by Julie Greene
The report Beeks produced after her long stay on the isthmus showed her to be a tough-minded critic with an eye for detail. A reporter for theNew York Times observed, “Miss Beeks does not mince her words, and she seems to see clearly and sanely.”50 Her critique became an influential but controversial document in the political tug-of-war over government policy in the Canal Zone, one widely distributed among government officials and heatedly debated by many reformers. Beeks found much to praise in the government’s work on the isthmus. She reported that Colonel Goethals had won people’s confidence because “there is a general feeling that he intends to do ‘the square thing,’ due to the fact that now the men can get a hearing and to the prompt action taken when fully convinced that some wrong condition has obtained.” She found the new dormitories and mess halls quite attractive, making the towns of the Zone more beautiful than almost any factory town in the United States. Beeks exulted over the streets and grounds free from garbage: “Would that our streets and back yards in the U.S. were as clean!” So pleasant did the labor camps appear upon first sight that a temporary visitor might exclaim, as Beeks had heard, “These men are getting all that there is coming to them.” She also found that there was, relatively speaking, little vice and drunkenness in the Zone. She did find the “curse of alcohol,” especially after payday, but felt that “there is no more orderly a community in the world” than that of the Canal Zone, and the misrepresentation of these fine men was much to be regretted. “Therefore, anxious mothers with well trained sons need not influence their boys to refuse employment on the Canal Zone, for they will be quite as safe as in any other district away from home influence.” Borrowing from President Roosevelt’s rhetoric, Beeks offered her highest praise: if her two brothers were to choose between jobs in New York City or any other large metropolis in the United States and a job in the Canal Zone, she would not hesitate to recommend the latter.51
Nonetheless, the hardheaded social investigator found many problems in the Zone, and no detail proved too small to mention. Beeks criticized the government for housing as many as a thousand men in boxcars and for providing insufficient married housing. She found American bachelors living in poorly ventilated dormitory rooms with as many as three other men. Given the nervousness caused by the tropical climate, she argued, this congestion was particularly harmful. Both nurses and Negro hotel waiters were forced to live in very small quarters. All employees suffered from sharing their quarters with bedbugs, cockroaches, and fleas, so Beeks urged the government to undertake a scientific study to seek improved methods of extermination. Since employees and families alike had access only to cold showers, Beeks strongly recommended that hotwater showers be made available.
The importance of encouraging more families to settle in the Zone proved a major concern for Beeks. The Canal Zone “has become a community and no longer simply affords construction camp life,” she stressed, and as such it was crucial to bring more families and to make their lives comfortable. Indeed, the Canal Zone “is a good place for young people to begin housekeeping, not only because of the attractive quarters, but because so much is furnished free … there is opportunity of saving and thus getting a good start in life.” Furthermore, lovesick men would not remain for long: “A man is much more contented in his own home not only because of the sentiment attached to it, but because there is someone to look after his personal needs, to provide wholesome food suited to his taste and the wife’s companionship prevents him from growing discouraged or taking impulsive action when things all seem to go wrong. There is no doubt but that the further development of home life will aid in securing a more permanent force of workers. Men with families there say they ‘would not stay ten minutes without them!’ ”52
Because she perceived families as critical for creating a stable and happy workforce, Beeks lavished attention on the problems that discouraged them from coming. It took far too long for workers to receive married quarters—some waited longer than a year—because of a severe shortage. The quarters were often buildings that housed four different families, and Beeks found this to be unsatisfactory—and potentially demeaning, she implied—for white Americans. Workers also complained to her, bitterly, of widespread favoritism in the awarding of married quarters. A man with connections might quickly be able to bring his wife and children to the Zone, while another man of equal rank would wait seemingly forever. And then there was the servant problem. The Jamaicans commonly used as servants by employees’ wives were notoriously inefficient and difficult to manage. Beeks observed: “If one will wash she will not iron, one who will iron will not cook, etc.” This required housewives to engage in very difficult labor. Officials should remedy the problem, she argued, by importing Chinese laborers to serve as servants, janitors, and cooks. Although they might require higher wages than Jamaicans, they would be well worth the price. Finally, Beeks highlighted insufficient schools as a problem that kept families from coming. She believed the number of schools for black children to be sufficient, but not so for whites. At a town like Empire, where some fifty white children lived, no school had yet been built. Such circumstances required that children either attend one of the schools for blacks or travel by train to another area, something that led many families to return to the United States.53
From memoirs they wrote, it is clear that housewives felt extremely isolated on the isthmus, challenged by the weather, illness, and insects of the tropics, and culturally and socially adrift. Beeks observed this and suggested that housewives be included in activities at YMCA clubhouses and that women’s clubs be established at every labor camp and affiliated with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Such clubs might engage in musicals, card parties, bowling contests, afternoon teas, and small groups to entertain bachelors at dinner now and then and “thus give them a little taste of home life.” These clubs would help women “become acquainted and less self-centred, for there would be something interesting to talk about.” Beeks concerned herself also with the lives of white wage-earning women—nurses in particular. But there her concern for women seemed to end. She included virtually no reference in her report to West Indian, Panamanian, Spanish, or Italian women.54
