To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

CHAPTER I

Chicago to New Orleans—Principally Chicago

Chicago as a Starting Point and Business Center for Panama—How Food is Manufactured—Chicago Modesty—Report of the Commercial Club’s Commission—Chicago the Center of Culture—The Illinois Central—Southern Surgical and Gynecological Society at Birmingham, the Mushroom City—The Banquet—Southern Hospitality and Wit—Extracts from Letter Home—Insurance Against Railway Accidents—The North Versus the South—Unveiling of a Statue—The Hahnemann Statue at Washington—New Orleans—Loss of Valuables—Over Charge at Hotel—A Machine-made Clerk—An Original Waiter—Southern Service—Southern Hospitality and Conviviality—The Beer Cure—Old English Standard—Comforting Reflection.

Those who wish to go to Panama should start from Chicago, which is the most direct route to Panama. In order to get there all one has to do is to go south; to return all one has to do is to come north. Chicago is at one end, Panama at the other.

But Chicago is not only the natural starting place for Panama, it is the natural business center of the Panama Canal. Chicago sent a Chicago man to build the canal, another Chicago man to boss it, others to plan it and others to provision it; and when the time comes will be ready with schemes to run it. Chicago believes that the canal must be constructed and conducted on a dual plan, the interoceanic and the alimentary—one for water and one for food. And she not only has the courage of her convictions, but the ability to assert them.

Unjust reflections have been cast upon the food which Chicago kills, cures and puts up in cans for the canal, and a word of explanation is necessary. It has been intimated that packing-house boys and butchers sometimes lose their footing and disappear so quickly that they can not be recovered or recognized, or even indicated on the labels. But these facts lack confirmation and the packers deny them. They are things of the past. Indeed, it was a Chicago man who demonstrated to Congress that the food from all parts of the country was fit neither for us nor for Panama. Thanks to his demonstrativeness, everybody now knows that until then pepper berries were made of tapioca kernels colored with lamp black; that preserved cherries were bleached with acid, colored with poisonous aniline, and used to contaminate the cocktails of our fathers and dye the hair and habits of our mothers; that the honey of our childhood was made of dead bees embalmed in sulphurous glucose; that Arabian coffee came from Brazil, and Italian olive oil from Mississippi cotton fields; that fancy liquors were made of ethyl alcohol and a chemical filler; and that breakfast foods were underweight in the package and overweight in the stomach. We now know that there was neither a sneeze in the peppers nor a stomach ache in the berries, and that the only genuine full weight articles were the tin cans and pasteboard boxes. We have learned that lamp black, mineral acids, sulphite of soda, coal tar and other embalmatives were used in the manufacture of our popular delicatessen, that the manufacturers bought them at forty dollars per ton in five-ton lots, and that the United States supports from five to fifty times as many doctors per capita as other countries do. All this has become history, and a Chicago man made it.

And now that Chicago has built her own canal, she is ready to give Uncle Sam the benefit of her unique experience. She has made water flow uphill once, and is ready to do it again. Chicago is always ready. She was ready with Wallace and Shonts. When Bigelow tried to paint the White House red, she was ready with Stevens. But what was the use? Her ways and the ways of Congress were different. Congress and the people who trust Congress have been bent upon finding fault and raising difficulties. Canal dirt and critical difficulties have been raised in equal quantities, but not with equal facility. Well-meaning foreigners, who work for the future and live in the past, advised a sea-level canal, knowing that Americans are good at making money and dirt fly, and that Chicago could use the dirt to fill up Lake Michigan. Chicago has known better all the time. The obviating of difficulties and doubts is a Chicago idea. But Chicago is not as yet appreciated; she must make herself heard. However, she has the modesty of youth, and can wait. She who talks last, talks best. In the meantime she is deepening her own canal, and will soon have navigable water between Chicago and Panama, and the world is bound to know it. Her motto is, Know Thyself!—and she lives up to it.

The following resume of the report of the Commercial Club’s Panama commission appeared about a year ago in the Chicago Tribune:

“The sanitary condition in the canal belt is perfect. The house sanitation is above criticism.

“The work of building the canal is progressing with rapidity.

“The labor is efficient, loyal and plentiful.

“The esprit de corps of the whole force under Engineer Stevens was characterized as ‘superb.’

“Organization of the working force is without a flaw.

“All the climatic dangers have been eliminated by the work of Dr. Gorgas, the sanitary expert.

“Panama has been transformed into as healthful a place to live as any of the Southern states.

“The equipment for digging the canal is of the highest type.

“The only criticism made by the various members of the commission may be summed up as follows:

“There is need for more schools.

“There is need for more amusement for the working force.

“Too much of the food served to the diggers is canned. Not enough fresh vegetables are served.

