The Canal Builders

by Julie Greene

  The controversy over military atrocities did not shake Roosevelt’s belief in the righteousness of American power. He continued to believe, as he had declared in 1899, that the Filipinos “must be made to realize that justice does not proceed from a sense of weakness on our part, that we are the masters. … We have put an end to a corrupt medieval tyranny, and by that very fact we have bound ourselves to see that no savage anarchy takes its place. What the Spaniard has been taught the Malay must learn—that the American flag is to float unchallenged where it floats now.”20 Yet at the same time, Roosevelt seemed to grow less interested during these years in formal imperialism and colonialism. He may have been influenced by the public’s distaste for aggressive military tactics, the harsh criticism from ­anti-­imperialists over the course of many years, or some instinctive sense that formal rule over distant territories would indeed cause a degeneration of Americans’ character. Whatever the explanation, although Roosevelt did not seek to limit the assertion of American power after 1902, he focused on expressing it more effectively through economic and commercial forms of domination, political influence, an aggressive diplomacy, and, when needed, military intervention. He also focused attention on generating favorable publicity regarding the assertion of American power overseas.

  Roosevelt’s skills in these arenas would prove invaluable as the construction of the Panama Canal got under way, for in the early years the project was firmly associated in the minds of Americans with scandal, corruption, and bureaucratic inefficiency. Poultney Bigelow, a lawyer, a professor of colonial expansion at Boston University, and the author of the article that argued service in the Philippines was turning white men into savages, played a large role in giving Americans this poor impression. His father, John Bigelow, had served in President Lincoln’s administration as consul to France and had toured the isthmus with Ferdinand de Lesseps in the 1880s, at which time he began a lifelong friendship with Philippe ­Bunau-­Varilla. And so John’s son Poultney naturally developed an interest in Panama and its promised canal. Poultney Bigelow attended Yale and Columbia Law School—he was, in fact, a classmate of Theodore Roo­sevelt’s at the latter. As a grown-up, he even visited Roosevelt’s home at Oyster Bay more than once, but the two never became close friends.21

  A strong, ­rugged-­looking man with an aristocratic air, Poultney Bigelow spent much of his life traveling and writing. He published widely, particularly on topics of German politics and the history and future of colonialism more generally. He excelled as a writer and as a public speaker.22 In 1905 his career hit the rocky terrain of Panama and never fully recovered. Returning from a journey to South America, Bigelow stopped in Colón and toured the Canal Zone for two days.

  He was visiting the Zone at a time when many were still fleeing it due to poor conditions and rapidly spreading disease. Although the worst of the yellow fever epidemic had passed by the time Bigelow visited in November of that year, nerves were undoubtedly still raw, and the government had not yet managed to provide many creature comforts for its workers. Perhaps all this influenced Bigelow’s experiences on the isthmus, since clearly he was unimpressed by what he saw. He wrote up his observations and sent them to theIndependent. His brief essay shook up public opinion and officialdom both in the United States and in the Canal Zone, for it attacked every aspect of the government’s work on the isthmus. He described cities so filthy as to be uninhabitable, particularly Colón, the gateway to the canal, a city built on a swamp with no clear drainage system. He noted the absence of clean water and rents preposterously high. Negro laborers, he declared, received far less pay than promised and confronted disdain and disrespect from U.S. officials. He described a Panamanian woman doing laundry for white officials and having nothing but rainwater dripping off her roof as water for the washing. And she dared not complain, lest sanitary officials come and make her dump out even this small bit of water. He noted bureaucratic inefficiency and red tape that prevented work from being done. He found the U.S. officials arrogant and unable to speak Spanish; he saw courts presided over by ­Spanish-­speaking Panamanians, their decisions unintelligible to employees from the United States or West Indies who spoke only English.23

  Two final charges made by Bigelow struck especially hard and caused an immediate uproar. First, he claimed that the canal was being built through graft and bribes. Ineffective Americans with political connections were traveling to the Zone to play at being doctors or engineers. When he sought to understand the cause of problems in the Zone, Bigelow reported, he “soon learned that ­So-­and-­So was the protégé of Senator this or Senator that—there was nothing to do but keep it out of the papers and lay the blame on the climate or the rain.” Roosevelt and Taft assure us that “political jobbery is foreign to their natures,” he wrote, yet it “flourishes under their noses and they appear to be incapable of stopping it.” Finally, Bigelow charged that the U.S. government had imported several hundred Martinican women to work as prostitutes: “Prostitutes are not needed on the Isthmus—and if they were there is no call to send for them at the expense of the taxpayer.”

