ROAD MAKING BY CONVICTS
The Commissary is not wholly popular. Native shop keepers, of course, are against it. For a time Zone employees were permitted to use their books of coupons for purchases in native stores, the storekeepers afterwards exchanging them for cash at the Commissary. This practice for some reason has been ruled out, and the native stores lost a certain amount of trade by the ruling. Nor are the natives the only discontented ones.
Americans in Panama, not in the employ of the Isthmian Canal Commission, are inclined to grumble because they are not permitted to make purchases at the Commissary. That, however, was a matter of serious agreement between the United States and the Republic of Panama. When the United States first announced its purpose of taking over the Zone and building the Canal, there was joy among the business folks of Panama and Colon. They saw fat pickings in purveying the necessities of life for a new population of considerable size. Visions of the return of the flush times of the French engaged their imaginations. All these pleasurable anticipations were doused under the wet blanket of the Commissary into which goes the major part of the spending money of the employees. But there are Americans on the Zone, other than employees and their families, and these by a solemn international compact are handed over to the Panamanian mercies. To buy at the Commissary you must have a coupon book, and without an employee’s number and brass check no coupon book will be forthcoming. Of course many evade the rule by borrowing a book from a friend, but after one has thus evaded the provisions of a treaty, one usually finds there is nothing special to buy after all. My own opinion is that for the necessities of life the Commissary is all very well, but lacks in those superfluities for which every one yearns. The two governments, by the way, which protected the Panama merchants against American competition also protected a handful of Panamanians in their clutch upon certain municipal monopolies. With the completion of its power house at Gatun the Canal Commission will have a great volume of power to sell or waste. Wasted it will have to be, for a group of capitalists control the light and power company in Panama City, and the United States has agreed not to compete with them.
ENTRANCE TO BOUQUETTE VALLEY
COCOANUT PALMS NEAR ANCON
Salaries on the Zone during the period of the “big job” were much higher than in the States, but it is probable that upon reorganization they will be materially reduced for those who remain in permanent service—of these Col. Goethals reckons that there will be for the Canal alone about 2700. If the Panama Railroad organization should be kept up to its present strength there will be in all about 7700 men employed. This is altogether unlikely however. The railroad will no longer have the construction work and débris of the Canal to carry, and the ships will take much of its commercial business away. During the construction period the wages paid were as follows:
| Col. Goethals | $ | 21,000 | ||||
| Other Commissioners, each | 14,000 | |||||
| Clerks | $ | 75 | to | $ | 250 | monthly |
| Foremen | 75 | „ | 275 | „ | ||
| Engineers | 225 | „ | 600 | „ | ||
| Draftsmen | 100 | „ | 250 | „ | ||
| Master mechanics | 225 | „ | 275 | „ | ||
| Physicians | 150 | „ | 300 | „ | ||
| Teachers | 60 | „ | 110 | „ | ||
| Policemen | 80 | „ | 107 | .50„ | ||
The minimum wage of a gold employee is $75 a month; the maximum, except in the case of heads of departments, $600. The hourly pay in some sample trades was, blacksmith, 30 to 75 cents; bricklayers, 65 cents; carpenters, 32 to 65 cents; iron workers, 44 to 70 cents; painters, 32 to 65 cents; plumbers, 32 to 75 cents. In the higher paid trades steam engineers earned $75 to $200 a month; locomotive engineers from $125 to $210, and steam shovel engineers $210 to $240.