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Show I THE PANAMA CANAL -- By Frederic J. Haskiii i . IV. THE FORCE. The impression one gels from 8 Stay V among tho men who constitute tlx- American contingent of the isthmian can.-U i'orec is that every man BeemB to feel himself ' the ownai of the canal, and is anxious to Mt the job completed as soon as possible in order that he may begin to -i Income from u instead in-stead of suffer a perennial outgo. Every Ev-ery oue of the five thousand or nunc Americans connected with the undertaking under-taking is deadly in earnest. He is proud of the record thai is hieing made, and seems to be imbued with the desire de-sire to have a hand in tho making of this record. The time for loafers, time-servera. time-servera. drunkards and shirkers is past. A weeding-put process bus been going -n f ir a year now. The inducements which can be held out are strong enough to attract good men, and the commission no longer finds itself under the aCcessity of tolerating' Lncompe-tence Lncompe-tence or indifference. The men who enre more for the "cup thai cheers" than for the canal soon find themselves "canned," as they say on the isthmus when a man loses his position. Now and then yon see one of these. He has ' either lost his place or has been re duced in position. He is the only mun on the isthmus who has a word to say against the work. He threatens all ports of exposures. He will tell you that he has a friend iu Congress and I that he is coine to have an in vesica tion that will reveal shameful conditions. condi-tions. He perhaps intends coine to Peru, or some other plaee where they pay good waces and nppr- nate c 1 men that is, if he can get the passage money. But without exception, it is nil a kick because ho has lost a job or has been dropped to a lower position. Everybody else is satisfied. Baos. of the men in the construction work are 1 old hands at the business. They have come in from everywhere. Some of (hem have spent years in construction construc-tion work in tropical countries and call themselves "tropical tramps." But they have no aversion to hard work. Years of residence in the tropics have inured them to climatic conditions, and years of experience have taught them to care for their health. They have known conditions elsewhere and are qualified to speak. Without exception they will tell you that they make more money and have every condition of construction con-struction work better than anywhere else they have ever been. I met a foreman fore-man of one of the big dirt yards, the one at Pedro Miguel, where fhey make up the dirt trains (or the big dump at La Boca, He told me he had been on construction work in the United States, in Peru, in Bolivia, Ecuador and Bra-2dl, Bra-2dl, and that nowhere had he been able to save as much money BS on the Isthmian Isthmi-an canal. He said i hat everything thai i men could reasonably ask was given them. 1 beard the same tiling from a hundred sources, from men who have opportunity to know. At the La BoCB dumps I met several men who had been on construction work in the States for years and they, without exception, declared de-clared that conditions down here, 240(1 land Ailes from New York, were better bet-ter than they had ever known on big construction jobs in the very heart ot the States. From the chief engineer down it seems that the best talent obtainable, has been secured for the prosecution of the work. The engineers of the construction con-struction department are all men who have made good in their respective field-- For instance, Civil Engineer Ba-ville, Ba-ville, who has charge of the experiments experi-ments at the Gatun dam, was selected I for that work because of his proven ability in connection with the Wachu- ! setts dam near Boston, an engineering problem of a similar nature as the eon- i struction of tho (-iaiun dam Those men nIs know how to (jet all hands under them to doing a maximum amount of work, Miid are accomplishing wonders hv combining the intelligent direction of those higher up with the main strength and awkwardness of the illiterate il-literate Spaniard and the ignorant Wi -i I ndian negro. Nearly every American member of tin force lias some pel ambition in connection con-nection with the work. There is Cap tain Miehaelson of the I ir seagoing dredge, Anoon, which Can BUCk UP :i half million cubic yards of earth a . month nnd carry H Out l sea. His pel ambition is to pilot the first ship through the canal. Ho says he intends to sin-k to the worn until the job is finished, it' his health allows, and then he hopes to be 'he head pilot al Ihe hip celebration when the canal is finished. Another employee with a worthy ambition am-bition i b Paymaster's Clerk Page II- already has the record of being the old est employee in point of service on the canal, lie has been connected with the canal project for twenty-two years. Ho jas on the pay force under the old French regime and was inherited by the new company with the other assets of the canal. He was .midoyod by tho Americans when they began operation-, and wants to see the .job finished. He can pay off as many men in a