Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers

by Harry Alverson Franck

So one day "Scotty" and I descended at the girderless railroad bridge and, taking each one side of the canal, set out to canvass its every nook and cranny. The canal as it then stood was about the width of two city blocks, an immense chasm piled and tumbled with broken rock and earth, in the center a ditch already filled with grimy water, on either side several levels of rough rock ledges with sheer rugged stone faces; for the hills were being cut away in layers each far above the other. High above us rose the jagged walls of the "cut" with towns hanging by their fingernails all along its edge, and ahead in the abysmal, smoky distance the great channel gashed through Culebra mountain.

The different levels varied from ten to twenty feet one above the other, each with a railroad on it, back and forth along which incessantly rumbled and screeched dirt-trains full or empty, halting before the steam-shovels, that shivered and spouted thick black smoke as they ate away the rocky hills and cast them in great giant handsful on the train of one-sided flat-cars that moved forward bit by bit at the flourish of the conductor's yellow flag. Steam-shovels that seemed human in all except their mammoth fearless strength tore up the solid rock with snorts of rage and the panting of industry, now and then flinging some troublesome, stubborn boulder angrily upon the cars. Yet they could be dainty as human fingers too, could pick up a railroad spike or push a rock gently an inch further across the car. Each was run by two white Americans, or at least what would prove such when they reached the shower-bath in their quarters—the craneman far out on the shovel arm, the engineer within the machine itself with a labyrinth of levers demanding his unbroken attention. Then there was of course a gang of negroes, firemen and the like, attached to each shovel.

All the day through I climbed and scrambled back and forth between the different levels, dodging from one track to another and along the rocky floor of the canal, needing eyes and ears both in front and behind, not merely for trains but for a hundred hidden and unknown dangers to keep the nerves taut. Now and then a palatial motorcar, like some rail-road breed of taxi, sped by with its musical insistent jingling bells, usually with one of the countless parties of government guests or tourists in spotless white which the dry season brings. Dirt-trains kept the right of way, however, for the Work always comes first at Panama. Or it might be the famous "yellow car" itself with members of the Commission. Once it came all but empty and there dropped off inconspicuously a man in baggy duck trousers, a black alpaca coat of many wrinkles; and an unassuming straw hat, a white-haired man with blue—almost babyish blue-eyes, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he strolled about with restless yet quiet energy. There has been no flash and glitter of military uniforms on the Zone since the French sailed for home, but every one knew "the Colonel" for all that, the soldier who has never "seen service," who has never heard the shrapnel scream by overhead, yet to whom the world owes more thanks than six conquering generals rolled into one.

Scores of "trypod" and "Star" drills, whole battalions of deafening machines run by compressed air brought from miles away, are pounding and grinding and jamming holes in the living rock. After them will presently come nonchalantly strolling along gangs of the ubiquitous black "powder-men" and carelessly throw down boxes of dynamite and pound the drill-holes full thereof and tamp them down ready to "blow" at 11:30 and 5:30 when the workmen are out of range,—those mighty explosions that twelve times a week set the porch chairs of every I.C.C. house on the Isthmus to rocking, and are heard far out at sea.

Anywhere near the drills is such a roaring and jangling that I must bellow at the top of my voice to be heard at all. The entire gamut of sound-waves surrounds and enfolds me, and with it all the powerful Atlantic breeze sweeps deafeningly through the channel. Down in the bottom of the canal if one step behind anything that shuts off the breeze it is tropically hot; yet up on the edge of the chasm above, the trees are always nodding and bowing before the ceaseless wind from off the Caribbean. Scores of "switcheros" drowse under their sheet-iron wigwams, erected not so much as protection from the sun, for the drowsers are mostly negroes and immune to that, as from young rocks that the dynamite blasts frequently toss a quarter-mile. Then over it all hang heavy clouds of soft-coal dust from trains and shovels, shifting down upon the black, white and mixed, and the enumerator alike; a dirty, noisy, perilous, enjoyable job.

