The job he obtained seemed at the outset quite ideal. In the States he could earn about $225 a month. The day he took his number on the Canal Zone he began to draw $250 a month. And that $250 was quite as good as $300 at home. To begin with he had no room-rent to pay, but was assigned comfortable if not elegant quarters, which he shared with one other man; carefully screened and protected from all insects by netting, lighted by electricity, with a shower-bath handy and all janitor or chambermaid service free. Instead of a boarding-house table or a cheap city restaurant, he took his meals at a Commission hotel at a charge of thirty cents a meal. People say that the fare could not be duplicated in the States for seventy-five cents, but I prefer to quote that statement rather than to make it on my own authority. By taking two meals a day and making the third of fruit, or a sandwich at a Y. M. C. A. clubhouse, he would cut his restaurant charges to $18 a month; the whole three meals would come to $27.80, so however voracious his appetite Bachelor Jack’s charges for food are light and for shelter nothing. Clothing troubles him little; his working clothes of khaki, and several suits of white cotton duck will cost him less than one woolen suit such as he must have “up home”. All seasons are alike on the Zone, and there is no need of various types of hats, overcoats and underwear.
All in all Bachelor Jack thinks he has come in for a good thing. Moreover, he gets a vacation of forty-two days on pay, a sick leave of thirty days on pay—and the sanitarium on the Island of Taboga being a very pleasant resort few fail to have slight ailments requiring precisely thirty days’ rest—and nine holidays also with pay. All in all Jack is neither overworked nor underpaid. His letters to his chums at home tell no stories of adversity but rather indicate that he is enjoying exceedingly good times. With reasonable care he will have ample means for really lavish expenditures on his vacation. Indeed it would require rather unreasonable effort to spend an engineer’s salary on the zone unless it went in riotous living in Panama City or Colon.
But a vision of better things opens before him—is always spread out before his enraptured vision. His friend who came down a year or two before him and who is earning only a little bit more money sets a standard of living which arouses new ambitions in Jack’s mind. His friend is married. Instead of one room shared with one or more tired engineers subject to grouches, he has a four-room apartment with bath—really a five-room flat, for the broad sheltered balconies shaded by vines form the real living room. Instead of eating at the crowded, noisy hotels, he has his quiet dining-room, and menus dictated by individual taste instead of by the mechanical methods of a Chief of Subsistence. Practically everything that can be done for the household by official hands is done free by the Commission—free rent, free light, free janitor service, free distilled water, free fuel for cooking—the climate saves that bugbear of married life at home, the annual coal bill. Moreover the flat or house comes to its tenant freely furnished. The smallest equipment supplied consists of a range, two kitchen chairs, a double bed, a mosquito bar, two pillows, a chiffonier, a double dresser, a double mattress, a dining table, six dining chairs, a sideboard, a bed-room mat, two center tables and three wicker porch chairs. This equipment is for the moderately paid employees who live in four-family quarters. The outfit is made more comprehensive as salaries increase.
IN THE LOBBY OF A Y. M. C. A. CLUB
Housekeepers must buy their own tableware, bedclothes, light furniture and bric-à-brac. But here again the paternal Commission comes to the rescue, for these purchases, and all others needful for utility, comfort or beauty, are made at the Commissary stores, where goods are sold practically at cost. Moreover, there is no protective tariff collected on imported goods and it would take another article to relate the rhapsodies of the Zone women over the prices at which they can buy Boulton tableware, Irish linen, Swiss and Scandinavian delicatessen, and French products of all sorts. And finally, to round out the privileges of married life on the Zone, medical service is free and little Tommy’s slightest ill may be prescribed for without fear of the doctor’s bill—though, indeed, the children you see romping in the pleasant places do not look as though they ever needed a prescription or a pill.
So Jack looks from his bachelor quarters over toward Married Row and it looks good to him. His amusements are but limited and his life does verge on the monotonous. His only place of recreation is the Y. M. C. A., which, while filling the want admirably week days, is a bit solemn Sundays—his only day off. The only theaters on the Zone are at Colon and Panama, and those are in the main only exhibitions of “movies.” Moreover, the Panama Railroad has thoughtfully arranged its schedule so that no Zone employee can go to the theater save on Saturday or Sunday night without staying out all night. As Jack smokes in his half a room (perhaps only a quarter) or wrangles with his roommate for place at the table lighted by one electric light his mind naturally turns toward the comforts enjoyed by his married friends, and he sees himself greeted on his return from toil in the jungle or the “Cut” by a cool, trim divinity in white, instead of by a lumbering giant in muddy khaki, as weary, hungry and grouchy as he.
STREET SCENE IN CULEBRA
Were he at home prudence would compel the consideration of cost. Here the paternal Commission puts a premium on matrimony. Very often, so often, indeed, that it is almost the rule, Jack returns from his first vacation home with a wife, or else coming alone is followed by the girl, and all goes merry as a marriage bell. But the time comes when Jack, a bachelor no longer, but a husband and perhaps a father, must leave the Isthmus. That time must come for all of them when the work is done. Enough, however, have already gone home to tell sad tales of the difficulty of readjusting themselves to normal conditions. Down comes the salary at least twenty-five per cent, up go living expenses at least thirty per cent. Nothing at home is free—coal, light, rent, and medical service least of all. Where Jack used to be lordly, he must be parsimonious; where he once bought untaxed in the markets of the world, he must buy in the most expensive of all market places, the United States. He absolutely cannot maintain at home the standard of life he adopted here, and the change with the endless little economies and pettinesses it entails gets on the nerves of both husband and wife. To start life thriftily and learn to be free-handed as prosperity increases is the natural line of development and does not mar happiness. But to be forced to pinch after a long period of lavishness is wearing. Back to the Zone come so many stories of romances begun by the Canal and ended in the divorce courts that one wonders if the paternalism of the Commission has been good for those who enjoyed it.