LABOR AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE ZONE
By its provision for the comfort of the unmarried employees the Isthmian
Commission has justified the allegation that it systematically
encourages matrimony among the men. The bachelor employee upon the gold
roll is housed in large barracks which rarely afford him a room to
himself, but ordinarily force upon him one, two or even three “chums.”
The intimacies of chumming are delightful when sought, but apt to be
irksome when involuntary. The bachelor quarters house from twelve to
sixty men, and are wholly made up of sleeping rooms. The broad screened
verandas constitute the only living room or social hall. If that does
not serve the young bachelor’s purpose he has the Y. M. C. A. which is
quite as public. In fact, unless he be one of the few favored with a
room to himself, he must wander off, like a misanthrope, into the heart
of the jungle to meditate in solitude. As hard outdoor work does not
make for misanthropy most of them wander off to the church and get
married.
The unmarried employees take their meals in what are called Commission
Hotels, though these are hotels only in the sense of being great eating
houses. Here men and women on the gold roll are served, for there are
bachelor girls on the Zone and at these hotels special veranda tables
are reserved for them and for such men as retain enough of the frills of
civilization as to prefer wearing their coats at their meals. Meals for
employees cost thirty cents each, or fifty cents for non-employees.
There is some divergence of judgment concerning the excellence of this
food. Col. Roosevelt, while on the Isthmus, evaded his guides, dashed
into a Commission hotel and devoured a thirty-cent meal, pronouncing it
bully and declaring it unapproachable by any Broadway meal at $1.00. The
Colonel sincerely believed that his approach was unheralded, but they do
say on the Zone that his descent was “tipped off” like a raid in the
“Tenderloin,” and that a meal costing the contractors many times thirty
cents was set before him.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LA BOCA FROM THE CITY]
Undoubtedly one who should order the same variety of dishes in a city
restaurant in the States would have to pay more than fifty cents,
although there are country hotels in which equal variety and excellence
for the price are not unattainable. A typical dinner menu includes soup,
two kinds of meat, four kinds of vegetables, hot rolls or light bread, a
salad, tea, coffee, or cocoa and for dessert pie or ice cream. The
Isthmian appetite for ice cream is a truly tropical wonder. In the
early days of the work the novice on the Isthmus was likely to mistake
an open bowl of quinine on the table for pulverized sugar, but this has
very generally disappeared.
[Illustration: AT LOS ANGOSTURAS
Some Panama rivers flow through dales like those of the Wisconsin]
No money changes hands at the Commission hotels, unless the diner
happens to be a non-employee. Meals are paid for by coupons from books
purchased at the Commissary. By omitting the luncheon, and filling its
place with a little fruit, or a sandwich, the Canal employee can make
his food cost only $18 a month. He has no lodging to pay; clothes are
the cheapest imaginable, for there are no seasons to provide for, nor
any rotations of fashions to be observed; theaters are practically
non-existent and away from Panama City temptation to riotous living are
slight. The Zone worker is the most solvent individual in all industry
and ought to close up a four or five years’ service with a comfortable
nest egg.
The economy and comfort of life on the Canal Zone are mainly due to the
Commissary system which has grown up under the American régime. This is
part of the Subsistence Department, which is divided into two
branches--hotel and commissary. The hotel department not only runs the
Commission hotels already described, but the two large hotels patronized
by tourists--the Tivoli at Ancon and the Washington at Colon. Though a
special rate is made at these two hotels for employees, their prices are
still too high for them to be patronized by any except the most highly
paid workers. Even the pleasure seeker on the Isthmus is likely to
regard their rates as rather exorbitant.
[Illustration: THE WATER FRONT AT COLON
Cocoanut palms are picturesque but beware of the falling nuts]
Their prices, however, are essentially those of the native Panamanian
hotels in the city, and in cleanliness they are vastly superior. The
visitor to Panama, however, who seeks local color or native food need
not expect to find either at the Tivoli. That is a typical resort hotel
which might have been moved down to the Isthmus from the Jersey beaches
or Saratoga Springs. Its only local color resides in its Jamaica
waiters, and as I am assured that they are no less a trial to the
managers than to the guests, criticism would be perhaps ungenerous. As
for native fruits and food, you must go away from the hotel to seek
them. An infrequent papaya appears on the menu, but for the mamei,
mango, sapodilla and other fruits, the guests at the time of my visit
sought the native fruit stores.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
NEGRO QUARTERS AT CRISTOBAL
The Jamaica negroes frequently elect to live in the shacks rather than
the commission barracks]
After all, however, the two big hotels are the least of the tasks
imposed on the Subsistence Department. The string of Commission hotels,
18 in all, serve about 200,000 meals monthly. There are also 17 messes
for European laborers who pay 40 cents per ration of three meals a day.
Sixteen kitchens serve the West India laborers who get three meals for
27 cents. About 100,000 meals of this sort are served monthly. Receipts
and expenditures for the line hotels, messes and kitchens are very
nicely adjusted. The Official Handbook puts receipts at about $105,000 a
month; expenditures, $104,500. The Tivoli Hotel earns a profit, but the
Washington Hotel, being newly built, had not at the time of publication
of this book made a financial report.
As I have noted, the hotels are not open to all sorts and conditions of
men. Those which I have described are established for the use of gold
employees only. Different methods had to be adopted in providing lodging
and eating places for the more than 30,000 silver employees, most of
whom belong to the unskilled labor class. About 25,000 of the silver
employees are West Indians, mainly from Jamaica or the Barbados, though
some French are found. A very few Chinese are employed. In 1906 Engineer
Stevens advertised for 2500 Chinese coolies, and planned to take 15,000
if they offered themselves, but there was no considerable response.
Perhaps the story of the unhappy Chinamen who destroyed themselves
during the French régime rather than live on the Isthmus may have been
told in the Flowery Kingdom and deterred others from coming. But few
Japanese laborers are enrolled, which is the more strange when the part
they took in railroad building in the Pacific northwest is remembered.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
LABOR TRAIN AT ANCON]
In all forty nationalities and eighty-five geographical subdivisions
were noted in the census of 1912. Greenland is missing, but if we amend
the hymn to “From Iceland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand,” it
will fit the situation. When work was busiest the West Indian laborers
were paid 10 cents an hour, for an eight-hour day, except in the case of
those doing special work who got 16 and 20 cents. The next higher type
of manual labor, largely composed of Spaniards, drew 20 cents. Artisans
received from 16 to 44 cents an hour. In figuring the cost of work it
was the custom of the engineers to reckon the West Indian labor as only
33 per cent as efficient as American labor. That is to say, $3 paid to a
Jamaican produced no greater results than $1 paid to an American.
Reckoned by results therefore, the prices paid for native labor were
high.
[Illustration: NEGRO SLEEPING QUARTERS
All extra clothing etc., is piled on shelf above. The floor is flushed
daily]
Quarters and a Commissary service were of course provided for the silver
employees. Their quarters were as a rule huge barracks, though many of
the natives and West Indians spurn the free quarters provided by the
Commission and make their homes in shacks of their own. This is
particularly the case with those who are married, or living in the free
unions not uncommon among the Jamaica negroes. The visitor who saw first
the trim and really attractive houses and bachelor quarters assigned to
the gold employees could hardly avoid a certain revulsion of opinion as
to the sweetness and light of Isthmian life when he wandered into the
negro quarters across the railroad in front of the Tivoli Hotel at
Ancon, or in some of the back streets of Empire or Gorgona. The best
kept barracks for silver employees were at Cristobal, but even there the
restlessness and independence of the Jamaicans were so great that many
moved across into the frame rookeries of the native town of Colon.
In the crowded negro quarters one evidence of the activities of the
sanitation department was largely missing. No attempt was made to screen
all the barracks and shacks that housed the workers. But the
self-closing garbage can, the oil-sprinkled gutters, the clean pavement
and all the other evidences of the activities of Col. Gorgas’ men were
there. Perhaps the feature of the barracks which most puzzled and amused
visitors to the Zone were the kitchens. Imagine a frame building 300
feet long by 75 feet wide, three stories high with railed balconies at
every story. Perched on the rails of the balustrades, at intervals of 20
feet, and usually facing a door leading into the building are boxes of
corrugated iron about 3 feet high, the top sloping upward like one side
of a roof and the inner side open. These are the kitchens--one to each
family. Within is room for a smoldering fire of soft coal, or charcoal,
and a few pots and frying pans. Here the family meal is prepared, or
heated up if, as is usually the case, the ingredients are obtained at
the Commissary kitchen.
The reader may notice that the gold employees are supplied with food at
a fixed price per meal; the silver employees at so much per ration of
three meals. The reason for this is that it was early discovered that
the laborers were apt to economize by irregularity in eating--seldom
taking more than two meals a day and often limiting themselves to one,
making that one of such prodigious proportions as to unfit them for work
for some hours, after which they went unfed until too weak to work
properly. As the Commission lost by this practice at both ends, the evil
was corrected by making the laborers pay for three meals, whether they
ate them or not--and naturally they did. It is a matter of record that
the quality of the work improved notably after this expedient was
adopted.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A WORKMEN’S SLEEPING CAR]
The gold messes are principally for the foreign laborers, Italians,
Spaniards and Portuguese, and pains are taken to give them food of the
sort they are accustomed to at home. Spaghetti is consumed by the ton,
as well as rice, garlic, lentils and other vegetables sought by the
people of southern Europe.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
A WORKMEN’S DINING CAR]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
OLD FRENCH BUCKET DREDGES
Some of these dredges are still in use for wet dredging]
In 1909 the Commission reported with satisfaction that “the rations at
the messes for European laborers have been increased, among the
additions being wine three time a week instead of twice a week”. This
record of accomplishment suggests some account of the way in which the
problem of the liquor traffic was handled on the Zone during the most
active period of construction work and prior to the order abolishing all
liquor selling. The problem was a difficult one, for the Zone was in
effect a government reservation, and under a general law of Congress the
sale of liquor on such reservations is prohibited. But on this
reservation there were at divers times from 34 to 63 licensed saloons.
