The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise

by J. Saxon Mills

Another remarkable evidence of how the canal administration stands in loco parentis to all its work-people is that it has provided twenty-six churches and maintains fifteen ministers of religion. This is interesting because it shows how the state, when conducted on common-sense principles, may provide for religious instruction without causing any offence or inflicting any injustice. The administration treated all denominations with perfect impartiality. Of the fifteen ministers it supported, four were Episcopalian, four Baptist, three Roman Catholic, one Wesleyan, and one Presbyterian. But this was not the entire provision of churches and chapels on the isthmus. There were fourteen other churches not under direct government control, but assisted by the government in many ways. Of the forty in all, thirteen were Episcopalian, seven Baptist, seven Roman Catholic, two Wesleyan, and eight undenominational.

As I have pointed out, the moral sanitation of the isthmus was cared for as well as the physical. For example, in September 1905, a man living in the canal zone was charged with running a roulette table. He pleaded that he owned a concession from the Republic of Panama. That excuse was not allowed, and he was sentenced to fine and imprisonment for transgressing one of the canal zone laws. Gambling, which had always been one of the Panamanian vices, was quite forbidden within the zone. Remembering the descriptions given of the state of morals at the isthmus during the French occupation, one cannot help being struck with the contrast afforded by the American regime. Criticisms of the canal scheme, of climatic and social conditions in the zone, appeared in the early days from time to time. Mr. Johnson quotes an example which is so amusing as to bear repetition:—

A land as feverish to the imagination as to the body is Panama. It is a land making a fitting environment to the deeds of conspiracy, piracy, loot, cruelty, and blood that have principally made its history for centuries. This gloomy, God-forsaken isthmus is a nightmare region. One descriptive writer has truly said of it that it is a land where the flowers have no odour, the birds no song; where the men are without honour and the women without virtue. He is not far wrong. The birds, brilliant as is their plumage, have no musical notes. The dense forests teem with bright-hued parrots, parroquets, and other birds, which squeak and scream but do not sing. There are beautiful orchids to be found in the swamps and jungles—fair to look upon, but they have no odour. The oranges have green skins instead of golden, the plantains must be fried to make them fit to eat, the reptiles and insects are often venomous, and myriads of parasites are ever ready to invade the human body and bring disease and death. In the atmosphere itself is something suggestive of the days of the old pirates and their fiendish cruelties and orgies. There is no life in the air; it is depressing, damp, miasmatic, and intensely hot. For a great part of the year thunder-showers succeed each other all day long and half the night, with sheet lightning all around the horizon after dark. There is practically no twilight, day passing almost instantly into night. It is no wonder that this uncanny land has made its residents degenerate into plotters, revolutionists, murderers, and thieves. Its aspect is one of darkness, treachery, and curse.

President Roosevelt had something to say on these recurring criticisms in a message to Congress in January 1906. He wrote:—

From time to time various publications have been made, and from time to time in the future various similar publications, doubtless, will be made, purporting to give an account of jobbing or immorality or inefficiency or misery as obtaining on the isthmus. I have carefully examined into each of these accusations which seemed worthy of attention. In every instance the accusations have proved to be without foundation in any shape or form. They spring from several sources. Sometimes they take the shape of statements by irresponsible investigators of a sensational habit of mind, incapable of observing or repeating with accuracy what they see, and desirous of obtaining notoriety by widespread slander. More often they originate with or are given currency by individuals with a personal grievance. The sensation mongers, both those who stay at home and those who visit the isthmus, may ground their accusations on false statements by some engineer who, having applied for service on the commission and been refused such service, now endeavours to discredit his successful competitors, or by some lessee or owner of real estate who has sought action or inaction by the commission to increase the value of his lots, and is bitter because the commission cannot be used for such purposes, or on the tales of disappointed bidders for contracts, or of office-holders who have proved incompetent, or who have been suspected of corruption and dismissed, or who have been overcome by panic and have fled from the isthmus. Every specific charge relating to jobbery, to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come, has been immediately investigated, and in no single instance have the statements of these sensation mongers and the interested complainants behind them proved true. The only discredit adhering to these false accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who, to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the completion of the great work in which both the honour and the interest of America are so deeply involved. It matters not whether those guilty of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and folly, or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or political grudge.