Beeks did assess the conditions facing male laborers from the Caribbean and Europe, although she certainly judged their circumstances according to a different standard from the one she used for white Americans. The closest equivalent she could find were the laws and policies established for poor immigrants in the United States. Tenement laws there required that airspace should not be less than four hundred cubic feet per adult. Virtually all unskilled workers in the Canal Zone lived in dormitories that allowed less airspace than that. This required special attention, Beeks argued, due to the high rate of pneumonia among silver workers. For the same reason she argued strenuously that drying rooms be provided so that workers would not have to sleep and work in wet clothes. The government provided silver workers with neither blankets nor furniture other than metal cots. Officials gave European laborers paper and ink and allowed them to write letters in the mess halls during the evenings, and Beeks believed the same provisions should be made for West Indians. The government provided no furniture for West Indians in the mess halls, and so they would sit under their barracks, “like animals,” or inside on the floor. European laborers confronted their own set of problems, and Beeks criticized officials for falsely representing conditions on the isthmus to them. Recruitment literature had pictured a lovely hotel, for example, implying that European common laborers would be allowed to stay there, although it in fact excluded any but white Americans.55
While Beeks argued eloquently for improvements in the working and living conditions of West Indians and Europeans, she remained almost entirely silent about race and racism on the isthmus. She noted the existence of “two sets of employes,” but she did not clarify the racial nature of this division or mention even once the silver and gold system. In a section devoted to inequalities confronted by workers, she noted that
common laborers (that is, West Indians and southern Europeans) worked longer hours than skilled American workers, and she characterized this as a hardship—not for the laborers, but for the American foremen who had to work as long as the common laborers they supervised. The remainder of her discussion of “inequalities” concerned differences between the hours, vacation, and sick leave accorded to different classes of white American employees. She quoted favorably the advice of one Zone resident who implored the U.S. government to “treat all civilized white employes equally and do away with favoritism.” In a rare comment about race relations, Beeks praised the ICC officials for replacing black commissary managers with whites on the grounds that black managers treated white workers’ wives “rudely.” She also emphatically urged the government to extend racial segregation by establishing separate counters for Negroes and whites in commissaries: “Blacks and whites should not be required to mix in making purchases at any of the branch commissaries.”56
Beeks had little to say about the quality of the food provided for silver workers or their treatment in the mess halls. She devoted incessant attention to the complaints U.S. citizens made about the food provided to them, however. Though she granted that great improvements had been made and that the mess halls were structurally attractive, she found the food monotonous and poorly prepared and the service horrible. One worker complained to her: “Daily egg breakfasts, eggs—eggs—eggs every morning!” Another said, “I do not eat any breakfast at all simply because I can’t. The pancakes are so tough I cannot eat them and the coffee is not fit to drink.” Others complained of odd sauces poured over the meat or the absence of ice on the table: “You go all the forenoon without water, and then you come in at noon and can’t get it cold.” Diners received no service at all unless they tipped the waiters generously. It was a wonder the men remained healthy with such poor provisions, Beeks’s report commented. Nurses at Ancon Hospital in particular received such poor food they felt compelled to supplement it with commissary purchases. One nurse commented, “Tell the President I not only want a ‘square deal,’ but very particularly a ‘square meal.’ ”57
Beeks devoted considerable space to analyzing why the American workforce changed so rapidly, with employees often returning to the United States after a year or less, and noted the threat this posed to successful construction. Besides general discontent over housing and food, Beeks cataloged complaints of favoritism over the assignment of married quarters, the need for more furniture, and inequalities in wages, hours, and vacation time. Small grievances piled up, like the circular that declared that any man who failed to cover his bed with a sheet would have his mattress removed. This was no way, Beeks argued, to treat Americans. She objected as well to the fact that “there is a strong anti-union sentiment among officials and an unwillingness to deal with union committees.” The sense that discrimination existed against union members and resulted sometimes in dismissals had caused great dissatisfaction among workers, she argued.58
Beeks pointedly criticized John Stevens’s administration for refusing even to allow workers to voice complaints. Goethals’s policy of hearing grievances every Sunday and making investigations had generated more hope and confidence in the administration. Still, she observed the oddness of Goethals’s policy—he would meet with a committee of boilermakers but not as members of their union, even though every boilermaker belonged to the union. To resolve such problems, Beeks strongly recommended that a conciliation board be established that could hear union complaints. She drew this lesson from labor relations at home in the United States. The importance of a conciliation board “was established by the Anthracite Coal Commission appointed by President Roosevelt and the same rule has been adopted by many employers’ organizations making contracts with unions.” Nearly every railroad had such a contract with its employees. The conciliation board should be headed up by a labor commissioner who could investigate grievances and help resolve disagreements. Such steps would ensure justice, and this in turn would “serve to attract a good class of laborers, for friends bring friends from the States if conditions are such that they write favorably to them.” Beeks also urged that a system of suggestion boxes be created throughout the Zone to allow for anonymous complaints and grievances. She found in her discussions with people a pervasive fear that they would lose their positions if they complained to her about conditions, and furthermore the fear seemed justified. People throughout the government hierarchy, from officials to doctors, from machinists to nurses, asked her to keep their names confidential.59