July 1, 1913, all licenses were canceled and the Zone went “dry”. The
earlier latitude granted to liquor sellers was excused by the
necessities of the case. The Spanish and Italian laborers were
accustomed to have wine with their meals and were not contented without
it. But at the later date the end of the work was in sight. There was no
longer need to secure contented labor at the expense of violating a
national statute. Hence the imposition of a stern prohibition law.
[Illustration: OLD FRENCH BRIDGE AT BAS OBISPO]
That system of regulating the sale of liquor on the Canal Zone is
brimful of anomalies and inconsistencies, but fairly well characterized
by a robust common sense. There is no liquor sold or served at the
Commissary hotels or kitchens, with the result that the Spanish and
Italian laborers to some extent refuse to patronize either, but get
their meals at some cantina where the wine of their country can be had.
There is no bar at the Hotel Tivoli. That tavern being owned by the
United States government and in a government reservation the law is
nominally obeyed. But as the tastes of men are not fixed by law, and
only imperfectly regulated by it, you will find the tables of this
hospitable inn plentifully dotted by comfortable looking bottles.
According to report the hotel authorities “send out” to some mysterious
spot for these supplies as ordered, but I never happened to see the
messenger of Bacchus on his errand and rather suspect that the hotel
cellar contains the cheering spring. At any rate the United States as a
hotel-keeper does not encourage liquor drinking at a bar, though it does
not absolutely prohibit it at table.
[Illustration: THE RELAXATION OF PAY DAY]
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
BAS OBISPO AS THE FRENCH LEFT IT]
The saloons of the Zone, viewed superficially, seemed to be conducted
for the convenience and comfort of the day laboring class--the silver
employees--mainly. The police regulations made any particular
attractiveness other than that supplied by their stock in trade quite
impossible. They could not have chairs or tables--“perpendicular
drinking” was the rigid rule. They could not have cozy corners,
snuggeries, or screens--all drinking must be done at the bar and in full
view of the passers-by. Perhaps these rules discouraged the
saloonkeepers from any attempt to attract the better class of custom. At
any rate the glitter of mirrors and of cut glass was notably absent and
the sheen of mahogany was more apparent in the complexions of the
patrons than on the woodwork of the bar. They were frankly rough,
frontier whisky shops, places that cater to men who want drink rather
than companionship, and who when tired of standing at the bar can get
out. Accordingly most of the saloons were in the day laborer quarters,
and it was seldom indeed that a “gold employee” or salaried man above
the grade of day laborer was seen in one. The saloons paid a high
license tax which was appropriated to the schools of the Zone, and they
were shut sharp at eleven o’clock because, as the chief of police
explained, “we want all the laborers fit and hearty for work when the
morning whistle blows”.
[Illustration: CONVICTS BUILDING A COMMISSION ROAD
The excellence of these roads should be an object lesson to Central
America]
That is the keynote of all law and rule on the Zone--to keep the
employees fit for work. If morals and sobriety are advanced why so much
the better, but they are only by-products of the machine which is set to
grind out so many units of human labor per working day.
Unhappily all the safeguards made and provided on the Zone are missing
in the code by which the saloons of Colon and Panama are regulated--if a
wide-open policy is to be described as regulation. These two towns at
the two ends of the Panama Railroad are, one or the other, within an
hour’s ride of any village on the line. Their saloons are many, varied
and largely disreputable. The more sequestered ones have attached to
them the evils which commonly hang about low drinking places, and the
doors swing hospitably open to the resident of the Zone, whether he be a
Canal worker or a soldier or marine from one of the camps.