Everywhere are gangs of men, sometimes two or three gangs working together at the same task. Shovel gangs, track gangs, surfacing gangs, dynamite gangs, gangs doing everything imaginable with shovel and pick and crowbar, gangs down on the floor of the canal, gangs far up the steep walls of cut rock, gangs stretching away in either direction till those far off look like upright bands of the leaf-cutting ants of Panamanian jungles; gangs nearly all, whatever their nationality, in the blue shirts and khaki trousers of the Zone commissary, giving a peculiar color scheme to all the scene.

Now and then the boss is a stony-eyed American with a black cigar clamped between his teeth. More often he is of the same nationality as the workers, quite likely from the same town, who jabbers a little imitation English. Which is one of the reasons why a force of "time inspectors" is constantly dodging in and out over the job, time-book and pencil in hand, lest some fellow-townsman of the boss be earning his $1.50 a day under the shade of a tree back in the jungle. Here are Basques in their boinas, preferring their native "Euscarra" to Spanish; French "niggers" and English "niggers" whom it is to the interest of peace and order to keep as far apart as possible; occasionally a few sunburned blond men in a shovel gang, but they prove to be Teutons or Scandinavians; laborers of every color and degree—except American laborers, more than conspicuous by their absence. For the American negro is an untractable creature in large numbers, and the caste system that forbids white Americans from engaging in common labor side by side with negroes is to be expected in an enterprise of which the leaders are not only military men but largely southerners, however many may be shivering in the streets of Chicago or roaming hungrily through the byways of St. Louis. It is well so, perhaps. None of us who feels an affection for the Zone would wish to see its atmosphere lowered from what it is to the brutal depths of our railroad construction camps in the States.

The attention of certain state legislatures might advantageously be called to the Zone Spaniard's drinking-cup. It is really a tin can on the end of a long stick, cover and all. The top is punched sieve-like that the water may enter as it is dipped in the bucket with which the water-boy strains along. In the bottom is a single small hole out of which spurts into the drinker's mouth a little stream of water as he holds it high above his head, as once he drank wine from his leather bota in far-off Spain. Many a Spanish gang comes entirely from the same town, notably Salamanca or Avila. I set them to staring and chattering by some simple remark about their birthplace: "Fine view from the Paseo del Rastro, eh?" "Does the puente romano still cross the river?" But I had soon to cease such personalities, for picks and shovels lay idle as long as I remained in sight and Uncle Sam was the loser.

So many were the gangs that I advanced barely a half-mile during this first day and, lost in my work, forgot the hour until it was suddenly recalled by the insistent, strident tooting of whistles that forewarns the setting-off of the dynamite charges from the little red electric boxes along the edge of the "cut." I turned back toward Paraiso and, all but stumbling over little red-wound wires everywhere on the ground, dodging in and out, running forward, halting or suddenly retreating, I worked my way gradually forward, while all the world about me was upheaving and spouting and belching forth to the heavens, as if I had been caught in the crater of a volcano as it suddenly erupted without warning. The history of Panama is strewn with "dynamite stories." Even the French had theirs in their sixteen per cent, of the excavation of Culebra; in American annals there is one for every week. Three days before, one of my Empire friends set off one afternoon for a stroll through the "cut" he had not seen for a year. In a retired spot he came upon two negroes pounding an irregular bundle. "What you doing, boys?" he inquired with idle curiosity. "Jes' a brealdn' up dis yere dynamite, boss," languidly answered one of the blacks. My friend was one of those apprehensive, over-cautious fellows so rare on the Zone. Without so much as taking his leave he set off at a run. Some two car-lengths beyond an explosion pitched him forward and all but lifted him off his feet. When he looked back the negroes had left. Indeed neither of them has reported for work since.

Then there was "Mac's" case. In his ambition for census efficiency "Mac" was in the habit of stopping workmen wherever he met them. One day he encountered a Jamaican carrying a box of dynamite on his head and, according to his custom, shouted: