The Canal Builders
Page 51
41.See Brooke to Goethals, Feb. 1, 1909; S. B. Williams to Goethals, Jan. 26, 1909; and Gaillard to Goethals, Jan. 19, 1909: all ICC Records, 2-P-49/P, box 49.
42.Goethals testifying in Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal, pp. 46–47, 234; Brooke to Goethals, Feb. 1, 1909, ICC Records, 2-P-49/P; Goethals, “Building of the Panama Canal,” pt. 2: “Labor Problems Connected with the Work,” pp. 401–2, 411–14.
43.Goethals to J. A. Mears, July 12, 1912, ICC Records, 2-P-49, “Demarcation of Grades of Work to Be Performed by Silver v. Gold Employees.”
44.Sibert to Goethals, April 21, 1910; Goethals to Sibert, April 25, 1910: both ICC Records, 2-P-49.
45.“Resolutions Proposed and Adopted by Employes of the ICC Regarding Certain Conditions Prevailing on the Canal Zone, January 1909,” ICC Records, 2-P-49/P. On the anti-Chinese movement in the United States, see Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
46.Fred Westcott to Goethals, Dec. 21, 1908, ICC Records, 2-E-11, pt. 1; Yates to Goethals, Dec. 4, 1909, ICC Records, 2-P-11.
47.Letter from Corozal, Canal Zone, Panama, to the editor, Plasterer, June 1914, pp. 6–7.
48.Member of Local 148, Atlanta, Operative Plasterers’ International Association, to the editor, Plasterer, Aug. 1914, p. 6. I am grateful to Grace Palladino for these letters from Plasterer and for informing me that Local 148 was represented at the 1914 union convention by an African American delegate—and so was presumably a local composed of African Americans.
49.Panama Canal—Skilled Labor: Extracts from Hearings of the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives, Fiscal Years 1907 to 1915 Inclusive, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.:GPO, 1914), pp. 372–81.
50.Goethals to Berger, Sept. 9, 1912, ICC Records, 2-E-11; Brooke to Goethals, Feb. 1, 1909, ICC Records, 2-P-49/P, “Protest by Labor Organizations Against Permitting Silver Employees to Perform Grades of Work That Should Be Done by American Citizens.”
51.T. H. Dickson to Rousseau, Dec. 23, 1910, ICC Records, 2-P-49; Goethals, “Building of the Panama Canal,” pt. 2: “Labor Problems Connected with the Work,” p. 418.
52.Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912, pp. 32, 52. According to the census, African Americans in the Canal Zone came most often from the following states (listed in order): Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana.
53.Personnel records for Henry Hart, ICC Records, box 167.
54.Personnel records for Charles Arnold, ICC Records, box 10.
55.On the “special” silver roll for African American employees, see R. E. Wood to Henry A. Smith, July 24, 1907; Gaillard to Jackson Smith, Feb. 11, 1908; Jackson Smith to Gaillard, Feb. 12, 1908: all ICC Records, 2-C-55.
56.Boyd’s comments are in a clipping attached to a letter from Ralph Tyler to Charles D. Hilles, secretary to President William Howard Taft, April 12, 1912, ICC Records, 28-B-233.
57.Rudolph Forster to Major F. C. Boggs (chief of office, ICC), July 5, 1912; Goethals, cable sent July 10, 1912: both ICC Records, 2-C-55. For material stressing the Republican Party’s support for Negroes, see “Sustaining the Colored Man’s Rights and Protecting the Colored Man’s Liberties,” in Republican Campaign Text-Book, 1906 (issued by the Republican Congressional Committee, 1906), pp. 72–73.
58.“The Afro-American Citizen,” in Republican Campaign Text-Book, 1912 (Philadelphia: Dunlap, 1912), pp. 239–46. Note the change in terminology from the Republican Campaign Text-Book of 1906 (cited in previous note) and that of 1912, as the “Colored Man” became the “Afro-American Citizen.”
59.Tyler to Hilles, April 12, 1912, ICC Records, 28-B-233. Ralph Tyler held one of the highest political offices of any African American in Washington, D.C., in 1912. During World War I, he would be appointed official war correspondent with the American Expeditionary Force, charged with covering all news regarding the “colored” troops in France. See Emmett J. Scott, Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919; New York: Arno, 1969), ch. 20.
