by Julie Greene
On a daily basis police spent much of their time inspecting camps, watching for vagrants, and making sure that intoxicated men (or women) did not become so disorderly as to interfere with the construction job the next day. Many tense moments occurred, particularly when West Indians and white policemen confronted each other and their perspectives on a person’s rights and the prerogatives of law and order in the Zone clashed. Such conflicts led many laborers to complain to Goethals about police cruelty toward them, providing a vivid picture of how they experienced “labor discipline.”
Most of the complaints about police abuse came from silver workers. A man named Walcott, for example, was walking home one day, carrying a package, when a policeman named Arndt began following him. Either Mr. Walcott, a West Indian who delivered ice for a living, declined to state what was in his package, or perhaps his explanation did not satisfy the policeman. The testimony differs on this and many other points. When Walcott reached home, he dropped the package and said to the policeman, “This is what you followed me for.” The policeman, “in a rage,” one witness observed, stated that he had to take Walcott to jail, but Walcott retorted, “I’m a free man the same as you and I never stole anything.” According to a shoemaker who lived next door, the policeman began hitting Walcott over the head with a club. Walcott’s wife came out on the porch and grabbed Walcott’s hands, as if to show the policeman that he would no longer resist arrest, but the police officer continued beating him over the head until finally his club broke and Walcott fell to the ground.
Walcott quickly rose and ran. When the policeman caught up with him, the two struggled for some time, each holding on to the other. The policeman hollered for someone to help him, but none of the West Indians in the vicinity would come to his assistance. Finally two white men, a foreman and a time inspector from the nearby Empire shops, heard the shouting and ran to help. One of them got the policeman’s gun out of his holster and aimed it at Walcott, telling him to stop fighting and go with the policeman to jail or he would be shot. By this time several West Indian women stood about, yelling at Walcott to stop and not risk getting hurt more severely. Walcott was arrested, but before the matter was concluded, the police searched his apartment and arrested three other West Indians, including a shoemaker and a tailor, for failing to assist the officer when he requested it. The police took Walcott to the hospital for treatment only several hours later, by their own testimony. Walcott’s wife went to the Empire police station with her five-year-old child, to check on her husband, but police shoved her down the steps and told her to leave. When she would not leave, she testified, they locked her and her child in a cell and refused to give her water or food.
Goethals’s inspector on this case, T. B. Miskimon, concluded that the fault lay with Walcott for resisting arrest. Although he did not personally know the policeman Arndt, the inspector noted, “He has never impressed me as having any of what is commonly called the ‘bull cop’ about him.” Miskimon explained that he had looked into the event with unusual care, taking testimony from nearly a dozen people, because there had recently been many complaints about police cruelty in the town of Empire. He succinctly noted that the cause of all the complaints must be one of two things: “Either the police are getting ‘strong’ or the negroes are.”23 Nine days later Miskimon recommended that the lieutenant in charge of the police force at Empire be discharged, as complaints about police brutality toward West Indians continued to surface. The police were clearly becoming “too strong,” but it is also worth noting that in this case, Goethals’s investigator recommended that action be taken against a cruel and racist police officer.24
Incidents like these spread apprehension among West Indians, and so ICC officials increasingly relied on West Indians to police their own communities. M. H. Thatcher, who headed civil administration in the Zone, noted: “We find [West Indian policemen] very useful in dealing with the black population… . We do not give them the same police powers that we give white policemen, but we give them sufficient powers to be very useful in their work.”25 Like other West Indians, however, those wearing the uniform of a Zone policeman had to be cautious in their behavior when they were around white U.S. citizens. The police chief typically did not assign West Indian policemen to patrol in white neighborhoods, but sometimes black policemen found themselves in a situation where their position as policemen conflicted with their racial status in the Zone. When a Jamaican or Barbadian policeman seemed to whites to overstep the boundaries of race, tensions flared. One night in 1908, for example, a West Indian watchman went to a room in an ICC hotel to deliver some shoes he had repaired for a white man. It happened that he was visiting a section of the hotel where many white railroad and construction workers known for their heavy drinking resided. After the West Indian delivered the shoes, an intoxicated white man named A. T. Murphy began shouting epithets at him. Murphy finally came into the hall, grabbed the watchman by the throat, and told him to leave, saying he “did not want a God damned negro spying around there.” Murphy began calling to his friends to come and help as he searched for his gun. The watchman blew his whistle for help, and a black policeman named Plummer soon came to his assistance.
