burn all day if we feel
like it”.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CHIEF COMMISSARY AT CRISTOBAL]
In such a house there is no plaster. From within you see the entire
frame of the house--uprights, joists, stanchions, floor beams, all--and
the interior is painted as a rule precisely like the exterior without
the white trimming. You don’t notice this at first. Then it fascinates
you. You think it amusing and improper to see a house’s underpinning so
indecently exposed. All that we cover with laths, plaster, calcimine and
wall paper is here naked to the eye. Only a skin of half-inch lumber
intervenes between you and the outer world, or the people in the next
room. You notice the windows look strange. There is no sash. To a house
of the sort I am describing four or six glass windows are allotted to be
put in the orifices the housekeeper may select. The other windows are
unclosed except at night, when you may, if you wish, swing heavy board
shutters across them.
A house of the type I have described is known as Type 10, and is
assigned to employees drawing from $300 to $400 a month. Those getting
from $200 to $300 a month are assigned either to quarters in a
two-family house, or to a small cottage of six or seven rooms, though,
as the supply of the latter is limited, they are greatly prized.
Employees drawing less than $200 a month have four-room flats in
buildings accommodating four families. Those who receive more than $400
a month are given large houses of a type distinguished by spaciousness
and artistic design.
When you come to analyze it such houses are only large shacks, and yet
their proportions and coloring, coupled with their obvious fitness for
the climate, make them, when tastefully furnished and decorated,
thoroughly artistic homes. For these homes the Commission furnishes all
the bare essentials. With mechanical precision it furnishes the number
of tables, chairs, beds and dressers which the Commission in its
sovereign wisdom has decided to be proper for a gentleman of the station
in life to which that house is fitted. For the merely æsthetic the
Commission cares nothing, though it is fair to say that the furniture
it supplies, though commonplace, is not in bad taste. But for decoration
the Zone dwellers must go down into their own pockets and to a greater
or less degree all do so. The authorities have not gone to the extent of
prohibiting this rivalry as at West Point and Annapolis where the cadets
are not permitted to decorate their rooms lest inequality and
mortification result. But in Panama the climate enforces such a
prohibition to some extent. Luxury there would be positive discomfort.
Costly rugs and hangings, richly upholstered furniture are out of place.
Air space is the greatest luxury, and a room cluttered with objects of
priceless art would be scarcely habitable.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
WHAT THE SLIDE DID TO THE RAILROAD
The pernicious activity of slides occasionally creates this novel
condition in railroad construction]
Within their limitations, however, the hostesses of the Zone have made
their homes thoroughly charming. The visitor was, I think, most
impressed by those who frankly used the trimmings of the tropics for
their chief decorations. The orchid-lined porches of Mrs. M. H.
Thatcher, wife of the civil commissioner, or Mrs. H. H. Rousseau, wife
of the naval representative on the Commission, were a veritable
fairyland when the swift tropic night had fallen and the colored lights
began to glow among the rustling palms and delicately tinted orchids. No
more beautiful apartment could possibly be imagined.
[Illustration: NOT FROM JAMAICA BUT THE Y. M. C. A.]
Housekeeping is vastly simplified by the Commissary. When there is but
one place to shop, and only one quality of goods to select from--namely
the best, for that is all the Commissary carries--the shopping tasks of
the housekeeper are reduced to a minimum. Nevertheless they
grumble--perhaps because women like to shop, more probably because this
situation creates a dull and monotonous sameness amongst the families.
“What’s the good of giving a dinner party”, asked a hostess
plaintively, “when your guests all know exactly what everything on your
table costs, and they can guess just what you are going to serve? They
say, ‘I wish she’d bought lamb at the Commissary, it costs just the same
as turkey’. Or ‘the Commissary had new asparagus today. Wonder why she
took cauliflower’? They get the Commissary list just as I do and know
exactly to what I am limited, as we can only buy at the Commissary.
There is no chance for the little surprises that make an interesting
dinner party”.