60.Tom M. Cooke to head of Department of Civil Administration, Canal Zone, May 9, 1912; Davis to Cooke (director of posts, Ancon, Canal Zone), May 7, 1912; J. W. Tannehill (postmaster) to Cooke, May 8, 1912: all ICC Records, 28-B-233.
61.Cooke to head of Department of Civil Administration, May 9, 1912, ICC Records, 28-B-233. In the United States similar arguments—that it would reduce racial conflicts and tensions—were used to justify racial segregation. This argument was used by President Woodrow Wilson, for example, as he extended Jim Crow segregation through the federal bureaucracy after winning the election in 1912. See Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 373.
62.Eagleson to Baxter, Aug. 28, 1914; Baxter to C. A. McIlvaine, Aug. 31, 1914; and McIlvaine to Eagleson, Sept. 2, 1914: all ICC Records, 28-B-233, pt. 1.
63.Charlie Walker, John Hicks, Charlie Woodard, A. Benson, Tom Onsley, and Sandy Odom (blacksmiths of the Mechanical Department of Empire) to Goethals, Jan. 13, 1909, ICC Records, 2-C-55.
64.Goethals to Walker, Jan. 20, 1909, ICC Records, 2-C-55. As we saw in chapter 1, President Roosevelt had ordered the hiring of Panamanians on the gold roll in deference to the fact that the canal was being built across their territory.
65.Odom, Onsley, Thomas Motley, Benson, Woodard, James Starks, Grinard T. Elder, Jesse Wenly, and James McKnight to Taft, Feb. 3, 1909, ICC Records, 2-C-55.
66.Williams’s case is discussed in the ICC Personnel Records for Gold Employees, box 575.
67.Goethals to Hart and John Thomas, March 18, 1910; H. F. Hodges (acting chairman) to Major E. T. Wilson (subsistence officer), Oct. 19, 1910: both ICC Records, 2-C-55, “Employment of Colored American Citizens, General.” On exclusion of African Americans from YMCA clubhouses, see discussion below.
68.Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912, pp. 52–54; “Women in the Isthmian Service,” Canal Record, May 27, 1908, p. 310. Women employed by the ICC and the Panama Railroad who were not U.S. citizens were mostly West Indians who worked at various forms of domestic service.
69.Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912, pp. 52–54; personnel records for Carrie Townsley, ICC Records; “Women in the Isthmian Service,” p. 310. Based on what we know about the history of female clerical workers, these women were most likely educated daughters of skilled workers in the United States. For the broader context of clerical workers’ history, see Ileen A. Devault, Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); Jerome P. Bjelopera, City of Clerks: Office and Sales Workers in Philadelphia, 1870–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Jurgen Kocka, White Collar Workers in America, 1890–1940: A Social-Political History in International Perspective, trans. Maura Kealey (London: Sage Publications, 1980); Lisa M. Fine, The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
70.Mary A. Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama (New York: Broadway, 1908), pp. 45–50, 185.
71.Ibid., pp. 102–3.
72.Ibid., pp. 87, 130.
73.Ibid., pp. 144, 177.
74.On the links between nurses in Panama, the Philippines, and other sites of U.S. imperialism, see Catherine Ceniza Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2003), pp. 28–29; Marie D. Gorgas and Burton J. Hendrick, William Crawford Gorgas: His Life and Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1924), p. 185. To compare nurses’ experiences in the United States, see Susan Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Barbara Melosh, “The Physician’s Hand”: Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890–1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
75.Willis J. Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose (New York: Syndicate, 1914), pp. 253–72; W. H. May, memorandum, Dec. 30, 1908; Goethals to May, Dec. 28, 1908; “Investigation Held at Colón Hospital, January 11th, as to the Nature of the Services of Misses Margaret M. Judge and Virginia Mooney, Nurses,” p. 21: all ICC Records, 2-P-40.
76.Alice Gilbert described her experiences in “Hospital,” ch. 2 in Muenchow, ed., The American Woman on the Panama Canal, pp. 3–6.
