THE FRUITFUL MANGO TREE
The children like their elders come in for the beneficence of the Commission. Free books, free stationery, free medical treatment and free transportation are provided for all. Prof. Frank A. Gause, superintendent of the Zone schools, is an Indianian and has taken a justifiable pride in developing the school system there so that it shall be on a par with the school of like grades in “the States.” He declares that so far as the colored schools are concerned they are of a higher degree of excellence than those in our more northern communities. Native and West Indian children attend the schools of this class, in which the teachers are colored men who have graduated in the best West Indian colleges and who have had ample teaching experience in West Indian schools.
The curriculum of the Zone schools covers all the grades up to the eighth, that is the primary and grammar school grades, and a well-conducted high school as well. Pupils have been prepared for Harvard, Wellesley, Vassar and the University of Chicago. The white schools are all taught by American teachers, each of whom must have had four years’ high school training, two years in either a university or a normal school and two years of practical teaching experience. These requirements are obviously higher than those of the average American city school system. Prof. Gause declares that politics and the recommendation of politicians have no share in the administration of the Zone schools, though the efforts of Washington statesmen to place their relatives on the payroll have been frequent and persistent.
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
COMPLETED CANAL NEAR GATUN
For the native and West Indian children a course in horticulture is given and school gardens established in which radishes, beans, peas, okra, papayas, bananas, turnips, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes, and yams are cultivated. It is worth noting that considerable success has been achieved with products of the temperate zone, though especial care was needed for their cultivation. One garden of three-quarters of an acre produced vegetables worth $350. There is a tendency among Americans on the Zone to decry the soil as unfit for any profitable agriculture. A very excellent report on “The Agricultural Possibilities of the Canal Zone”, issued by the Department of Agriculture, should effectually still this sort of talk. To the mere superficial observer it seems incredible that a soil which produces such a wealth of useless vegetation should be unable to produce anything useful, and the scientists of the Department of Agriculture have shown that that paradoxical condition does not exist. Practically all our northern vegetables and many of our most desirable fruits can be raised on the Zone according to this report, and it goes on to say:
Photo by Underwood & Underwood
TRAVELLING CRANES AT MIRAFLORES