BAS OBISPO AS THE FRENCH LEFT IT
The saloons of the Zone, viewed superficially, seemed to be conducted for the convenience and comfort of the day laboring class—the silver employees—mainly. The police regulations made any particular attractiveness other than that supplied by their stock in trade quite impossible. They could not have chairs or tables—“perpendicular drinking” was the rigid rule. They could not have cozy corners, snuggeries, or screens—all drinking must be done at the bar and in full view of the passers-by. Perhaps these rules discouraged the saloonkeepers from any attempt to attract the better class of custom. At any rate the glitter of mirrors and of cut glass was notably absent and the sheen of mahogany was more apparent in the complexions of the patrons than on the woodwork of the bar. They were frankly rough, frontier whisky shops, places that cater to men who want drink rather than companionship, and who when tired of standing at the bar can get out. Accordingly most of the saloons were in the day laborer quarters, and it was seldom indeed that a “gold employee” or salaried man above the grade of day laborer was seen in one. The saloons paid a high license tax which was appropriated to the schools of the Zone, and they were shut sharp at eleven o’clock because, as the chief of police explained, “we want all the laborers fit and hearty for work when the morning whistle blows”.
CONVICTS BUILDING A COMMISSION ROAD
The excellence of these roads should be an object lesson to Central America
That is the keynote of all law and rule on the Zone—to keep the employees fit for work. If morals and sobriety are advanced why so much the better, but they are only by-products of the machine which is set to grind out so many units of human labor per working day.
Unhappily all the safeguards made and provided on the Zone are missing in the code by which the saloons of Colon and Panama are regulated—if a wide-open policy is to be described as regulation. These two towns at the two ends of the Panama Railroad are, one or the other, within an hour’s ride of any village on the line. Their saloons are many, varied and largely disreputable. The more sequestered ones have attached to them the evils which commonly hang about low drinking places, and the doors swing hospitably open to the resident of the Zone, whether he be a Canal worker or a soldier or marine from one of the camps.
The uniformed men are more in evidence than they ought to be—more than they would be if an erratic and uninformed public sentiment at home had not led Congress to close the army canteens in which the soldier could have his beer or light wine amid orderly surroundings. If the good ladies of the W. C. T. U. who hold the abolition of the army canteen one of their triumphs could see the surroundings into which the enlisted man is driven, and know the sort of stuff he is led to drink, they might doubt the wisdom of their perfected work. But as one after another Secretaries of War and Generals of the Army have unavailingly pleaded for a return to the canteen system, it is unlikely that facts presented by a mere writer will have any effect on the narrow illiberality which prompted the Congressional action.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
CONSTRUCTION WORK SHOWING CONCRETE CARRIERS AND MOULDS
The buckets containing concrete are controlled from a station in the steel scaffolding—run out, stopped and emptied at the proper point