by Julie Greene
The anarchists continued meeting throughout the autumn of 1911 and at least through the spring of 1912, and Perez continued to publishEl Único. One leaflet distributed by the anarchists reflected a sense of grisly humor, noting that a coming meeting would include refreshments such as “Monks’ heads, Friars’ Juice, Fried Priests’ Heart, Tenderloin of Colonel, and Iced Jesuits’ blood.” These dark images were matched by occasional threats of violence as the anarchist movement grew. In letters and postcards a few anarchists and disgruntled employees threatened to “blow up the works,” meaning dynamite the locks. And a rumor spread through the Canal Zone that someone had threatened to assassinate chief engineer Goethals.40
The threats of violence increased pressure on the government to respond aggressively. Catholic priests demanded that the government repress the anarchist movement ruthlessly. Some within the government, most notably M. H. Thatcher, who headed the Department of Civil Administration, agreed. Arguing that Perez was an outlaw and encouraging violence, Thatcher urged strong action against him. Gradually, however, most in the government argued for a tolerant policy. The Spanish consul agreed, claiming that there was nothing threatening about the movement. The most influential voice, ultimately, appears to have been that of Goethals’s chief clerk, who read over the spy reports and then assessed the anarchist threat for his boss. He declared that the anarchists were not inciting their followers to violence. “They believe that the present organization of society is unjust, and that their class suffers most from the injustice. What intelligent human being would deny this?” Although he believed their activities could lead to a strike or encourage an assassination attack, he noted the government’s powerful police and military presence in the Zone and doubted officials would have any trouble repressing either of those. Most emphatically, he warned that suppression would only keep the movement alive. Heeding such advice, the ICC took no steps to prohibit mass meetings and did not deport Perez or any other anarchists—even though they had deported strike leaders in the past. Officials continued to watch the Spanish workers carefully, keeping them and their leaders under tight police surveillance. In March 1912 the final piece of evidence regarding anarchism available to us notes simply that the government refrained from interfering with any further anarchist meetings. Interestingly, the government took a stronger stance against strikers than against anarchists.41
After early 1912, Spanish workers in the Canal Zone seem to have suspended their strikes, riots, and anarchist meetings. One can only guess at the nature of the denouement that followed the conflicts of 1911, because little more evidence regarding Spanish workers exists in the voluminous records kept by the ICC. Perhaps the government’s strategy worked, and leniency killed the movement. Yet the basic conditions remained the same, and it seems improbable that all tensions and grievances would abruptly disappear. A more likely possibility is that the Spaniards’ fears came true, and the U.S. government moved ahead rapidly with its plan to replace Europeans with West Indians. The government had already begun this process by 1911, and Spanish protests had focused precisely on that phenomenon. Furthermore, all the strikes and anarchist agitation must have encouraged the U.S. government to proceed as fast as it could with this strategy, in order to eliminate the troublesome Spaniards. In addition, from 1909 onward few Spaniards entered the Canal Zone because their government prohibited further recruiting. Immigration into the Zone had declined more generally by 1912 as the project’s completion neared, and hundreds of men began leaving the Zone for work on United Fruit Company plantations in Guatemala. These changing demographics likely complicated efforts to organize and weakened ties to anarchist movements in Europe.42
BEFORE THEIR movement came to an end, Spanish workers launched an articulate protest against the U.S. government’s policies in the Canal Zone, one that was expressed through political agitation, food riots, and workplace action. Theirs would stand as the most effective resistance movement during the construction decade. Ironically, however, while the internationalist ideals of anarchism might have encouraged cooperation with men of different races and nationalities, harsh realities in the Zone pushed the Spaniards’ protest in a different direction. They became increasingly focused on differentiating themselves from black West Indians to prove their superiority and to clarify their racial identity.
Officials had expected Spaniards would work more productively than West Indians and, by spurring the latter to be more efficient, would serve as a tool in their quest to manage such a large and unwieldy workforce. They found the Spaniards less effective as workers and far more troublesome than they expected. In the end, officials believed the presence of Spaniards helped push West Indians to work harder, but—to their surprise—West Indians helped them manage the Spaniards as well. The system of segregation placed Spaniards in a position uneasily adjacent to that of West Indians and allowed government officials to hold over their heads the threat that they could be replaced by a more lowly paid laborer of African descent. This generated explosive protests among Spaniards that caused headaches for government officials, but it also created a barrier to more widespread solidarities that might have empowered canal workers, given rise to a more potent labor movement, and made possible more significant improvements in workers’ living and working conditions.
Even as government officials struggled to discipline and manage the gold and silver workers, another group grew interested in the construction project. The canal was too monumental to be left to the ICC officials alone. Journalists and reformers in the United States—socialists, progressives, and corporate welfare advocates—observed the government’s policies in the Zone, often traveling there to see the big ditch for themselves. Increasingly, they used the construction project as a template for evaluating the proper role of the state and its relationship to society during a time of tumultuous change in the United States. They provided suggestions regarding how the United States should treat its workforce and sometimes demanded that government officials heed their advice. For many in the U.S. government, including President Theodore Roosevelt, managing the influence of journalists and reformers back home would prove as important and difficult as any other aspect of building the canal.