The arrival on the scene of a West Indian policeman incensed the crowd. White men began pushing Plummer around and shouting, “Hang him!” and “Kick him out!” while someone placed a rope around his shoulders. After a few minutes of such treatment, Plummer felt himself pushed down the stairs as the Americans yelled at him to go and find a white policeman. Plummer hastily retreated as a white policeman appeared and subdued the crowd. Goethals’s investigator, Miskimon, took testimony from all sides, including Plummer, who declared he had intended only to calm the crowd. Miskimon, however, was more concerned about whether the American men’s carousing in the hotel would disrupt their neighbors—or their own work habits. He noted, “It seems to be a good natured crowd and that while they seem to do considerable drinking they appear to be alright ‘on the job’ the next day.” The inspector concluded that Plummer and the Negro watchman had both been mistreated, but his recommendation to Goethals was simply that “it might be well to keep these people in mind so that their jollifications do not reach such a stage that they will be unfit for work on the days following.” If it does reach that point, he noted, it may be necessary to transfer some of the men so as to “break the gang up.” In the end, the men faced no consequences for their behavior despite having threatened a black policeman with lynching. Goethals and his investigator knew they needed to allow some “jollification” but prevent it from impeding canal workers’ productivity on the job. For reasons like this, West Indians learned to avoid the white workers’ dormitories as much as possible.26
The most common solution Goethals and Miskimon imagined for social problems ranging from unfair commissary managers to extreme episodes of racial or gender conflict was simply to remove the person causing the problem. When a group of canal employees became too unruly, as the above example suggests, they contemplated separating the men and moving them to different dormitories. At other times Goethals ordered a family moved to a different neighborhood, an employee moved to a different division, or a union-organizing troublemaker deported from the Canal Zone altogether. When none of this worked, he and the ICC had a last weapon in reserve: a prison sentence. The Canal Zone penitentiary provided the final plank in the system of justice and discipline devised by the ICC officials. Like every other aspect of life in the Zone, the prison system was created not only to preserve public order but to maintain labor productivity. The Zone penitentiary at Culebra housed nearly 150convicts as of 1912, the vast majority of them West Indians, and it was well-known that prisoners worked long days at hard labor. If employees were not contributing to the construction effort, in short, as a last resort the ICC could imprison them and in that way ensure their productivity. One way or another, men and women living in the Canal Zone would be made to assist the construction project.27
Prison memor
anda from 1908describe the arduous life of penitentiary prisoners. They woke at 5: 30each morning and spent time cleaning before marching to breakfast. There they received boiled beef, rice and potatoes or yams, coffee, and half a pound of bread. After breakfast, guards shackled each prisoner to a ball weighing between eighteen and thirty pounds and attached to an eight-foot-long chain. The prisoners then marched in their shackles a mile or two to the work site. They labored there for ten hours, while guards carrying double-barreled shotguns watched over them. At noon they received more coffee and another half pound of bread; at night orderlies served them a dinner similar to their breakfast. Afterward, from 6: 00to 9: 00, the prisoners’ time was their own. During these evening hours prisoners were allowed to talk. On Sundays and holidays, they could receive friends for a couple of hours. At no other time could prisoners speak to anyone. No talking between cells, no talking in the dining hall, no talking on the job. According to the rules, prisoners could not make any sound of any kind unless they required a conversation with a guard or a foreman.28
Prisoners performed a variety of jobs, filling in ditches, building roads, and cleaning and maintaining the penitentiary. Officials found that road building in particular provided ideal work for inmates. Any prisoner, regardless of his background, could do this work. Although it required difficult labor in swamps and exposed prisoners to torrential rains, officials argued it was healthy outdoor exercise and better for inmates’ health than confinement to cells. Road construction kept prisoners in the public’s eye, made it easier to guard them, and as the head of civil administration, Joseph Blackburn, put it, “The deterrent effect of punishment is greater when prisoners are brought frequently before the public.”29 The mild humiliation experienced by prisoners working in public served both as a punishment and as a warning to others. When the Commercial Club of Mobile, Alabama, wrote Canal Zone chief of police and prison warden George Shanton to ask how the use of convict labor on roads was working, Shanton responded with enthusiasm: “This is by all means the most practicable and humane method of handling prison labor.” Gradually, officials began relying more heavily on prison labor, assigning not only convicts in the penitentiary to hard labor but also those convicted of lesser crimes by the district judges. They be-gan assigning more work to prisoners such as breaking up rocks and building construction. They also built stockades to house overnight convicts working far from the penitentiary, declaring it a system that had been used effectively with convict labor in the U.S. South and in the Philippines.30
Officials praised the prisoners’ productivity, estimating that they worked 7percent to 100percent more efficiently than other canal workers. This saved the U.S. government a significant amount of money. The assistant engineer overseeing the prisoners’ labor conceded that this remarkable efficiency derived partly from the fact that prisoners knew they would receive punishment if they worked poorly (even gazing at visitors was explicitly forbidden); however, he also attributed the fine results to “the perfect discipline and thorough organization possible in working convict labor… . [S]plendid results can be obtained if they are properly handled.”31