given time .'is any man on the Isthmus, and the mistakes he maks are as few and far between as four-leaved clovers. There are nearly OOOO white people in the canal .one. out or a total popu- f lation of more than 35,000. Of these about litOii ;ire women nnd 1100 are ; children, who live in canal commission j quarters. About 17 per cent, of tho I white men in the zone aro aliens, mostly Spaniards and tallans, but only a very small per cent of the women and chu- I dren are Americans. The working 1'oree a evades about J'Ou men with 1hs eanal commission and about 6500 with the Panama railroad. Approximately I 11,000 are at work ou the excavations. . On dredging there are some 5000 at work. On other contributory construction construc-tion work there are about 5000 engaged, making a force of approximately 81.00(1 1 at work on the construction work of all ' kinds on the canal. I There are slightly more than 800 women employed on the canal, of whom about 90 per cent, ale with the commission com-mission ami the remainder are with the Paftama railroad. The highest salary paid to a woman is $175 a mouth and the lowest $50, The average is about $73. It is not the policy of the commission com-mission to employ many women, and those it does employ are mainly related to men living in married quarters, who furnish them a home. L he commission finds that it would cost more propor-I propor-I tionately to furnisn homes for women than lor men. I No oue can imagine the difficulties that beset the Americans who manage the great work of digging the canal Many is the day when it rains two or three inches in an hour or two. Of course, this makes veritable seas of mud of the big dumps where they deposit de-posit the excavated material, and these seas are almost without bottom. To slop hauling until these dried out would be out of the question, for it would cut down the total monthly excavations very seriously. On the other hand, to run their dirt trains on the dumps n eans that many of them will literally .-ink into the mud. Vet the dump foremen, fore-men, the yard masters and the others in command, courageously take the re-Bponsibflity re-Bponsibflity and the work goes forward. Sometimes it is hours and hours be tore thej can get a train off a stnken track, but here in the canal zone no one ever say die, and the work goes merrily on, rain or no rain. Xn one in the States ever saw it rain much harder than it did here one day not long ago. In less than two hours nearly three inches of raiu had fallen. And vet when 1 asked the division superintendent how much dirt they had gotleu out of ub bra that day he handed hand-ed me the cheering information that it had amounted to 40.000 cubie yards of material, which is at the rate of a million mil-lion cubic yards a month for Oulebra cut alone. Riding on a dirt train alter a rain I asked the conductor how ho managed to keep his orders dry while such a downpour was falling. "Orders be hanged!'' he replied. "I have to carry everything in my mind when these rains fall. Even rubber coats will not keep one dry during these Panama Pan-ama rains. And be went on ins way sinking as if he didn't mind BUCh a shower more than a duck would. The steam shovel engineers of the canal hold the record as being about I the only people in the employ of the United States who ever conducted a successful strike against the government govern-ment for higher wages. They were get ting $185 a month, with six weeks' leave with pay and quarters besides, but they thought it was not enough. They struck and the force dwindled from sixty five to thirteen. New men were secured, but tilings did not go well, and the President aud his advisers ad-visers decided to give them their present pres-ent wages, $210 per month. This brought all the other classes of steam shovel and train men proportionate increases. in-creases. The average length of time Americans stay on the Isthmus is a little more than two years. There is something enervating in the climate which, together to-gether with the lack of opportunities ' for rational diversion, seems to make a man, after he has been there two or three years, have longings for home which he cannot overe.omp. During the wet season the winds seem so laden with moisture that they pass men by unable to coo) their brows. On tho whole it is very depressing, though it is not unhenlthful. A construction engineer who has to be out in the hot sun all day long told me that in the twenty months he has been on the Isthmus he had never had a headache from heat. Sunstrokes are all but, unknown. On the whole. Uncle Sam has employed em-ployed on this great job as tine a force of workers as can bo found anywhere. These men aro terribly in earnest. Bo-fore Bo-fore them the dirt, is flying, barriers are being broken down, and tho promise of hope is being redeemed by the assurance of success. This canal force is indeed a noble army, and there can be no ! doubt that it will succeed in cutting the mighty ditch that will join in wedlock wed-lock the waters of the two greatest oceans of the globe. (Copyright, 19ns, by Frederic J. llaskin.) Tomorrow The Panama Canal. V I The Gatun Dam. |