CHAPTER FIVE
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PROGRESSIVISM FOR
THE WORLD
WHERE MIGHT one travel in the early twentieth century to find a society in which profit was not the goal? Where competition did not loom tyrannically over workers and employers? Where the government owned the railroads, the hotels, the stores, and the restaurants and even provided free housing to every resident? Where the ideas of Henry George, the nineteenth-century bestselling author who advocated government ownership of land, had at last become a reality? And where government officials honestly and efficiently intervened to ensure citizens received the best care possible? In 1911 the prominent American socialist Arthur Bullard published a book arguing that such a place already existed—in the Panama Canal Zone.
Bullard had traveled to Panama to observe conditions and interview workers and officials. He declared, “The more one stays here, the more one realizes that the Isthmian Canal Commission has gone further towards Socialism than any other branch of our government—further probably than any government has ever gone.”1
Bullard was one of many progressive and socialist reformers who observed the government’s work on the isthmus and took from it inspiring lessons to apply at home. Born in Missouri in 1879, Bullard quit Hamilton College after two years, so eager was he to get to the world of reform in New York City. There he began working as a probation officer, publishing essays on criminology when he could. Soon he was writing on a variety of topics for the major magazines of the day. He worked as editor of theOutlook, as associate editor of theMasses, and as a staff member of the socialist newspaper theCall. One of the “gentlemen socialists” linked closely to the University Settlement House in New York City, Bullard moved in an invigorating circle of reformers and social workers
that included William English Walling, James G. Phelps Stokes, Walter Weyl, Robert Hunter, and Leroy Scott. In 1905, Ekaterina “Babushka” Breshkovskaia, the “Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” toured the United States, and Bullard became her constant companion, escorting her as she met with the stars of American reform ranging from Jane Addams to Emma Goldman. Inspired by Babushka, Bullard and Walling visited Russia to cover the 1905 revolution for American periodicals. Soon both men had emerged as experts on Russian affairs.2
Bullard’s socialist beliefs led him to seek more knowledge about Panama as well as Russia. When the canal construction project was about half completed, he took a ship through the Caribbean, watched U.S. labor recruiters at work in Barbados, and then, when an outbreak of yellow fever on the island meant his journey to Panama would be delayed several weeks due to a quarantine, seized the only opportunity he could find to continue his trip. The American labor recruiter offered him a spot on a British ship carrying West Indians from Barbados to the Canal Zone. He jumped aboard, telling readers that he had been the only white man on board other than the British crew. During the trip, he explained dramatically, he helped the British officers suppress efforts at mutiny by hot and desperately hungry West Indians. Then he breathed a sigh of relief after six long days when land was finally sighted.
Like so many other Americans, Bullard found that a tour of the Canal Zone strengthened his faith in the government. A friend met Bullard and escorted him by train across the isthmus, pointing out the wonders of the construction project. As the train passed the Cristobal machine shops and his friend identified them as the largest of their kind in the world, Bullard initially found himself feeling tired of “this ‘largest in the world’ talk. … The largest dam, the highest locks, the greatest artificial lake, the deepest cut, the biggest machine shops, the heaviest consumption of dynamite, the most wonderful sanitary system.” Nonetheless, he was gradually won over: “It is only as you accustom yourself to the idea that each integral part of the work is of unequaled proportions that you begin to sense the grandeur of the whole undertaking.” Ultimately, Bullard concluded, “I gained a new respect for Uncle Sam—a new respect for his children who have conceived and are executing this gigantic thing.”3
Bullard’s socialist beliefs gave him a special interest in the extensive government intervention and ownership making the construction project possible. Everywhere at home, he noted, one hears that the profit incentive must rule and government should remain as limited as possible. And yet the canal, the greatest undertaking of the age, is a government job, the work is done by government employees, and the government controls every aspect of life and work in the Canal Zone. Bullard met and talked at length with a white American worker who belonged to the Socialist Party, an educated and eloquent man who had been working in the Zone for several years. “ ‘Yes,’ the worker said, ‘this is a fine place to get an idea of what some things will be like when we get the world educated up to Socialism. … [T]his Canal Zone is as near Socialism as you can get to-day—a lot nearer.’ ” With the nationalization of land, the mechanic noted, Henry George’s plan had been realized. The machine shops ran efficiently with no profit incentive, and the commissaries handled retail distribution cheaply, again because there was none of the waste known as profit. Indeed, he noted, the Canal Zone provided an answer to most of the obvious criticisms of socialism: “I never made a Socialist speech in the States yet without some wise guy getting up and saying that the politicians are all grafters… . Well, say, this is a government job. … Have you seen any graft running around loose here? I guess not.” Likewise, the mechanic declared, the canal project shattered the myth that men would only work well for profit. Everyone there was working for wages, from Goethals on down to the humblest workingman. To this socialist workingman, Goethals treated the workers well precisely because “he won’t make any more money if he gouges us. He don’t increase his income by neglecting to put a guard on my machine.” In short, this man concluded, Goethals “can afford to be decent. And I guess that is Socialism in a nutshell. We want to revolutionize things so every one can afford to be decent—so nobody will have to cheat, nor underpay, nor overcharge to make a living.”