Throughout her visit on the isthmus, Beeks received a warm welcome from everyone. But when it came time to circulate her report among politicians and ICC officials, she and Easley were anxious. As he sent the report to Taft, Easley prepared him to receive it in a good spirit: “In making her criticisms Miss Beeks recognized the fact that never before have there been as good conditions in construction work, but in view of the climatic conditions, the length of time to be consumed in the building of the Canal, and the fact that the Government should be a model employer, she has proceeded on the theory that the surroundings of the employes should be as comfortable as possible. Naturally more can be expected from the Government than from a private employer with limited capital and restricted by competitive conditions.” Easley reminded Taft of Beeks’s wide-ranging experience developing welfare policies for private corporations, even attaching a list of all the companies she had advised during the previous decade. And in case she might seem to be reacting weakly to tough conditions in the Zone, he carefully noted, “Miss Beeks has endured hardships and knows what it is to subsist on ‘corn bread and side meat.’ Therefore any reference that she makes to bad food comes not from one who expects conditions to be too ideal.”60
A copy of the report went immediately to President Roosevelt, and he digested it rapidly. He praised it overall, but one section horrified him. Beeks’s report repeated Poultney Bigelow’s accusation that graft and bribery existed in the Canal Zone. Roosevelt responded fiercely: “No charge is more easily made nor leaves a more unpleasant taste in the mouth. It is just as if Miss Beeks should say that ‘it was alleged’ that the wives of various officials were unchaste. Such an accusation must never be publicly repeated unless there is an intention to back such a statement.” The yellow press would jump instantly upon the issue, he noted, resulting in no end of trouble. Roosevelt asked Beeks to provide him with any evidence she had, and he would then conduct a separate investigation, but under no circumstances should the discussion of graft be left in the report or otherwise made public. Easley responded that Beeks could only issue vague charges regarding graft because her informants did not want their names revealed. He conceded nonetheless that Beeks would report all her information to Taft and Roosevelt and that he would eliminate any references to graft from the report.61
This was nothing compared with the storm of criticism Beeks and the NCF faced from officials on the ground in the Canal Zone. Goethals immediately asked his staff to respond to Beeks’s report, and then he compiled a point-by-point rebuttal of every major criticism she made. Although he agreed to adopt several of her suggestions, the overall tone of his response was a weary dismissal: things were not so bad as they seemed, her reforms would cost too much, and she didn’t fully understand life and work in the Canal Zone. He appreciated her hard labors and her good intentions, Goethals said, but ultimately her suggestions were simply off the mark. In particular he rejected requests for improvements in the lives of southern Europeans and West Indians. Goethals’s labor recruiter in Spain, LeRoy Park, agreed, saying that “the Commission has done all that it promised, and all that can be expected, to take care of these people, and it can scarcely be within the wish of the citizens of this country, who furnish the wealth that goes into the Panama Canal, that such wealth shall be expended for luxuries for foreigners who are receiving a wage adequate to their service, when so many native American laborers know so well the pangs of hunger.”62
Their polite response masked a great bitterness felt by many officials toward Beeks and her report. No one reveals the depths of anger more clearly than Jackson Smith, the manager of the Department of Labor, Quarters, and Subsistence, who more than any other individual was the target of Beeks’s criticisms. Smith was a young man with five years of experience building railroads in Mexico and Ecuador when chief engineer John Stevens catapulted him—above more experienced men—to head the Department of Labor, Quarters, and Subsistence. An efficient but abrasive and often rude man, Smith was charged with providing housing and food to tens of thousands of working people and overseeing their labor. Thus he bore more responsibility than most individuals for the success or failure of the construction project. Like Goethals, Smith favored ruling in the Zone with an iron fist. He became known for his hierarchical approach to housing allowances, giving gold men one square foot of housing for every dollar they earned per month on the job. Disgruntled workers called him “Square-Foot Smith.” And if Smith matched Goethals in his tough way of ruling, he lacked the latter’s charm and became, in his short tenure, one of the most unpopular officials on the isthmus. By 1908, Goethals had decided, as he wrote Taft, that Smith’s “unpopularity is so pronounced as to interfere seriously with the efficiency of his department.”63
Over the years workers and their unions had raised a crescendo of complaints against Smith. In 1907, Beeks added her voice to the chorus. Most of the problems she observed in the Zone fell into Smith’s territory. Although she did not single him out by name, her remarks clearly called Smith’s leadership into question: “Tactful, considerate attention on the part of the representatives of the Department of Labor, Quarters and Subsistence would do much toward maintaining content[ment] under adverse circumstances.” Beeks knew, she declared, that the department’s officials were sincerely interested in employees’ welfare; nonetheless, “it is apparent that obnoxious and arbitrary methods too frequently have been pursued.” Common sentiment in the Zone was that Smith and his men refused to explain the reasons for poor conditions and refused to hear complaints. Instead, they “suggest that the next boat be taken to the States if not satisfied.” Although Beeks knew the department faced an extremely difficult challenge, she concluded, “Its policy of dealing with the human family has been erroneous and is the cause of general dissatisfaction.”64