The uniformed men are more in evidence than they ought to be--more than
they would be if an erratic and uninformed public sentiment at home had
not led Congress to close the army canteens in which the soldier could
have his beer or light wine amid orderly surroundings. If the good
ladies of the W. C. T. U. who hold the abolition of the army canteen one
of their triumphs could see the surroundings into which the enlisted man
is driven, and know the sort of stuff he is led to drink, they might
doubt the wisdom of their perfected work. But as one after another
Secretaries of War and Generals of the Army have unavailingly pleaded
for a return to the canteen system, it is unlikely that facts presented
by a mere writer will have any effect on the narrow illiberality which
prompted the Congressional action.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
CONSTRUCTION WORK SHOWING CONCRETE CARRIERS AND MOULDS
The buckets containing concrete are controlled from a station in the
steel scaffolding--run out, stopped and emptied at the proper point]
It is a curious fact that in the tropics where one would expect to find
cooling rather than heating beverages as a rule the demand is chiefly
for the “hard stuff.” The walls of the saloons, the floors of the
cantinas, or native drinking places, are covered with bottles or barrels
of whisky, rum, brandy and gin. Only in places frequented by the Spanish
and Italians are the lighter wines often seen. The Jamaica negro is
devoted to the rum of his country, and one sees him continually in the
most unexpected places producing a quart bottle from some mysterious
hiding place in his scanty clothing, and benevolently treating his
crowd. In excess--and that is what he aims at--it makes him quarrelsome
and a very fair share of the 7000 annual arrests on the Zone are due to
the fortuitous combination of the two chief products of Jamaica--rum and
the black. It is doubtful, however, whether the Jamaican could be kept
to his work without his tipple, and it was for that reason that the
unusual expedient of permitting liquor selling on a government
reservation was adopted.
The Commissary branch of the Subsistence Department is a colossal
business run by the government for the good of the dwellers on the
Zone. It gathers together from the ends of the earth everything needful
for these pampered wards of Uncle Sam, and sells its stock practically
at cost price. From pins to pianos, from pigs-knuckles to pâté de foie
gras you can get every article of use or luxury at the Commissary. At
least you can in theory, in fact the statement needs toning down a
little, for you will hear plenty of grumbling on the Zone about the
scanty satisfaction derived from shopping in “that old Commissary.”
[Illustration: HOW THE NATIVES GATHER COCOANUTS]
All the same its activities are amazing. It launders linen at prices
that make the tourist who has to pay the charges of the Tivoli Laundry
envy the employees their privileges. It bakes bread, cake and pies for
the whole 65,000 of the working population, and does it with such nice
calculation that there is never an overstock and the bread is always
fresh. Everything of course is done by machinery. Kneading dough for
bread and mixing cement and gravel to make concrete are merely
co-ordinate tasks in the process of building the Canal and both are
performed in the way to get the best results in the least time.
Everything is done by wholesale, Hamburger steak is much liked on the
Isthmus, so the Commissary has a neat machine which makes 500 pounds of
it in a batch. That reminds me, of a hostess who preferred to make her
own Hamburger steak, and so told her Jamaica cook to mince up a piece of
beef. Being disquieted by the noise of chopping, she returned to the
kitchen to find the cook diligently performing the appointed task with a
hatchet.
[Illustration: _Photo by Elliott_
LOOKING DOWN MIRAFLORES LOCKS]
In the icy depths of the cold storage plant at Cristobal, where the
temperature hovers around 14 degrees, while it is averaging 96 outside,
you walk through long avenues of dressed beef, broad pergolas hung with
frozen chicken, ducks and game, sunken gardens of cabbage, carrots,
cauliflower and other vegetable provender. You come to a spot where a
light flashes fitfully from an orifice which is presently closed as a
man bows his head before it. He straightens up, the light flashes and is
again blotted out. You find, on closer approach, two men testing eggs by
peering through them at an electric light. Betwixt them they gaze thus
into the very soul of this germ of life 30,000 times a day, for thus
many eggs do they handle. Yet the odds are that neither has read the
answer to the riddle, “did the first hen lay the first egg, or the first
egg hatch the first chicken?” Unless relieved by some such philosophical
problem to occupy the mind one might think the egg tester’s job would
savor of monotony.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL AT BOCAS]
Out of the railroad yards at Cristobal at 3:45 every morning starts the
Commissary train, usually of 21 cars, 11 of which are refrigerated. Its
business is to deliver to all the consumers along the 47 miles of Canal
villages and camps the supplies for the day. Nineteen stores, and as
many kitchens, messes and hotels, must be supplied. Ice must be
delivered to each household by eight in the morning. Ice is one of the
things that the employees do not get free, but though nature has no
share in making it, they get it cheaper than our own people, for whom
nature manufactures it gratis and a few men monopolize the supply.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
NEW AMERICAN DOCKS AT CRISTOBAL]
If one is fond of big figures the records of the Commissary Department
furnish them. The bakery for example puts forth over 6,000,000 loaves of
bread, 651,844 rolls and 114,134 pounds of cake annually. Panama is a
clean country. Every tourist exclaims at the multitudinous companies of
native women perpetually washing at the river’s brink and in the
interior I never saw a native hut without quantities of wash spread out
to dry. But the Commissary laundry beats native industry with a record
in one year of 3,581,923 pieces laundered--and it isn’t much of a
climate for “biled” shirts and starched collars either. There is a
really enterprising proposition under consideration for the retention of
this laundry. A ship going west would land all its laundry work at
Cristobal and by the time it had made the passage of the Canal--10
hours--all would be delivered clean at Balboa via the railroad. East
bound ships would send their laundry from Balboa by rail. It is an
amazing climate for ice cream, however, and the Commissary supplied
110,208 gallons of that. Some other annual figures that help to complete
the picture of mere size are butter, 429,267 pounds; eggs, 792,043
dozen; poultry, 560,000 pounds; flour, 320,491 pounds.