77.Goethals to Miss E. Jeanette George, Ancon Hospital, Aug. 21, 1911; Mason to Gorgas, Sept. 18, 1911: both ICC Records, 2-P-40.
78.Mason to assistant chief sanitary officer, Nov. 1, 1911, ICC Records, 2-P-40.
79.Busbey to Goethals, Nov. 27, 1911; Goethals to Gorgas, Nov. 27, 1911; Goethals to Colonel J. H. Phillips (acting sanitary officer), telegram, Dec. 1, 1911: all ICC Records, 2-P-40.
80.Mason to Phillips, Dec. 4, 1911; Russell to Goethals, Dec. 3, 1911; Frances P. Sprouse and fifty-two other women to Goethals, Dec. 4, 1911: all ICC Records, 2-P-40.
81.Goethals to Phillips, Dec. 4, 1911, ICC Records, 2-P-40.
82.On Taylorism there exists a vast scholarship; most influential to me have been Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor.
83.May, memorandum, Dec. 30, 1908; “Investigation Held at Colón Hospital,” p. 3: both ICC Records, 2-P-40.
84.Goethals to Captain Robert E. Noble (acting chief sanitary officer), Jan. 9, 1909; Judge to H. R. Carter (director of hospitals, Ancon), Jan. 9, 1909: both ICC Records, 2-P-40.
85.“Investigation Held at Colón Hospital”; Goethals to Judge, Jan. 15, 1909: both ICC Records, 2-P-40.
86.“Investigation Held at Colón Hospital,” p. 38; Carter to Goethals, Jan. 12, 1909; Goethals to Judge, Jan. 15, 1909: all ICC Records, 2-P-40.
87.Taft to Davis, Aug. 23, 1904, ICC Records, 28-A-31, “Religious Organizations.”
88.Louise C. Bidwell Collection, MS 86-13, folders 2 (copies of invitations) and 4 (memoir written by Bidwell), Special Collections, Ablah Library, Wichita State University; Gilbert, “Hospital,” pp. 3–6.
89.Clarence Hicks, “Report of International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Association on Panama,” Feb. 4, 1905; Roosevelt to Stevens, May 21, 1906: both ICC Records, 95-A-1. For another example of preliminary thinking by ICC officials on the need for leisure activities, see the assessment by Canal Zone governor George Davis to Benjamin Lyon Smith (secretary of Home Missions), Sept. 21, 1904, ICC Records, 95-A-1.
90.Goethals to Secretary of War J. M. Dickinson, March 30, 1910; “By-Laws for the Conduct of Young Men’s Christian Association Work on the Canal Zone,” n.d.; minutes of Gorgona Council Meeting, Oct. 10, 1910; statistical report for month of September 1907, Young Men’s Christian Association; announcement of the YMCA clubhouses, May 1907; minutes of meeting of the advisory committee of the YMCA of the Canal Zone, June 5, 1907: all ICC Records, 95-A-1.
91.Statistical report for month of September 1907, Young Men’s Christian Association; Shanton to Bruce Minear (general secretary, YMCA, Culebra), Aug. 21, 1907: both ICC Records, 95-A-1.
92.Goethals to Dickinson, March 30, 1910; statistical report for month of September 1907, Young Men’s Christian Association: both ICC Records, 92-A-1.
93.Goethals to Dickinson, March 30, 1910; Announcement of the YMCA Canal Zone, May 1907: both ICC Records, 92-A-1. See also “Commission Club Houses: Activities of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” Canal Record, Feb. 19, 1908, p. 196. On the YMCA in the United States, see Thomas Winter, Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Winter argues that YMCA officials worked for moral improvement in part by impressing middle-class standards of manhood upon workingmen.
94.Gorgas and Hendrick, William Crawford Gorgas; Bidwell Collection, MS 86-13, folder 2 (copies of invitations).
95.Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose, pp. 346–47. For a fascinating comparison of the French and American eras in terms of leisure activities, see Edwin E. Slosson and Gardner Richardson, “Two Panama Life Stories,” Independent 60 (1906), pp. 918–25. The authors interviewed a Jamaican laborer who worked for both the French and the Americans. There was much he preferred about the French approach to managing workers, but he found the regimented nature of life under the United States to be an improvement: “The best thing the Americans have done is to stop bad language and gambling, which leads to quarrels. There is a big fine and prison for gambling. In the French days there used to be cock fighting, and drinking, and shooting, and dancing all the time. Now it is all stopped.”