Shanton and other officials were keenly aware of how reformers in the United States might react to their prison policies. “It is absolutely necessary,” Shanton wrote, “that we establish a reputation on this piece of work that will keep all vagrants and bums, who have once been sent to that place to work, in fear of being arrested and sent back by the judge.” We do not want any cruel treatment, but nonetheless a “force of character” should be employed to teach the men that they are to work and work hard. Then “the reputation of the Gatun road will be such that the vagrant class will go most any where in the world to escape going back to that road to work.” Shanton also cautioned officials to give prisoners the best and most plentiful food they could, maintain sleeping quarters in fine condition, and provide them with “every care and attention, so that the public in general cannot criticize us along that line.”32
Yet disciplining prisoners remained a complicated issue. In 1909, after hearing complaints that prisoners were routinely beaten and whipped by guards, Goethals ordered an investigation. Three guards fined for beating prisoners defended themselves by saying they were following instructions from their superiors. One declared his lieutenant had told him how to handle prisoners who misbehaved: “You can get even with them when you get them in the brush.” This same guard said he was instructed to whip convicts who required punishment. A policeman argued that they should treat convicts the same way they “handle negroes in Texas.” After investigating, Miskimon concluded that the chief of police had approved the use of the whip or strap on prisoners. He noted, “It is a well known fact that in police organizations the rough handling of prisoners is not allowed before the public, and the commanding officer of a precinct
will be the first to get after you for it, while if the same happens in the station he will avoid seeing it if possible, if the parties appear to merit such treatment.”33
Goethals ordered an end to corporal punishment as a result of this investigation. Soon thereafter he received anxious complaints from guards who declared the elimination of corporal punishment was generating widespread insubordination and mutiny, and they feared a large-scale riot would soon result. It was said that prisoners were constantly speaking and joking with one another despite the rule requiring silence. They were engaging in fights, baiting their guards, and, when working in public, begging for tobacco or money from tourists standing nearby. In one case an “American lady” was insulted by a convict who employed language one would not even use in the presence of a “public woman.” There were cases of prisoners attempting to assault the policemen guarding them. One policeman was attacked by a prisoner who used his iron ball as a weapon. Police officers strongly requested that Goethals reverse himself and allow the use of the strap on prisoners again.34
These problems placed ICC officials in a quandary. They certainly worried about insubordination among prisoners, and they found it difficult to punish them by withdrawing privileges since prisoners enjoyed virtually none. On the other hand, they thought that policemen who complained might be exaggerating the prisoners’ offenses, in part due to anger they felt over the government’s decision to prohibit corporal punishment. White policemen who worked at the penitentiary had felt especially criticized and insulted by that investigation. Goethals and his officials agreed that policies were urgently needed that could compel good behavior, punish insubordination, and prevent riots. After examining highly regarded penal institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico, they developed a plan that divided prisoners into five grades, each one treated slightly differently in terms of access to privileges and the burden of wearing striped clothing and the ball and chain. By earning points for good behavior, prisoners would gradually attain a higher level. At the highest grade, prisoners would be rewarded with indoor work and full privileges, and be allowed to wear a gray rather than a striped uniform. “In this way an account is kept of each prisoner showing
his status as a prisoner,” declared M. H. Thatcher, the head of civil
administration. Certain prisoners—those sentenced to a life term or still facing more than one-third of a five-year term—were prohibited from entering the higher grades because, if not required to wear a ball and chain, they were considered too great an escape risk. Officials also created small cells where troublesome prisoners were ordered to spend up to four hours in dark and solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water.35 ICC officials believed that with this systematic set of changes, they had brought the Canal Zone’s penal system into accordance with the best institutions of the United States. Such reforms helped them make the penitentiary an efficient means of punishing canal workers who lacked discipline or behaved in disorderly ways while simultaneously guaranteeing that prisoners would contribute their labor to the construction project.36
MORAL DISORDER, SEX, AND CRIME
In order to buil
d an American civilization in the Canal Zone, officials struggled to curb behaviors they considered unrespectable or immoral. At the same time, they sought to offer certain comforts to workers in order to enhance their ability to perform productively at work and thus to keep them in the Zone. Moral, social, and political order in the Zone, they believed, could not be achieved without a balance between repression and permissiveness. Considering which behaviors they curbed and which they allowed opens a window into the notions of officials—and into a world of Zone residents caught in the unwelcome glare of policemen, courts, and Goethals’s personal investigator.
Alcohol, for instance, was one of the most popular vices in the Zone. It formed an important part of the day for most workers, helping them relax and thus endure the challenges of their jobs, yet too much intoxication would hinder labor productivity. So officials carefully regulated alcohol. As Goethals explained to a Senate committee, “Our working men are human; they have got to have their liquor, and if we do not sell it to them they are going to get it elsewhere, and in the towns where liquor is not sold they get it by the bottleful and they stand by that bottle until it is gone; then there is trouble.” The government thus allowed not only saloons but also several distilleries throughout the Zone to ensure that workingmen had access to good-quality liquor. Pressed by senators to close them down, Goethals called the distilleries “not a disturbance; they are a source of contentment.” The government, he proclaimed, sought not only to provide alcohol to the men but also to ensure they consumed alcohol that was decent in quality. Government officials wanted the business for themselves, however, and so zealously prosecuted anyone caught selling liquor without a license.37