The Zone police force compels admiration. It is not spectacular, but is eminently business-like and with the heterogeneous population with which it has to deal it has no doubt been busy. At the outset President Roosevelt sent down to command it an old time Rough Rider comrade of his. In late years a regular army officer has been Chief of Police. At that period it was a problem. Not only was the population rough and of mixed antecedents, but many foreign nations were looking on the Isthmus as an excellent dumping place for their criminals and other undesirable citizens. It was not quite Botany Bay, but bade fair to rival that unsavory penal colony. Closer scrutiny of applicants for employment checked that tendency, and a vigorous enforcement of the criminal law together with the application of the power to deport undesirables soon reduced the population to order.
BULLOCK CART IN CHORRERA
In the early days crimes of violence were common. If one carried money it was wise to carry a gun as well. Organized bandits used to tear up the railroad tracks and wantonly destroy property for no reason save to satisfy a grudge against the Commission. But the organization of the police force stopped it all. In the cities of Colon and Panama is little or no public gambling, and the brood of outlaws that follow the goddess chance are not to be found there. On the Zone is no gambling at all. Even private poker games, if they become habitual, are broken up by quiet warnings from the police. It isn’t that there is any great moral aversion to poker, but men who sit up all night with cards and chips are not good at the drawing board or with a transit the next day. Everything on the Zone, from the food in the Commissary to the moral code, is designed with an eye single to its effect on the working capacity of the men. It is a fortunate thing that bad morals do not as a rule conduce to industrial efficiency, else I shudder at what Col. Goethals might be tempted to do to the Decalogue.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
SUN SETTING IN THE ATLANTIC AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
The police force in its latter days was in the command of a regular army officer. In 1913 it numbered 332 policemen, two inspectors and a chief. Of the policemen 90 were negroes, all of whom had been in the West India constabulary or in West Indian regiments of the British army. The white policemen had all served in the United States army, navy or marine corps. The men are garbed in khaki, and look more like cavalrymen than police officers—indeed a stalwart, well-setup body of a high order of intelligence and excellent carriage. Arrests are numerous, yet not more so than in an American city of 65,000 people. Of about 150 convicts nearly all are black and these are employed in the construction of roads within the Zone. The work of the police is greatly expedited by the celerity of practice in the courts. That Anglo-Saxon fetish, trial by jury, is religiously observed, but the juries are of three men instead of twelve and are held strictly to the consideration of questions of fact alone. There is a full equipment of civil and criminal courts with an appellate division, but no appeal lies to the courts of the United States. There do not seem to be many lawyers in the Zone, hence there is little litigation—or perhaps because there is little litigation there are few lawyers. It is always a mooted question whether lawyers are the cause or the effect of litigation, the bane or the antidote.
Children thrive on the Canal Zone. Nearly every visitor who has had the time to go into the residence sections of Culebra, Gorgona and other large Canal villages has exclaimed at the number of children visible and their uniform good health. Naturally therefore a school system has grown up of which Americans, who lead the world in public education, may well be proud. Three thousand pupils are enrolled, and besides a superintendent and general officials, eighty teachers attend to their education. The school buildings are planned and equipped according to the most approved requirements for school hygiene, and are especially adapted to the tropics—which means that the rooms are open to the air on at least two sides, and that wide aisles and spaces between the desks give every child at least twice the air space he would have had in a northern school.
