Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1906 — LABOR OS PANAMA CANAL. [ARTICLE]

LABOR OS PANAMA CANAL.

NEGROES FROM WEST INDIES FURNISH THE BULK. Lack Energy and Brains—The Serious Problem of How tp Secure a Competent Supply of Unskilled —Workmen on the Great Work. .In an article .pn the--John Foster Carr, writing in the Outlook, says that the blacks who are doing the drudging toil of the work there come from the chaiff of Carribbean Islands that curves its 2000 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco to Yucatan—dhe islands that are soon fn naval strategj" to be the outwdrks of the canal. Compare these negroes; manwithman.andyoAifindastonlsh.Ing differences. The Barbadian often has all the marks of his African fathers. The Jamaican, less by blended blood than by education and a half-civilization national, shows a surface advance in type. As his shovel works through the crushed stone and mixes the concrete he will |oin in a monotonous but his music has no melody like that of our negroes. He is very English, sometimes to the point of mutton-chop whiskers, and sometimes, by a perversity in imitation, be becomes a veritable h-less Cockney in ebon. In be Martiniquan the African traits are transformed. There is often a French jomeliness; in the women a French iaintiness and intelligence. A full naif of the men wear the French goatee and bear a preposterous resemblance to the boulevardier Napoleon. They ply their picks sullenly. And so the men of no two islands are dike. Grenadians are quite different Irom Lucians; the man from St. Kitts i requires more tactful handling than •Jie Fortune Islander. Study them as laborers and the essential similarities of all West InIlans appear. It does not matter whether they are digging a drainage Irench in Colon, or laying tracks at the very bottom of the Great Cut, or breaking up the ancient pavements of Panama. Watch them work for but a single day and you are puzzling over the worst problem ‘hat faces cur engineers. The only labor they can find in the Western Hemisphere for building the canal has less than one-third the efficiency of our labor of the North. The West Indian’s every movement is slow and bungling; every small obstacle a subject for debate; anything at all a sufficient excuse for all hands to stop work. A slow upward look from one or two of a gang is usually the only sign that they have heard the foreman’s yell, for there Is no change in pace or manner of work. Both remain slow, incredibly slow —“slow as the wrath of God,” is the impatient descriptive phrase of the chief engineer. They seem in a topic trance of idleness and stupidity. They cannot learn to master a tool. They will bend over the ground with a pick, and use no muscles for the work but their biceps. Let a good foreman keep at them and they can finally be brought to lift it above the shoulder as long as they are watched, but it always falls of its own weight. “The poorest labor I have ever known” is the condemnation of a globe-trotting engineer. And yet we can well spare some of our denunciation of the West Indian, for his improvement lies measurably in our own hands. His lodging is already better and more cleanly than any that he has ever known, and the new type of his quarters is a further advance in ventilation and protection against mosquitoes. But he has not fared so well In the matter of nourishment. Allowing him to feed himself for peace sake has had unfortunate consequence, because perhaps two-fifths of all these laborers do not eat sufficient or proper food to enable them to do any kind of hard work. I have looked into hundreds of their pots boiling over bonfires, as they crouch beside A very large number contained nothing but rice, or a piece of yam, or some plantains. Others had added a small piece of salt pork, beef or codfish. In the rainy season, when with damp wood their primitive fires fall them, they tell me that they have often to choose between half-cooked yams and rice, which the doctors say is not digestible—and biscuits. Bread is almost unknown. The Colombians alone know how to forage well. Their fish and meat stews are always hearty and sometimes delicious, as I can testify, and they alone of, all the laborers on the Isthmus wfro feed themselves seem to live better than those who go to the Commission’s kitchens. Weak and anaemic arfe all these poorly-fed laborers. They fall easy victims to malaria, and on this account alone the chief sanitary officer maintains, pn cmonia with 70 to 90 per cent, of fatal cases is prevalent among them when the better-fed white man is nearly immune. Thinking that they can live for less than the Commission’s 30 cents a day, 15,800 of the 17,000 "silver men” provide their own food. For reasons of health as welt as of industrial efficiency they should all he obliged to take the Commission’s ration. It consists of rice, beans, onions, fresh and salt beef, codfish, lard, bread, sugar and coffee, v r " led with occasional potatoes, plalhteins and bananas. The proportions are changed to suit the national taste of each mess, and the whole ration has the approval of our Agricultural Department.