[Illustration: OX METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION]
As I said before, the population of the Zone, fed mainly through the
Commissary, numbers about 65,000. When one reads of the quantity of food
needed one wonders at the skill and energy that must have been employed
in our Civil War to keep armies of 300,000 and more in the field.
However, in those days perhaps eggs and ice cream did not figure in the
Commissariat, and we have no statistics as to poultry, though the poet
laureate of Sherman’s army referred feelingly to “how the turkeys
gobbled that our Commissaries found.”
[Illustration: ROAD MAKING BY CONVICTS]
The Commissary is not wholly popular. Native shop keepers, of course,
are against it. For a time Zone employees were permitted to use their
books of coupons for purchases in native stores, the storekeepers
afterwards exchanging them for cash at the Commissary. This practice for
some reason has been ruled out, and the native stores lost a certain
amount of trade by the ruling. Nor are the natives the only discontented
ones.
Americans in Panama, not in the employ of the Isthmian Canal Commission,
are inclined to grumble because they are not permitted to make
purchases at the Commissary. That, however, was a matter of serious
agreement between the United States and the Republic of Panama. When the
United States first announced its purpose of taking over the Zone and
building the Canal, there was joy among the business folks of Panama and
Colon. They saw fat pickings in purveying the necessities of life for a
new population of considerable size. Visions of the return of the flush
times of the French engaged their imaginations. All these pleasurable
anticipations were doused under the wet blanket of the Commissary into
which goes the major part of the spending money of the employees. But
there are Americans on the Zone, other than employees and their
families, and these by a solemn international compact are handed over to
the Panamanian mercies. To buy at the Commissary you must have a coupon
book, and without an employee’s number and brass check no coupon book
will be forthcoming. Of course many evade the rule by borrowing a book
from a friend, but after one has thus evaded the provisions of a treaty,
one usually finds there is nothing special to buy after all. My own
opinion is that for the necessities of life the Commissary is all very
well, but lacks in those superfluities for which every one yearns. The
two governments, by the way, which protected the Panama merchants
against American competition also protected a handful of Panamanians in
their clutch upon certain municipal monopolies. With the completion of
its power house at Gatun the Canal Commission will have a great volume
of power to sell or waste. Wasted it will have to be, for a group of
capitalists control the light and power company in Panama City, and the
United States has agreed not to compete with them.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BOUQUETTE VALLEY]
[Illustration: COCOANUT PALMS NEAR ANCON]
Salaries on the Zone during the period of the “big job” were much higher
than in the States, but it is probable that upon reorganization they
will be materially reduced for those who remain in permanent service--of
these Col. Goethals reckons that there will be for the Canal alone about
2700. If the Panama Railroad organization should be kept up to its
present strength there will be in all about 7700 men employed. This is
altogether unlikely however. The railroad will no longer have the
construction work and débris of the Canal to carry, and the ships will
take much of its commercial business away. During the construction
period the wages paid were as follows:
Col. Goethals $21,000
Other Commissioners, each 14,000
Clerks $ 75 to $250 monthly
Foremen 75 „ 275 „
Engineers 225 „ 600 „
Draftsmen 100 „ 250 „
Master mechanics 225 „ 275 „
Physicians 150 „ 300 „
Teachers 60 „ 110 „
Policemen 80 „ 107.50 „
The minimum wage of a gold employee is $75 a month; the maximum, except
in the case of heads of departments, $600. The hourly pay in some sample
trades was, blacksmith, 30 to 75 cents; bricklayers, 65 cents;
carpenters, 32 to 65 cents; iron workers, 44 to 70 cents; painters, 32
to 65 cents; plumbers, 32 to 75 cents. In the higher paid trades steam
engineers earned $75 to $200 a month; locomotive engineers from $125 to
$210, and steam shovel engineers $210 to $240.
