INTERIOR OF GATUN Y. M. C. A. CLUB
Social life on the Zone is rather complex. At the apex, of course, are the Commissioners and their families. The presence of an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States in Panama City adds another factor to the always vexed question of precedence, while the maintenance of a military post with a full regiment, and a marine camp with a battalion does not help to simplify matters. Social affiliations among those not in the Commission or the Army set are based with primitive simplicity upon the amount of the husband’s earnings. One advantage of this system is that it is based upon perfectly accurate information, for everybody on the Zone works for the Commission and the payrolls are periodically published. But it jars the ingenuous outsider to have a woman, apparently without a trace of snobbery, remark casually of another, “well, we don’t see much of her. Her husband is in the $2000 class you know”.
Y. M. C. A. CLUB AT GATUN
These clubs are the true centers of the social life of the zone
Social life is further complicated by the fact that the people of the Zone came from all parts of the United States, with a few from Europe. They have no common home associations. When the settlement of the Zone first began the women were dismally lonely, and the Commission called in a professional organizer of women’s clubs to get them together. Clubs were organized from Ancon to Cristobal and federated with Mrs. Goethals for President and Mrs. Gorgas for Vice-President. Culebra entertained Gorgona with tea and Tolstoi, and Empire challenged Corozal to an interchange of views on eugenics over the coffee cups and wafers. In a recent number of The Canal Record, the official paper of the Zone, I find nearly a page given over to an account of the activities of the women’s societies and church work. It appears that there were in April, 1913, twenty-five societies of various sorts existing among the women on the Zone. The Canal Zone Federation of Women’s Clubs had five subsidiary clubs with a membership of fifty-eight. There were twelve church organizations with a membership of 239. Nearly 290 women were enrolled in auxiliaries to men’s organizations. But these organizations were rapidly breaking up even then and the completion of the Canal will witness their general disintegration. They served their purpose. Only a mind that could mix the ideal with the practical could have foreseen that discussions of the Baconian Cipher, or the philosophy of Nietzsche might have a bearing on the job of digging a canal, but whoever conceived the idea was right.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
MARINE POST AT CAMP ELLIOTT
A force of about 500 marines will be kept permanently on the Zone
Photo by Underwood & Underwood