CHAPTER THREE: SILVER LIVES
1.Isaac McKinzie v. McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, Aug. 12, 1912, civil case 119, RG 21, Judicial Records of the Canal Zone, 1st Circuit, National Archives, Washington, D.C. For other examples of suits against this company, see cases 143, 145, 157, 169. The information in the following paragraphs about McKinzie’s case comes also from the case cited above. Important studies on West Indian life and work include Velma Newton, The Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850–1914 (Mona, Jamaica: University of the West Indies, 1984); Bonham Richardson, Panama Money in Barbados, 1900–1920 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985); Lancelot S. Lewis, The West Indian in Panama: Black Labor in Panama, 1850–1914 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980); Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985); Gustave Anguizola, “Negroes in the Building of the Panama Canal,” Phylon 29, no. 4 (Fall 1968), pp. 351–59; Gerardo Maloney, El Canal de Panamá y los trabajadores antillanos (Panama City: Universidad de Panamá, 1989); Luis Navas, Hernando Franco Muñoz, and Gerardo Maloney, El movimiento obrero en Panamá (Panamá: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, 1999); George Westerman, The West Indian Worker on the Canal Zone (Panama: Liga Civica Nacional, 1950); Elizabeth McLean Petras, Jamaican Labor Migration: White Capital and Black Labor, 1850–1930 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988); Rhonda A. Frederick, “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panama Canal Migration (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005). Fictional accounts that provide insightful reimaginings of West Indian life include Dr. Carlos E. Russell, An Old Woman Remembers: The Recollected History of West Indians in Panama, 1855–1955 (Brooklyn: Caribbean Diaspora Press, 1995); George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954); Maryse Condé, Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992); Eric Walrond, Tropic Death (New York: Collier Books, 1926).
2.Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal for the Fiscal Year 1911, conducted on the Canal Zone by the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 61st Cong. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1910), pp. 145–47. The Liability Act providing for compensation took effect on Aug. 1, 1908. Between that date and Nov. 1, 1909, the U.S. government received two thousand claims. During that period it disbursed $54,000 for injuries but less than $700 for deaths. See also Ne
wton, Silver Men, p. 142; and George W. Goethals, “The Building of the Panama Canal,” pt. 2: “Labor Problems Connected with the Work,” Scribner’s Magazine, April 1915, p. 418. In 1912 the Panama Canal Act increased compensation and extended it to more employees.
3.Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912 (Mount Hope, C.Z.: ICC Press, 1912), pp. 29–31. Only Panamanians were more numerous in the region when the United States took possession of the Zone in 1904, at about five thousand men and women.
4.Constantine Parkinson, “Isthmian Historical Society Competition for the Best True Stories of Life and Work on the Isthmus of Panama During the Construction of the Panama Canal,” Panama Collection of the Canal Zone Library-Museum, box 25, folders 3–4, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
5.Census of the Canal Zone, February 1, 1912, pp. 8–12, 29–31; Newton, Silver Men, esp. pp. 88–97.
6.Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal for the Fiscal Year 1911, pp. 67–72; Newton, Silver Men, p. 136. There were just over one hundred West Indian policemen, for example, and thirty West Indian teachers.
7.Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal for the Fiscal Year 1911, pp. 65–76, 135.
8.Ibid., pp. 67–72; Newton, Silver Men, pp. 134–38; Canal Record, Sept. 2, 1914, p. 15. The gradual rise in the number of artisans employed by the ICC can be tracked in the Canal Record and in the annual reports of the ICC. See, for example, “Report of the Department of Labor, Quarters, and Subsistence,”Annual Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1908 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908), app. J, p. 249.
9.Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal for the Fiscal Year 1911, pp. 67–72; Newton, Silver Men, p. 41; Lewis, West Indian in Panama, p. 30.
10.Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal for the Fiscal Year 1911, pp. 67–72; Newton, Silver Men, p. 136.