In one important way, the mechanic and Bullard agreed, the Canal Zone was not a socialist society. As the former declared, “First of all, there ain’t any democracy down here.” Although Goethals was a good boss, the man said, he possessed total control. And while he treated workingmen and their unions with respect, workers nonetheless lacked any say in the policies of the Zone: “Government ownership don’t mean anything to us working men unless we own the Government. We don’t here—this is the sort of thing Bismarck dreamed of.” As Bullard himself noted, “One is used to thinking that if we were deprived of jury trials and the right to vote, we would begin to shoot. But down here the only right which has not been alienated is the right to get out. There are two or three steamers home a week.”4
Despite these limitations of government, Bullard found a great deal to admire, and so did, he argued, the thousands of Americans in the Canal Zone. Soon the construction would be completed, and most of those Americans would return home. It would be hard, then, to convince them that “government enterprise is necessarily inefficient, extravagant and dishonest.” The women of the Canal Zone, likewise, would find it difficult to believe there is “sufficient sanctity in the right of the middleman to his profit to justify the high cost of living.” Bullard concluded, “This is the lesson of Panama. … ‘Collective activity’—this new force which we are developing with such amazing success in the tropics, which we, Americans, have carried further than any other nation—is worth considering as a means of solving our problems at home.”5
Bullard seems to have taken these lessons to heart. In the years to come he became a strong proponent of state intervention. He supported the United States entering World War I—one of a group of socialists to do so—became a powerful adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, and took a job heading the Russian Division of the reformer George Creel’s propaganda machine, the Committee on Public Information. His experiences suggest the ways in which reformers looked to the Canal Zone for insights and lessons about the state’s role during the Progressive Era. Books and articles on the construction of the canal pervaded American culture during this period, and writers would routinely assess the meaning of the canal not only in terms of its impact on economics and foreign policy but also in terms of contemporary understandings of the state. This is unsurprising, since state power was the topic of the day. Reformers, politicians, workers, employers, and everyday citizens all debated the proper form and extent of government intervention, and how to reconcile a more powerful state with America’s democratic traditions. That tension between authoritarianism and democracy was played out in the Canal Zone as well, but with a much greater emphasis on extensive state intervention and less concern for democratic impulses.
A great many Americans accepted that the government should play a greater role to help cure social ills caused by industrialization, mass immigration, and rapid urbanization, but others worried that state expansion threatened laissez-faire economics as well as popular and democratic government. Under the leadership of presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the power and size of the government rapidly expanded. Many agreed with Bullard that the Canal Zone was a place—perhapsthe place—to watch for insights into the government’s proper role. Beyond that, however, there existed a great deal of disagreement. How should the government run the construction effort? What role might progressive ideals play in shaping the project? Did democracy matter? The Canal Zone quickly became a site for contesting diverse approaches to these issues, and ICC policies reflected contemporary views on the state’s role and the future of reform.
“THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AT PANAMA”
One point on which many observers agreed was that the canal project signaled a new and more collectivist approach to gov
ernment. Individualism and the free market seemed clearly on the decline. Scientific approaches to social responsibility meant more government, more fair treatment of employees, and less interference by private capital. Writing in theChicago Daily Tribune about what he called “the American revolution at Panama,” Samuel Merwin praised how “the Canal is being built, and the Canal Zone administered, entirely by wage-earners.” Moreover, the employees received decent treatment: “Instead of driving a laborer or other employee to exhaustion, and then turning him over to the nearest saloon or dive for the night, the Commission uses him intelligently and efficiently; removes the usual commercialized temptations from its neighborhood; pays him adequately; and places at his hand an astonishing variety of well-organized and wholesome recreations.” Merwin stressed “the efficiency of this extremely modern method of treating employees.” Like Bullard, he noted that this was not socialism, because it lacked democracy, and indeed he seemed to desire not socialism, but rather a more powerful collectivism inspired by notions of civic engagement and social responsibility: “The good old individualistic theory that by keeping men down to a state of desperation you give the occasional strong man an ‘incentive’ to fight his way up” was rejected by Europeans a while ago. Now, at last, the Canal Zone was proving to Americans the futility of expecting laborers to live and work “under the usual conditions of commercialism.” Merwin suspected, as others did, that the thousands of enthusiastic young men experiencing the “scientific paternalism” of the Canal Zone, who had learned what it felt like to live amid a sound and modern government, relieved of having to worry about whether they made sufficient wages or how they would pay a bill, would likely “become germ-centers of a thoughtful and healthy sort of discontent when they return and find themselves turned loose at the mercy of a new set of purely commercial forces.”6