The soundness and purity of the canal zone administration has long ago been established beyond all question and cavil. The Americans have given an example to the world how a great work of this kind, involving the gathering together of a large multitude of workers from many races and nations, may be carried on without those moral and physical evils which have marked too many enterprises of the kind. In fact, the way in which the Americans have arranged and controlled the life of the canal zone stands quite as much to their credit as the skill and determination they have shown in the actual construction of the canal.

But we have said nothing yet about the workers themselves on the canal. The Americans, on taking over the work from the French, found about 700 West Indian negroes engaged in excavating the Culebra Cut. From this contingent as a nucleus a much larger army of workers was built up. The numbers rapidly grew. In December 1905 there were 5,000 employees; in 1906, 24,000; in 1908, 31,000; the highest figure being reached in 1910, when there were 50,000 workers available for duty. Of the employees, speaking roughly, one-seventh have been white Americans, all, of course, skilled workers, one-seventh European labourers, and five-sevenths West Indian negroes. The British West Indies, especially Barbados, have continued to be the main source of labour supply. But the West Indian at the outset left a great deal to be desired in his work and efficiency. In 1905 complaints were made on the subject by the chairman of the canal commission to the President of the United States. In 1906 the chief engineer reported:—

The criticisms of the character of the common labour which were made in last year's report still hold good. Our labour consists almost entirely of West Indian negroes, and their efficiency is very low, although we have a few of this class who are fairly steady workers—by this it is meant that they average to work all the time, but the great body of them do not. The majority work just long enough to get money to supply their actual bodily necessities, with the result that, while we are quartering and caring for twenty odd thousand of these people, our daily effective force is many thousands less. Preliminary steps have been taken toward securing a large number of Spanish labourers direct from the north-west provinces of Spain, also for the securing of a trial shipment of Cantonese Chinese, as it is believed that the introduction of labourers of different nationalities will be beneficial.

The Chinese project was frustrated through the influence of trade unions in the United States, backed up by representations from the Pacific coast states. The West Indian labourer quickly began to earn a better report. It was found that his inefficiency was largely due to insufficient and improper food. He speedily improved when turned on to the generous and nourishing diet provided in the zone. In order to be certain that he had the full advantage of the provided meals, the price of them was very wisely deducted from his wages. Moreover, the American foremen soon began to learn that the men from Barbados, Trinidad, and elsewhere were British subjects and could not be treated as though they were southern state "coons." With a better understanding and more sympathetic treatment of the black employees, much more work was got out of them, and a good deal of the credit for the building of the Panama Canal is due to the 30,000 workers[14] who have been recruited mainly from the British islands in the West Indies.

But the southern European contingent has been found to be excellent material. It was thought that the work-people of Spain, Italy, and Greece would take more easily to navvying work in the tropics than people from more northerly regions of the temperate zone. The results were, on the whole, satisfactory. The Greeks were, it is true, not equal to the Italians or the Spaniards, and very few of them were recruited for canal work. The Italians, also, though several thousands of them were engaged, proved rather hard to handle. They were bitten with collectivist ideas, and inclined to act on trade union lines. The Spaniard was, in every way, the most satisfactory workman introduced from Europe. He was taken in an unsophisticated state directly from his village in Galicia or Castile. He was tractable and orderly, and quick and ready to learn. Hard labour under the tropical sun and in the hot damp of the isthmus seemed to have no exhausting or enervating influence whatever upon him. The Spaniard shows no sign of settling down on the isthmus. He either goes home with his savings or on to railway work in Brazil. Some 9,000 have been directly recruited, but this number does not include all the Spanish labourers whose muscle has helped to the completion of this great work.