AN OLD WELL AT CHIRIQUI
That it can be maintained with its present population is of course impossible. When the employment, furnished by the construction of the Canal is finished, the army of engineers and laborers will disintegrate and scatter to other fields of industry. This process is already begun. Our government in securing labor from the West India islands assumed the task of returning the laborers to their homes at the expiration of their term of service and this is now being done, though not so rapidly as would have been the case except for the persistent activity of the slides at Culebra. It has been suggested that gifts of land, instead of passage money home, would be acceptable to these laborers, not merely West Indians, but Europeans as well. Thrown open to settlement under proper conditions the Zone would no doubt attract a certain class of agriculturists from the States.
A GOOD YIELD OF COCOANUTS
Undoubtedly there will be a field for skilled agricultural endeavor there. As I have already noted Col. Goethals estimates the necessary force for the operation of the Canal at 2700. For the operation of the Panama Railroad in 1913 five thousand men were required but with the cessation of Canal work this number would be largely reduced. Probably 6000 men would constitute the working force of both Canal and railroad. A working force of that number would create a population of about 15,000. There is further the military force to be considered. Col. Goethals strenuously urged that 25,000 men be kept on the Isthmus permanently, but the opinion of Congress, toward the period of the opening of the Canal, seemed to be that about 7000 would be sufficient. In all probability the latter figure will be the smallest number of men that will go to make up the military establishment.
CHOLO GIRLS AT THE STREAM
There is every reason to believe that at Balboa particularly the shipping interests will create a large and prosperous town, while already the cities of Panama and Colon, geographically part of the Zone, though politically independent, have a population of at least 60,000.
When the Canal is once in operation there will be from 75,000 to 100,000 people on the Zone and in the two native cities within it to furnish a market for the food products that can be raised on that fertile strip of land. Today the vegetables of the temperate zone are brought 3000 miles to the Zone dwellers, sometimes in cold storage, but chiefly in cans. As for those who live in the Panama towns and are denied access to the Commissary, they get fresh vegetables only from the limited supply furnished by the few Chinese market gardens. According to the Department of Agriculture nearly all vegetables of the temperate clime and all tropical fruits can be grown on the Zone lands. This being the case it seems a flat affront to civilization and to the intelligent utilization of natural resources to permit these lands to revert to the jungle, and force our citizens and soldiers in these tropic lands to go without the health-giving vegetable food that could easily be raised in the outskirts of their towns and camps. Of the sufficiency of the market for the output of all the farms for which the Zone has space and arable soil there can be no doubt, for to the townspeople, the Canal operatives and the garrisons there will be added the ships which reach Colon or Balboa after long voyages and with larders empty of fresh green vegetables.