“Although these were the only criticisms heard, the members of the commission were not unanimous. Several held the belief that the food supply could not be improved. It was pointed out that the government is erecting schools rapidly and that there is now under construction several Y. M. C. A. buildings, which will afford the needed recreation.”

If that was so under Engineer Stevens, it is too bad he did not stay down there to keep it so. I hope that the Commercial Club commission were not mere optimists; that they did not mistake entertainments for attainments; that the equatorial sun did not dazzle their Northern eyes; that nature is not deceiving us by a temporary show. The canal work needs Chicago eyes.

Chicago is already recognized as the center of culture of the United States. Fredr. P. Fish, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Boston man, said at a banquet in Chicago:

“Chicago is on the culture center ...... For all time the Middle West as represented by Chicago will remain the center. We must graft the Western point of view on our Eastern ideas if we are to progress.” Surely a wise man and a prophet has come out of the East.

As Chicago is “the culture center” of the United States, the part she played at the last meeting of the Pan-American Medical Congress is not without significance. She sent the largest number of delegates of any city or nation and, if we may believe the evidence of their senses, ran the Congress. If she chooses she can organize a Pan-American Medical Congress all by herself that will run itself. She can furnish all of the scientific essays and discussions, the banquets and the banqueters, the reputation and the reverberation and, if necessary, the attendance and the talking.

However, to come back to where we started from, the Illinois Central, it was that Chicago railway which provided the chief engineer who cut the red tape and started a revolution in methods. He cut the Gordian knot by cutting the whole business. The Illinois Central was, of course, the best railway for me to take for my trip to Panama, but as I was to attend the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association on my way, my Chicago modesty suggested the patronage of a Southern railway, which to my surprise gave me as good a ride as the Illinois Central gives. The only fault I found with it was that its express trains were too accommodating.

For Doctors Only.

The association met at the interesting and mushroom-growing, mining and manufacturing center, Birmingham, Ala., the “New City of the New South,” where men and money are said to make each other—doing it by modern methods, and in large quantities. In this Chicago of the South I hoped to get some pointers on medical, surgical and social customs and curatives appropriate to Southern climates, preparatory to trusting myself in the deadly tropics, where water is laden with germs, the air full of infection and meat is spoiled before it is fit to eat.

And I was not disappointed in my expectations, for the profession of Birmingham, in return for the heavy feast of science afforded by the visitors, gave us a banquet which put our Northern idealizations and realizations to shame. It was celebrated in the immense square banquet hall of Hotel Hillman. The tables were placed around the room near the walls, leaving a square space in the center about forty feet in diameter decorated to represent the Vale of Cashmere. This space was adorned with immense prostrate mirrors for water, a profusion of tubs of tropical plants for islands, electric flashlights above for twinkling stars, and the expansive toastmaster’s face at one side to represent the rising full moon. The flowers and lights and reflections in the central space, bordered by the ornate and sumptuously provisioned tables, constituted one of the most beautiful and intoxicating sights and experiences of the kind I had ever seen and partaken of, and led to the most exuberant five hours’ flow of wit and humor of which I have any personal knowledge.

The toastmaster was a physician who had developed into a politician and post-prandial celebrity, and who made witty speeches enough to render the occasion memorable, even if no one had responded to his toasts. He infused his political inversion and irresponsibility of speech into the minds of those upon whom he called, so that the most solemn and scientific of our Northern laboratory plodders and surgical experts mixed the most unexpected and absurd exaggeration into their carefully prepared scientific and soporific remarks. They forgot to be instructive and became entertaining.

Even the Irish were outclassed. Hereafter I shall always speak of our Southern wit and humor as the most spontaneous and exuberant in the world. The North is witty because it is partly Irish, the South is wittier because it is entirely American.

For Women Only.

Extract from Letter Home.

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 1904.

My dear ——:

The scientific exercises have just concluded and before dressing for the banquet I will make use of the few moments between the diurnal reading and the nocturnal eating of articles, to inform you that you have lost five thousand dollars. Whenever I have insured my life before trusting my fate to the reckless railway management which this country cultivates, and which costs from one to two lives a day in demonstrating how two trains can occupy the same space at the same time, I have found that my life has been spared and my estate has lost the six thousand dollars of insurance money for which I had contracted and paid. I have survived so often that I am beginning to have faith in the insuring method as a life preserver. I know of nothing else that has protected me from the ax of those public executioners facetiously called railways. If the government would only give attention to the regulation of railway accidents as it does to the regulation of railway rates, some good might be done. Railway rates are simply ruinous; railway recklessness is simply regretable.