[Illustration: NATIVE RELIGIOUS PROCESSION AT CHORRERA
The figure of the Savior is faintly shown behind the central crucifix,
riding on a mule]
Some of the hourly rates are said to be nearly double those paid in the
United States, and the workers had the added advantages of free quarters
and the other perquisites of employment heretofore described.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
OPENING THE COCOANUT
The natives cut open the green nuts with swift cuts of their heavy
machetes. A miss would cost a finger]
The Canal Zone is not a democracy. It has no constitution so far as its
residents are concerned. There are no elections and no elected officers.
Naturally, however, it must needs have a government, though the
individual will of Col. Goethals has sufficient authority to override
that government if he chooses to exert it. But for the orderly discharge
of public business there exists the Department of Civil Administration
with Commissioner Maurice H. Thatcher as its chief during the last year
of the constructive work. Gov. Thatcher was appointed in 1909 and
brought his department to a high state of efficiency. This department
has supervision over the posts, revenues and customs, the police and
fire departments, the Division of Public Works, and schools, churches
and the judiciary.
[Illustration: RICE STACKED FOR DRYING]
There were, during the period of greatest activity, 17 post offices on
the Zone. The stamps used are Panama stamps, purchased from the Republic
at 40 per cent of their face value and with the words “Canal Zone”
printed across their face. Stamps to the amount of about $80,000 were
sold annually and the money order business during the active years
exceeded $5,000,000 annually, most of which represented the savings of
the workers.
The Zone police force compels admiration. It is not spectacular, but is
eminently business-like and with the heterogeneous population with which
it has to deal it has no doubt been busy. At the outset President
Roosevelt sent down to command it an old time Rough Rider comrade of
his. In late years a regular army officer has been Chief of Police. At
that period it was a problem. Not only was the population rough and of
mixed antecedents, but many foreign nations were looking on the Isthmus
as an excellent dumping place for their criminals and other undesirable
citizens. It was not quite Botany Bay, but bade fair to rival that
unsavory penal colony. Closer scrutiny of applicants for employment
checked that tendency, and a vigorous enforcement of the criminal law
together with the application of the power to deport undesirables soon
reduced the population to order.
[Illustration: BULLOCK CART IN CHORRERA]
In the early days crimes of violence were common. If one carried money
it was wise to carry a gun as well. Organized bandits used to tear up
the railroad tracks and wantonly destroy property for no reason save to
satisfy a grudge against the Commission. But the organization of the
police force stopped it all. In the cities of Colon and Panama is little
or no public gambling, and the brood of outlaws that follow the goddess
chance are not to be found there. On the Zone is no gambling at all.
Even private poker games, if they become habitual, are broken up by
quiet warnings from the police. It isn’t that there is any great moral
aversion to poker, but men who sit up all night with cards and chips are
not good at the drawing board or with a transit the next day. Everything
on the Zone, from the food in the Commissary to the moral code, is
designed with an eye single to its effect on the working capacity of the
men. It is a fortunate thing that bad morals do not as a rule conduce to
industrial efficiency, else I shudder at what Col. Goethals might be
tempted to do to the Decalogue.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SUN SETTING IN THE ATLANTIC AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT]
The police force in its latter days was in the command of a regular army
officer. In 1913 it numbered 332 policemen, two inspectors and a chief.
Of the policemen 90 were negroes, all of whom had been in the West India
constabulary or in West Indian regiments of the British army. The white
policemen had all served in the United States army, navy or marine
corps. The men are garbed in khaki, and look more like cavalrymen than
police officers--indeed a stalwart, well-setup body of a high order of
intelligence and excellent carriage. Arrests are numerous, yet not more
so than in an American city of 65,000 people. Of about 150 convicts
nearly all are black and these are employed in the construction of roads
within the Zone. The work of the police is greatly expedited by the
celerity of practice in the courts. That Anglo-Saxon fetish, trial by
jury, is religiously observed, but the juries are of three men instead
of twelve and are held strictly to the consideration of questions of
fact alone. There is a full equipment of civil and criminal courts with
an appellate division, but no appeal lies to the courts of the United
States. There do not seem to be many lawyers in the Zone, hence there is
little litigation--or perhaps because there is little litigation there
are few lawyers. It is always a mooted question whether lawyers are the
cause or the effect of litigation, the bane or the antidote.
Children thrive on the Canal Zone. Nearly every visitor who has had the
time to go into the residence sections of Culebra, Gorgona and other
large Canal villages has exclaimed at the number of children visible and
their uniform good health. Naturally therefore a school system has grown
up of which Americans, who lead the world in public education, may well
be proud. Three thousand pupils are enrolled, and besides a
superintendent and general officials, eighty teachers attend to their
education. The school buildings are planned and equipped according to
the most approved requirements for school hygiene, and are especially
adapted to the tropics--which means that the rooms are open to the air
on at least two sides, and that wide aisles and spaces between the desks
give every child at least twice the air space he would have had in a
northern school.