[Illustration: A BACHELOR’S QUARTERS]
That is perhaps a trifle disquieting to the adventurous housekeeper,
but, except for the purpose of entertaining, the Commissary must be a
great boon. Its selection of household necessities is sufficiently
varied to meet every need; the quality the best and its prices are
uniformly lower than in the United States. This comparative cheapness in
prices is, of course, due to the elimination of the middlemen, the
buying by the commissary in large quantities and the disregard of profit
as an element in the business. There is but one step between the Beef
Trust, or other manufacturers, and the ultimate consumers on the Zone.
The one intermediary is the Commissary. It buys in such quantities that
it can be sure of the lowest prices. It buys in markets 3,000 miles or
more away from its stores, but it gets the lowest freight rates and an
all-water carriage from New York. Finally it pays no rent and seeks no
profit, hence its prices should be the lowest. Here is a selection from
the printed list issued in April, 1913, from which any house-keeper can
judge of Zone prices:
Veal Cutlets, per pound 17c
Lamb Chops, per pound 24c
Corned Beef, No. 1 14c
Sirloin Steak, per pound 19c
Halibut, fresh, per pound 15c
Chickens, fancy roasting, 5¹⁄₂ pounds each $1.25
Ducks, blackhead, pair 60c
Pork, salt, family 14c
Eggs, fresh, dozen 25c
Butter, creamery, special 41c
American Cheese, per pound 22c
Celery, per head 11c
Cabbage, per pound 3c
Onions, per pound 3c
Potatoes, white, per pound 3c
Turnips, per pound 3c
Grapefruit, each 4c
Oranges, Jamaica, per dozen 12c
[Illustration: THE TIVOLI HOTEL]
[Illustration: THE GRAPE FRUIT OF PANAMA]
If, however, the Commissary system reduces life to something of a
general uniformity and destroys shopping as a subject of conversation,
the ladies of the Zone still have the eternal servant problem of which
to talk. De Amicis, the travel writer, said that servants formed the one
universal topic for conversation and that he bid a hasty farewell to his
mother in Naples after a monologue on the sins of servants, only to
find, at his first dinner in Amsterdam, whither he had traveled with all
possible speed, that the same topic engrossed the mind of his hostess
there. In Panama the matter is somewhat simplified by the fact that only
one type of servant is obtainable, namely the Jamaica negress. It is
complicated by the complete lack of intelligence offices. If a
housekeeper wants a maid she asks her friends to spread the tidings to
their servants, and then waits, supine, until the treasure comes to the
door. Servants out of employment seek it by trudging from house to house
and from village to village. Once hired they do what they have to do and
no more. Among them is none of the spirit of loyalty which makes the
“old Southern mammy” a figure in our fiction, nor any of the energy
which in the Northern States Bridget contributes to household
life--though, indeed, Bridget is disappearing from domestic service
before the flood of Scandinavians and Germans.
The only wail I heard on the Isthmus about the increasing cost of living
had to do with the wages of servants. “In the earlier days”, said one of
my hostesses reminiscently, “it was possible to get servants for very
low wages. They were accustomed to doing little and getting little, as
in Jamaica and other West Indian islands, where many servants are
employed by one family, each with a particular ‘line’. People say that
in Panama City servants can still be found who will work for $5 silver
($2.50) per month, and that Americans have spoiled them by paying too
much. But I think they have developed a capacity for work and management
equal to that of servants in the States and deserve their increased
wages. I pay $15, gold, a month to my one capable servant. Occasionally
you will find one who will work for $10, but many get $20 if they are
good cooks and help with baby. Probably $12 to $15 is an average price.
“These Jamaica servants speak very English English--you can’t call it
Cockney, for they don’t drop their h’s, but it differs greatly from our
American English. They are very fond of big words, which they usually
use incorrectly, especially the men. A Commissary salesman, to whom I
sent a note asking for five pounds of salt meat, sent back the child who
carried it to ‘ask her mother to differentiate’, meaning what kind of
salt meat. A cook asked me once ‘the potatoes to crush, ma’am’? meaning
to ask if they were to be mashed. Another after seizing time to air a
blanket between showers reported exultantly, ‘the rain did let it sun,
mum’. And always when they wish to know if you want hot water they
inquire, ‘the water to hot, mum’?
