The Gold Employee means, on the face of it, the man or woman whose salary is calculated in United States currency, while the Silver Employee is the labourer, white or black, who works at so much an hour, calculated in the currency of Panama, in which a dollar is equal to just half the American or gold dollar. But to all intents and purposes, so far as I could make out, the Gold Employee is the white American, the Silver Employee is everybody else. There are 6000 American employees of the Commission; and, counting officials of the Panama Railway and women and children, there are altogether about 12,000 Americans on the Zone. The total number of employees varies considerably, but is somewhere about 40,000.
The second institution to which my friend introduced me was a Commissary Store, of which there are half a dozen in the Zone. In this large and roomy building commodities of every description are dispensed to employees of the Commission. I say dispensed, for nothing is bought for money. |A Socialistic Store.| Everything is paid for by coupons various values, issued to employees alone—the object being to ensure that none but they shall benefit by the institution. As the region is almost wholly unproductive, everything has to be imported from New York, New Orleans, and other points of the United States, from one to two thousand miles distant—the “perishables” being handled by a magnificent system of cold storage. As everything is supplied virtually at cost price, the Canal employee on the average pays for what he consumes rather less than he would in New York.
“But, my dear sir,” I said, as we left the Commissary Store, “this is sheer unmitigated State Socialism.”
“I know it,” he replied, “but I have always thought that Socialism under Carlyle’s ‘benevolent despot’ would be no bad thing. And we flatter ourselves that, in the I.C.C., the benevolent despot has, for once, been discovered.”
Our motor had by this time appeared—a motor running on the railroad—and we set off. |The Culebra Cut.| First we ran down the ordinary passenger track to Las Cascadas; and there, by means of an ingenious portable turntable, we faced about and got ourselves switched on to rails leading to the Cut. Times out of number had our motor-man to jump off and turn the points so as to run us into a siding while some huge “dirt train” rumbled past. The rule is that everything must give place to a “business” train. Only for the President of the United States was the line cleared.
Up in the North, an old soldier of the Union, now one of the most delightful of scholars and critics—why should I not name Professor Lounsbury?—had said to me, “I thought that the charge of Pickett’s Brigade, on the third day at Gettysburg, was the greatest sight that I ever had seen or would see; but the Culebra Cut really rivalled it.” I was curious to see where any analogy could lie between two such disparate spectacles; and, frankly, I could find it only in the cannonade of dynamite through which we had occasionally to run. But unquestionably the Cut is a wonderful spectacle, a tremendous demonstration of human and mechanical energy.
It is simply the transformation of a mountain into a valley. Imagine all the biggest railway cuttings you have ever seen ranged into a sort of giant stairway, along the two sides of a great prism-shaped valley; and imagine all these cuttings, at a dozen different levels, being daily and hourly deepened by an army of machines and men. The activity is enormous. Here we have whole companies of drills of various kinds boring the rock to be charged with dynamite; a little farther on we pause at a given signal, and presently come five or six detonations, one after the other, like a sharp discharge of artillery. The usual charge is about three hundred pounds; but on one occasion twenty-three tons were used in a single explosion, to blow away a whole hillside. When the ground has been loosened, or “fired,” as they call it, along comes that mammoth earth-eater, the steam-shovel, with its attendant train of dirt-cars, digs its shining steel teeth into the hillside, and munches it up at the rate of five cubic yards to a mouthful. These giant mouthfuls it spits out again one by one into the flat “Lidgertwood” cars on the adjoining track, five or six mouthfuls (I forget the exact number), constituting a carload. The train of some fifteen cars is, in fact, a long platform on wheels; for iron aprons join car to car and make the platform continuous. The cars, moreover, have but one side, so that, when the train arrives at the dumping-ground, a sort of steam plough is dragged by a cable along its whole length, and its huge burden of rock and soil is discharged in a very few minutes. For another consistency of soil, a tilting form of dirt-car is used. In short, no possible time- or labour-saving device is neglected. Even the shifting of temporary railway tracks, which is constantly required, is effected by a machine, which lifts whole sections of rails and “ties,” and deposits them in their new location.
Along the whole length of the Cut we made our way, zig-zagging from level to level. |Engineering Difficulties.| When we were in the very bottom of the “prism,” and the two sides of the eviscerated mountain were towering above us, I inquired what was to be the ultimate surface level of the water, and found that the surface level had not yet been reached by many feet.
For about half its length, the Canal will not have the aspect of a canal at all, but of a great lake. The low lands of the northern side of the Isthmus are to be entirely flooded by the damming at Gatun of the Chagres river. This lake-reservoir will have a surface area of about one hundred and ten square miles, and will serve as a regulator of the water supply. For instance, such a sudden rainfall as would cause the Chagres river to rise thirty-five feet in twenty-four hours, will raise the water in the dam only about three inches.
It is whispered in Colon that there is still one great engineering difficulty in the way of the enterprise, and that is to find an adequate foundation for the huge Gatun Dam. Whether such a difficulty exists I cannot say, but, if it does, I am very sure it will be overcome. Croakers also declare that it is well known that the proposed width of the locks at Gatun and La Boca (100 feet) will be quite inadequate for the greater Dreadnoughts and Lusitanias of the future, but that the engineers dare not tackle a larger “proposition.” These are very likely the idlest of rumours. The quidnuncs of Colon do not observe the admirable resolution adopted by the Cristobal Women’s Club, namely, “That every club-woman in the Canal Zone constitute herself a committee of one to foster favourable instead of adverse criticism of the conditions of the Zone and of the Isthmus of Panama.”