But it has been good for the supreme purpose of digging the Canal and that was the one end sought.
YOUNG AMERICA AT PLAY
Let me return from this excursion into the domain of matrimonial philosophy and take up once again the account of the population of the Zone and its characteristics. It must be remembered that a very large part of the unskilled labor on the Canal is done by negroes from Jamaica and Barbadoes. But not all of it. The cleavage was not so distinct that the skilled labor could be classed as white, and the unskilled black, for among the latter were many Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians and the peoples of Southwestern Europe. The brilliant idea occurred to someone in the early days of the American campaign that as the West Indians, Panamanians and Latin-Americans generally were accustomed to do their monetary thinking in terms of silver all day labor might be put on the silver pay roll; the more highly paid workers on a gold pay roll. Thenceforward the metal line rather than the color line was drawn. The latter indeed would have been difficult as the Latin-American peoples never drew it very definitely in their marital relations, with the result that a sort of twilight zone made any very positive differentiation between whites and blacks practically impossible. So despite Bobby Burns’ historic dictum—
“the gowd is but the guinea’s stamp
The man’s the man for a’ that”,
on the Zone the man is silver or gold according to the nature of his work and the size of his wages. Of gold employees there were in 1913, 5362, of silver 31,298, so it is easy to see which pay roll bore the names of the aristocracy.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
HINDOO MERCHANTS AT A ZONE TOWN
Practically all of the gold force are Americans. It is for them, in the main, that the cool, dark green houses with white trimmings, and all carefully screened in, are built. For them the buyers of the Commissary ransack the markets of the world, buying only the best. For them the Hotel Tivoli at Ancon and the Washington Hotel at Colon were built, though it is true that tourist trade rather than the patronage of the Canal workers supports them. For them are eighteen hotels, so-called—really only eating houses—scattered along the line, serving excellent meals for thirty cents each. Indeed, most of the features of Isthmian life which catch the eye of the tourist and make him think existence there quite ideal are planned to make the place attractive enough to keep the gold employees on the job. To him that hath shall be given, and it required greater inducements to anchor to a desk in Panama the man capable of earning a good salary at home than it did to hold the negro from Jamaica or Martinique, or the Spaniard or Italian steady to his job.