I am well, excepting a stiffness and soreness in my left ankle, which reminds me that I got away just in time from the frozen North, where people eat and freeze too much and get rheumatism and appendicitis, to visit the Sunny South, where people eat and drink too much and get rheumatism and appendicitis. In the North we think that the cold makes us healthy and hardy, while in the south people think that appetizers and night-caps keep them healthy and happy. And I am temporarily inclined to think that the Southerners must be half right, for my ankle is getting better already.

After a most interesting session devoted to the discussion of obscure and difficult scientific facts and fancies, the society adjourned to the public park to unveil the statue of the late Wm. Elias Davis, the eminent Birmingham surgeon who founded the Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association. It is the second statue that has been erected to a private individual in Alabama, and is also about the second attempt of the kind by our profession in the United States, the statue of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, at Washington being the first. There is also at Washington a statue of Hahnemann, the originator of the once popular fad, homeopathy, placed there by a few fad fellows before they faded out.

But it is growing dark and the band is playing and the festivities are about to begin. We must eat and drink and get merry, which is the lot of the living.

For Children Only.

Extract from Letter Home.

New Orleans, Saturday, Dec. 17, 1904.

Here I am in “Ne Awleens,” where creoles and crocodiles grow. At least, here is all that is left of me. Umbrella, railroad ticket, handkerchief, necktie fastener, appetite, digestion, etc., were lost on the way. My valise was carried away in my car, which was quietly detached from the train at Montgomery while I was walking about the station hunting for my appetite. However, I inquired and ran about and caught the runaway car and recovered my bag and my appetite, but not my umbrella. An honest umbrella does not exist. Who remembers ever having had a lost one come back, or a found one go back? My return ticket was taken up by the conductor at bedtime but was not returned to me in the morning when I arrived in Birmingham. It was discovered on the floor in the train, and left at the ticket office at New Orleans by a stranger. New Orleans has one more honest man than our other large cities, which are diseased spots on the earth’s surface, where human parasites predominate.

However, the railway officials are not the only absent-minded men in the South. The hotel clerk at Birmingham charged me for four days instead of two. I should merely have considered the hotel a high-priced one had not a friend told me that he had been charged for three days instead of two. But after being corrected, my bill was as much too small as at first it was too large. The clerk was made in Birmingham where everything is done by machinery. To get the best service it was necessary to know how to run him. He was one of those original characters who do everything differently—and indifferently.

When I went to breakfast the morning after the banquet, I ordered nothing but coffee and rolls. The negro waiter, who was another original, evidently had also been up late the night before, for when I gave my order he gaped frightfully, and I dodged. He filled it (not his mouth) correctly, but took it to a fat man at the next table, who had ordered a real American breakfast and who scorned to accept mere coffee and rolls, although he looked as if he needed much less breakfast than I did. I then ordered a glass of water without any ice in it, and this was also taken to the large gentleman, who was an ice drinker and refused it. When I had drunk my coffee, glanced at my rolls and paid my bill, my change also went to the stranger; but it also was not enough for him. If I had ordered a large breakfast and had thus made the waiter work, or if I had carried a pistol within sight, he would probably have brought things to me when he forgot to whom they belonged. He bore me no ill-will, however. He was a good waiter, as are all Southern waiters, if only one knows how to keep them awake and interested, and excuse mistakes. I think we will have to send some of our colored waiters from the North down there.

The Southerners are, however, far ahead of us in hospitality, and it is in keeping with this virtue that they drink too often. I do not think that they drink for the sake of drinking, as often as do many of our Northern indulgers, nor do they often drink to get drunk. They drink to be hospitable and encourage one another and whet their appetite. Whether they are thus socially farther advanced than we, and we will follow them, or whether the comparatively large percentage of abstainers in the North is an advance, and they will follow us, is a conundrum. I suppose that they really drink out of conservatism. To abstain would be too radical a change. If liquor could have been emancipated with the slaves and sent over the border to Canada, where they use it to warm their toes and melt their tongues, it would have been better for the South and for us. Perhaps the increase in the consumption of beer in the United States may become our salvation. It means less alcohol and less drunkenness, more gemütlichkeit and less strenuous conviviality, more hobnob livers and fewer concrete kidneys.

There is hope, however, for Southerner and Northerner and Canadian if we may credit an observation of Sydney Smith, made in England a hundred years ago. While speaking of the improvements he had observed during his lifetime he said:

“I forgot to add ... that even in the best society one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk.”

The following quotation of Edward Eggleston is taken from an editorial in American Medicine, January 27, 1906:

“It was estimated early in the eighteenth century that about one building in every ten in Philadelphia was used in some way for the sale of rum, and in Massachusetts, Governor Belcher was afraid that the colony would ‘be deluged with spirituous liquors.’”

How comforting for us to know that our ancestors, from a temperance standpoint, were worse than we are, and that our children in the natural course of events will be better than we are.