[Illustration: THE FRUITFUL MANGO TREE]
The children like their elders come in for the beneficence of the
Commission. Free books, free stationery, free medical treatment and free
transportation are provided for all. Prof. Frank A. Gause,
superintendent of the Zone schools, is an Indianian and has taken a
justifiable pride in developing the school system there so that it shall
be on a par with the school of like grades in “the States.” He declares
that so far as the colored schools are concerned they are of a higher
degree of excellence than those in our more northern communities. Native
and West Indian children attend the schools of this class, in which the
teachers are colored men who have graduated in the best West Indian
colleges and who have had ample teaching experience in West Indian
schools.
The curriculum of the Zone schools covers all the grades up to the
eighth, that is the primary and grammar school grades, and a
well-conducted high school as well. Pupils have been prepared for
Harvard, Wellesley, Vassar and the University of Chicago. The white
schools are all taught by American teachers, each of whom must have had
four years’ high school training, two years in either a university or a
normal school and two years of practical teaching experience. These
requirements are obviously higher than those of the average American
city school system. Prof. Gause declares that politics and the
recommendation of politicians have no share in the administration of the
Zone schools, though the efforts of Washington statesmen to place their
relatives on the payroll have been frequent and persistent.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
COMPLETED CANAL NEAR GATUN]
For the native and West Indian children a course in horticulture is
given and school gardens established in which radishes, beans, peas,
okra, papayas, bananas, turnips, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes, and yams
are cultivated. It is worth noting that considerable success has been
achieved with products of the temperate zone, though especial care was
needed for their cultivation. One garden of three-quarters of an acre
produced vegetables worth $350. There is a tendency among Americans on
the Zone to decry the soil as unfit for any profitable agriculture. A
very excellent report on “The Agricultural Possibilities of the Canal
Zone”, issued by the Department of Agriculture, should effectually still
this sort of talk. To the mere superficial observer it seems incredible
that a soil which produces such a wealth of useless vegetation should be
unable to produce anything useful, and the scientists of the Department
of Agriculture have shown that that paradoxical condition does not
exist. Practically all our northern vegetables and many of our most
desirable fruits can be raised on the Zone according to this report, and
it goes on to say:
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
TRAVELLING CRANES AT MIRAFLORES]
“Opportunities for establishing paying dairy herds appear good, ...
there is unquestionably a good opening for raising both pork and
poultry. Small farming, including the production of vegetables and
choice tropical fruits, such as the avocado, mango, papaya, pineapple,
orange, guava, anona, etc., can be carried on profitably with the
application of intensive methods, coupled with proper care in the
selection of crop varieties and soil. The supply of pineapples,
avocados, and papayas is very much below the demand, notwithstanding the
fact that these fruits are apparently well adapted to a considerable
portion of the Zone. With the introduction of varieties of mangos better
than the seedling types now grown this fruit could be made very much
more popular with the northern population. As an evidence of the good
opportunities for the production of choice fruits not only to supply
local demand, but for export trade, the Island of Taboga in Panama may
be cited. Here upon very steep slopes, including much extremely stony
land, large quantities of delightfully flavored pineapples are grown for
shipment. The mango and avocada (aguacate) are also shipped from this
small island with profit”.
[Illustration: THE REVIEW AT ONE OF THE ROOSEVELT RECEPTIONS]
[Illustration: PACIFIC FLATS LEFT BY RECEDING TIDE
The fall is 18 feet and the receding tide leaves more than a mile thus
bare]
Consideration of the agricultural and industrial possibilities of the
Canal Zone is made desirable, indeed imperative, by the proposition of
the military authorities to abandon the whole territory to the
jungle--to expel from it every human being not employed by the Canal
Commission or the Panama Railroad, or not having business of some sort
in connection with those organizations. This was not in contemplation
in the early days of the Zone. It was planned to invite settlement,
though retaining the actual ownership of the land to the United States.
By way of encouraging such settlement the Isthmian Commission was
authorized to lease to settlers farms not exceeding 50 hectares (125
acres) each, at an annual rental of $3 a hectare. This was not
particularly attractive and the proposition was made less so by limiting
the period of leases to twenty-five years. Moreover the limitation on
the size of the individual farm made cattle farming quite impossible,
and even ordinary farming doubtful, for in 50 hectares the actual area
of good farming land is likely to be small. Although criticism of these
provisions was current, in 1913 nothing was done for their correction
because of the vigor with which the military authorities urged the
entire depopulation of the Zone.
[Illustration: A WHALER AT PEARL ISLAND]
That proposition has not yet come before the American people. It has not
even been debated in Congress, but at the moment of the publication of
this book the Commission is proceeding calmly with its arrangements, as
though the program were definitely fixed. The argument advanced by Col.