[Illustration: PURE PANAMA, PURE INDIAN AND ALL BETWEEN]
“Their names are usually elaborate. Celeste, Geraldine, Katherine,
Eugenie, are some that I recall. My own maid is Susannah, which reminds
me--without reflecting on this particular one--that as a class they are
hopelessly unmoral, though extremely religious withal. I have known them
to be clean and efficient, but as a rule they are quite the reverse.
Some are woefully ignorant of modern utensils. One for example, being
new to kitchen ranges, built a fire in the oven on the first day of her
service. Another, having been carefully instructed always to take a
visitor’s card on a tray, neglected the trim salver provided for that
purpose and extended to the astonished caller a huge lacquered tin tray
used for carrying dishes from the kitchen.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY F. E. WRIGHT
OLD LANDING AT TABOGA
The concrete walls leading from the beach up to the level of the street
were built as a memorial of the successful revolution of 1905.]
“I’ll never forget”, concluded my hostess between smiles, and sorrow,
“how I felt when I saw that lonesome little card reposing on the broad
black and battered expanse of that nasty old tray”!
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
INTERIOR OF GATUN Y. M. C. A. CLUB]
Social life on the Zone is rather complex. At the apex, of course, are
the Commissioners and their families. The presence of an Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States in
Panama City adds another factor to the always vexed question of
precedence, while the maintenance of a military post with a full
regiment, and a marine camp with a battalion does not help to simplify
matters. Social affiliations among those not in the Commission or the
Army set are based with primitive simplicity upon the amount of the
husband’s earnings. One advantage of this system is that it is based
upon perfectly accurate information, for everybody on the Zone works for
the Commission and the payrolls are periodically published. But it jars
the ingenuous outsider to have a woman, apparently without a trace of
snobbery, remark casually of another, “well, we don’t see much of her.
Her husband is in the $2000 class you know”.
[Illustration: Y. M. C. A. CLUB AT GATUN
These clubs are the true centers of the social life of the zone]
Social life is further complicated by the fact that the people of the
Zone came from all parts of the United States, with a few from Europe.
They have no common home associations. When the settlement of the Zone
first began the women were dismally lonely, and the Commission called in
a professional organizer of women’s clubs to get them together. Clubs
were organized from Ancon to Cristobal and federated with Mrs. Goethals
for President and Mrs. Gorgas for Vice-President. Culebra entertained
Gorgona with tea and Tolstoi, and Empire challenged Corozal to an
interchange of views on eugenics over the coffee cups and wafers. In a
recent number of _The Canal Record_, the official paper of the Zone, I
find nearly a page given over to an account of the activities of the
women’s societies and church work. It appears that there were in April,
1913, twenty-five societies of various sorts existing among the women on
the Zone. The Canal Zone Federation of Women’s Clubs had five subsidiary
clubs with a membership of fifty-eight. There were twelve church
organizations with a membership of 239. Nearly 290 women were enrolled
in auxiliaries to men’s organizations. But these organizations were
rapidly breaking up even then and the completion of the Canal will
witness their general disintegration. They served their purpose. Only a
mind that could mix the ideal with the practical could have foreseen
that discussions of the Baconian Cipher, or the philosophy of Nietzsche
might have a bearing on the job of digging a canal, but whoever
conceived the idea was right.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
MARINE POST AT CAMP ELLIOTT
A force of about 500 marines will be kept permanently on the Zone]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TOURISTS IN THE CULEBRA CUT]
The same clear foresight that led the Commission to encourage the
establishment of women’s clubs caused the installation of the Y. M. C.
A. on the Isthmus, where it has become perhaps the dominating social
force. With a host of young bachelors employed far away from home there
was need of social meeting places other than the saloons of Panama and
Colon. Many schemes were suggested before it was determined to turn over
the whole organization of social clubs to the governing body of the Y.
