When girls are about twelve years old the mothers, tired of supporting them, for that task is seldom assumed by the fathers, take them to town on the first market day. The little produce being sold, the pair proceed from house to house seeking some “kine missus” who will take a school girl. In the end the child becomes the property of whoever will clothe, feed and shelter her. Pay is not expected, though when she grows helpful she is sometimes given an occasional gift of silver. The rights of the mistress are patriarchal, and whether or not she spoils the child the rod is seldom spared. When she gets to be seventeen or so the girl suddenly disappears in the night, with a bundle of her clothing. The inevitable man has crossed her path and she has gone to be his companion and slave.
ONE WAY OF CARRYING BANANAS
At the docks of the United Fruit Co., mechanical carriers, so perfected as not to bruise the fruit, have replaced the leisurely negro
When you think of it there is not much economic change in her situation. She worked for her mistress for nothing—she does the same for her husband, or more commonly for her “friend.” He may work spasmodically for her when the need of actual money compels, but as a rule she is the wage earner. Always she tends the little garden and takes its slender produce to market. Sometimes she joins the coal-bearing Amazons down at the steamship docks. Often she goes back to the family which brought her up and offers her services anew—this time for a wage. Every house has two or three boxes a few feet away serving for servants’ quarters, but a girl of this type will decline these, renting instead a shack in a “yard,” taking there daily the materials for her dinner usually provided by her mistress. At its door, in a brazier, or a tiny stove, she will cook the meal for the idle “husband” and the children who arrive with mechanical regularity. After supper there is the gossip of the dozen or more women in the yard.
The rebuilding of Kingston, compelled by the earthquake, is proceeding apace. The town will lose much in quaintness, one can see that by the ruins of some of the older structures in which stately colonial outlines can be traced. But it will gain in adaptation to the climate and the ever-present earthquake menace. The main business street—King Street, of course, being a British colony—is lined on either side with arcaded concrete buildings of a uniform type. Ceilings are high, windows large and one may walk the three long blocks of the busiest business section without emerging from the shady arcades. The government buildings, occupying two full squares and setting well back from the street, are of a type that suggests the streets of India, and are also of reinforced concrete. It is the belief of the authorities that the comparative lightness of this material coupled with its resistant powers will enable it to survive any earthquake. The whole period of the shock of 1907 barely exceeded ten seconds, but its wreckage will not be repaired in ten years.
“GWINE TO DE BIG JOB”
The cargo that we have taken on from the spice-scented dock is technically called a “cargo of black ivory,” made up of negroes sailing for Colon to work on the “big job.” Good-natured, grinning negroes these, though I have heard that, on the smaller ships that carry them by hundreds for the 500 miles for five dollars each, they sometimes riot and make trouble. With us they were inoffensive, though it is perhaps as well that the passenger quarters are to windward of them. The religious sentiment is strong upon them and as the sun goes down in the waste of waters the wail of hymn tunes sung to the accompaniment of a fiddle and divers mouth organs rises over the whistle of the wind and the rumble of the machinery. One can but reflect that ten years ago, before the coming of Col. Gorgas and his sanitation system, three out of five of these happy, cheerful blacks would never return alive from the Canal Zone. Today they invite no more risk than a business man in Chicago going to his office, and when their service is ended the United States government is obligated to return them to Jamaica where for a time their money will make them the idols of the markets, lanes and yards.