Goethals and other military experts is that the Canal is primarily a
military work. That the Canal Zone exists only because of and for the
Canal, and should be so governed as to protect the dams and locks from
any treacherous assault is admitted. The advocates of the depopulation
program insist that with a residence on the Zone refused to any save
those employed by the Commission and subject to its daily control, with
the land grown up once more into an impenetrable jungle so that access
to the Canal can be had only through its two ends, or by the Panama
Railroad--both easily guarded--the Canal will be safe from the dynamiter
hired by some hostile government.
It may be so, but there is another side to the question. The Canal Zone
is an outpost of a high civilization in the tropics. It affords object
lessons to the neighboring republics of Central America in architecture,
sanitation, road building, education, civil government and indeed all
the practical arts that go to make a State comfortable and prosperous.
Without intention to offend any of the neighboring States it may fairly
be said that the Zone, if maintained according to its present standards,
should exercise an influence for good on all of them. It is the little
leaven that may leaven the whole lump.
[Illustration: AN OLD WELL AT CHIRIQUI]
That it can be maintained with its present population is of course
impossible. When the employment, furnished by the construction of the
Canal is finished, the army of engineers and laborers will disintegrate
and scatter to other fields of industry. This process is already begun.
Our government in securing labor from the West India islands assumed
the task of returning the laborers to their homes at the expiration of
their term of service and this is now being done, though not so rapidly
as would have been the case except for the persistent activity of the
slides at Culebra. It has been suggested that gifts of land, instead of
passage money home, would be acceptable to these laborers, not merely
West Indians, but Europeans as well. Thrown open to settlement under
proper conditions the Zone would no doubt attract a certain class of
agriculturists from the States.
[Illustration: A GOOD YIELD OF COCOANUTS]
Undoubtedly there will be a field for skilled agricultural endeavor
there. As I have already noted Col. Goethals estimates the necessary
force for the operation of the Canal at 2700. For the operation of the
Panama Railroad in 1913 five thousand men were required but with the
cessation of Canal work this number would be largely reduced. Probably
6000 men would constitute the working force of both Canal and railroad.
A working force of that number would create a population of about
15,000. There is further the military force to be considered. Col.
Goethals strenuously urged that 25,000 men be kept on the Isthmus
permanently, but the opinion of Congress, toward the period of the
opening of the Canal, seemed to be that about 7000 would be sufficient.
In all probability the latter figure will be the smallest number of men
that will go to make up the military establishment.
[Illustration: CHOLO GIRLS AT THE STREAM]
There is every reason to believe that at Balboa particularly the
shipping interests will create a large and prosperous town, while
already the cities of Panama and Colon, geographically part of the Zone,
though politically independent, have a population of at least 60,000.
When the Canal is once in operation there will be from 75,000 to 100,000
people on the Zone and in the two native cities within it to furnish a
market for the food products that can be raised on that fertile strip of
land. Today the vegetables of the temperate zone are brought 3000 miles
to the Zone dwellers, sometimes in cold storage, but chiefly in cans. As
for those who live in the Panama towns and are denied access to the
Commissary, they get fresh vegetables only from the limited supply
furnished by the few Chinese market gardens. According to the Department
of Agriculture nearly all vegetables of the temperate clime and all
tropical fruits can be grown on the Zone lands. This being the case it
seems a flat affront to civilization and to the intelligent utilization
of natural resources to permit these lands to revert to the jungle, and
force our citizens and soldiers in these tropic lands to go without the
health-giving vegetable food that could easily be raised in the
outskirts of their towns and camps. Of the sufficiency of the market for
the output of all the farms for which the Zone has space and arable soil
there can be no doubt, for to the townspeople, the Canal operatives and
the garrisons there will be added the ships which reach Colon or Balboa
after long voyages and with larders empty of fresh green vegetables.
To the mind not wholly given over to militarism the idea that this
region in which so admirable, so unparalleled a beginning of industrial
development has been made should be now abandoned is intolerable. And it
does not seem at all plausible that our locks and dams and spillways
would be safer in a wilderness patrolled by perfunctory guards than they
would be in a well-settled and thriving community every man in which
would know that his prosperity was wholly dependent upon the peaceful
and uninterrupted operation of the Canal.
Doubtless there will be some discussion before acquiescence is given to
the military proposition that the Canal Zone--as large as the State of
Indiana--shall be allowed to revert to jungle, be given over to the
serpent, the sloth and the jaguar. That would be a sorry anti-climax to
the work of Gorgas in banishing yellow fever and malaria, and of
Goethals in showing how an industrial community could be organized,
housed and fed.
[Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_
SHIPPING AT BALBOA DOCKS]