M. C. A. There were at the period of the greatest activity on the Zone
seven Y. M. C. A. clubs located at Cristobal, Gatun, Porto Bello,
Gorgona, Empire, Culebra and Corozal. The buildings are spacious, and,
as shown by the illustrations, of pleasing architectural style. On the
first floor are a lobby, reading-room and library, pool and billiard
room, bowling alley, a business-like bar which serves only soft drinks,
a quick lunch counter, and in some cases a barber shop and baths. On the
second floor is always a large assembly-room used for entertainments and
dances. This matter of dancing was at first embarrassing to the Y. M. C.
A., for at home this organization does not encourage the dreamy mazes of
the waltz, and I am quite sure frowns disapprovingly on the swaying
tango and terrible turkey trot. But conditions on the Isthmus were
different and though the organization does not itself give dances, it
permits the use of its halls by other clubs which do. The halls also are
used for moving picture shows, concerts and lectures. The Superintendent
of Club Houses, Mr. A. B. Dickson, acts as a sort of impressario, but
the task of filling dates with desirable attractions is rather a
complicated one 2000 miles away from the lyceum bureaus of New York.
The service of the Y. M. C. A. is not gratuitous. Members pay an annual
fee of $10 each. This, however, does not wholly meet the cost of
maintenance and the deficit is taken care of by the Commission, which
built the club houses at the outset. That the service of the
organization is useful is shown by the fact that Col. Goethals has
recommended the erection of a concrete club house to cost $52,500 in the
permanent town of Balboa.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LOBBY IN TIVOLI HOTEL]
Social intercourse on the Zone is further impeded by the fact that the
few thousand “gold” employees are scattered over a strip of territory 43
miles long traversed by a railroad which runs but three passenger trains
daily in each direction. Dances are held on alternate Saturday nights at
the Tivoli and Washington Hotels and guests cross from the Atlantic to
the Pacific or vice-versa to attend them, but on these nights a special
train takes the merrymakers home. If, however, a lady living at Culebra
desires to have guests from Cristobal to dinner, she must keep them all
night, while a popular bachelor with half a dozen dinner or party calls
to make needs about three uninterrupted days to cover his list.
Church work, too, has been fostered by the Commission. Twenty-six of the
churches are owned by it, and all but two are on land it owns. In 1912
there were forty churches on the Zone--seven Roman Catholic, thirteen
Episcopal, seven Baptist, two Wesleyan and eight undenominational.
Fifteen chaplains are maintained by the government, apportioned among
the denominations in proportion to their numbers. Much good work is done
by the churches, but one scarcely feels that the church spirit is as
strong as it would be among the same group of people in the States. The
changed order of life, due to the need of deferring to tropical
conditions, has something to do with this. The stroll home from church
at midday is not so pleasant a Sunday function under a glaring tropical
sun. Moreover no one town can support churches of every denomination,
the railroad is at least impartial in that it does not encourage one to
go down the line to church any more than to a dance or the theater.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
ALTAR IN GATUN CATHOLIC CHURCH]
Even as I write the disintegration of this society has begun. On the
tables of the Zone dwellers you find books about South America or
Alaska--the widely separated points at which opportunity for engineering
activity seems to be most promising. Alaska particularly was at the time
engaging the speculative thought of the young engineers in view of the
discussion in Congress of the advisability of building two government
railroads in that territory. The preparation of moving thither the Canal
organization was highly pleasing to the younger men who seemed to think
that working over glacial moraines and running lines over snow fields
would form a pleasing sequel to several years in the tropical jungles
and swamps. You will see on the Isthmus bronzed and swarthy men who are
pointed out to you as “T T’s” which is to say tropical tramps who served
first in the Philippines. Just what appellation will be given those who
go from the tropics to the arctic is yet to be discovered. In the _Canal
Record_ I read of the final dissolution of the Federation of Women’s
Clubs. Stories of the ambitions of individual commissioners for new
employment are appearing in the public prints. Only the pernicious
activity of the slides at Culebra and Cucaracha can much longer delay
the dissolution of the social life that has so pleasingly flourished
under the benevolent despotism of Col. Goethals.