Chapter 20

THE WATER FRONT AT COLONCocoanut 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 theguests, 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodNEGRO QUARTERS AT CRISTOBALThe Jamaica negroes frequently elect to live in the shacks rather than the commission barracks

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

NEGRO QUARTERS AT CRISTOBALThe 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 fromJamaica 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodLABOR TRAIN AT ANCON

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.

NEGRO SLEEPING QUARTERSAll 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 streetsof 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodA WORKMEN’S SLEEPING CAR

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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodA WORKMEN’S DINING CAR

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

A WORKMEN’S DINING CAR

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodOLD FRENCH BUCKET DREDGESSome of these dredges are still in use for wet dredging

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

OLD FRENCH BUCKET DREDGESSome 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.

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. Butas 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.

THE RELAXATION OF PAY DAY

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodBAS OBISPO AS THE FRENCH LEFT IT

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 inthe 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”.

CONVICTS BUILDING A COMMISSION ROADThe 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. Butas 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodCONSTRUCTION WORK SHOWING CONCRETE CARRIERS AND MOULDSThe buckets containing concrete are controlled from a station in the steel scaffolding—run out, stopped and emptied at the proper point

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

CONSTRUCTION WORK SHOWING CONCRETE CARRIERS AND MOULDSThe 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 governmentfor 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.”

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.

Photo by ElliottLOOKING DOWN MIRAFLORES LOCKS

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, sunkengardens 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.

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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodNEW AMERICAN DOCKS AT CRISTOBAL

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.

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.”

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 becausethey 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.

ENTRANCE TO BOUQUETTE VALLEY

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 itscommercial business away. During the construction period the wages paid were as follows:

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.

NATIVE RELIGIOUS PROCESSION AT CHORRERAThe 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodOPENING THE COCOANUTThe natives cut open the green nuts with swift cuts of their heavy machetes. A miss would cost a finger

Photo by Underwood & Underwood

OPENING THE COCOANUTThe 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.

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.

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 reasonsave 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodSUN SETTING IN THE ATLANTIC AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT

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 thecourts 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.

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 ofpractical 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.

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodCOMPLETED CANAL NEAR GATUN

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:

Photo by Underwood & UnderwoodTRAVELLING CRANES AT MIRAFLORES

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. Smallfarming, 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”.

THE REVIEW AT ONE OF THE ROOSEVELT RECEPTIONS

PACIFIC FLATS LEFT BY RECEDING TIDEThe 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 contemplationin 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.

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.

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 insecuring 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.

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.

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-givingvegetable 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.

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