  Many others had criticized U.S. policies before Bigelow did. The infamous failure of the French combined with staggering difficulties during the early years of U.S. occupation generated many negative perspectives. ICC secretary Joseph Bucklin Bishop wrote later that the negative newspaper and magazine articles were so common it seemed “to suggest that powerful influences were behind it.”24 Yet Bigelow’s were particularly damning charges. The essay concluded that changes were needed in this system, “which already gives ominous signs of rottenness.” He wanted someone put in charge who would hold the position for life and who would have the powers of a dictator. Until such reforms took place, “it would be a reckless father who would advise a son to take employment on the Canal Zone.”25

  Roosevelt and his administration aggressively responded to Bigelow’s charges. Within a few days Roosevelt issued a special message to Congress attacking the “­sensation-­mongers” and including reports by Secretary of War William Howard Taft and by chief engineer John Stevens that provided ­point-­by-­point rebuttals of everything Bigelow charged. They took special care to disprove his accusations regarding prostitution and graft. The Martinican women, they admitted, were brought to the Canal Zone by the U.S. government, but officials imported them to unite Martinican men with their family members, so that the men would work more efficiently. They argued strenuously that political connections were not influencing appointments and hires on the isthmus and denied that red tape was hindering government bureaucracy. They discredited Bigelow himself for having spent only two days on the isthmus, and they attacked his two main sources as discontented residents who had been refused political appointments by the U.S. government. Theodore Shonts, the chairman of the ICC, assassinated Bigelow’s character in a public speech, stooping even to ­name-­calling: “Poultry—I mean Poultney—Bigelow is a completely annihilated man. All his charges of jobbery and immorality were investigated immediately and found to be without foundation.” He is “an irresponsible scandalmonger of surprising mendacity.”26

  The U.S. Senate launched an investigation and demanded that Bigelow identify his sources. He refused. He continued to defy the Senate committee even after hours of questioning and after senators threatened to arrest him for contempt. Bigelow melodramatically declared, “You can put me on bread and water and confine me to Colón, but you ­can’t make me disclose the names of persons who have told me these things in confidence.” Years later he explained that since residents of the Canal Zone lived “under a reign of political terror,” he dared not reveal his informants. The senators adjourned so they could debate their options privately, but in the end, when reminded of a recent Supreme Court decision that protected journalists’ right not to reveal their sources, the senators reluctantly backed down. Bigelow remained bitter about his treatment to the end of his life, and continued lecturing and writing about the government’s problems in Panama for many years.
In his memoirs he accused U.S. government officials of naïveté in running their colonies. They believe, he argued, that all it takes to keep people in the colonies contented is to supply them with Bibles, a book on Lincoln, and the Declaration of Independence. If someone declares that people are not satisfied with their lot, “Congress denounces him as unpatriotic, hales him before an inquisitorial Committee of Investigation, confronts him with a dozen witnesses who prove him to be a liar, and sends him away grateful at having escaped the penalty of high treason.”27

  Meanwhile, negative press continued to appear, which was surely frustrating to Roosevelt and the ICC officials. Editors of theIndependent, feeling embarrassed at having printed Bigelow’s infamous report, sent Edwin Slosson and Gardner Richardson to the Canal Zone to assess the veracity of his charges. Their report ran in four parts during March 1906 and noted that Taft and Stevens had identified many inaccuracies in Bigelow’s essay. They attempted to strike a neutral tone, reporting on the many improvements being made in the Zone and the gradual progress in the work. But they also observed that chronic gamblers as well as “human derelicts and habitual adventurers” were numerous throughout the isthmus, and Colón was indeed a filthy and smelly city. On the crucial question of Martinican women, Slosson and Richardson refused to confirm or deny Bigelow’s charge that the United States had imported prostitutes. Yet they declared that most people with whom they spoke “stated freely, frankly and emphatically their belief that the women were imported by the Canal Commission to satisfy the demands of the negro laborers” and that they had been deposited arbitrarily along the Zone without regard for the location of family members. Many were leading immoral lives, Slosson and Richardson declared, although others were working at good jobs with the government or private families. In a ­follow-­up article, Slosson and Richardson returned to the topic of women, concluding: “The three things lacking to make life enjoyable on the Isthmus are all feminine—women, cows, and hens.” They compared the balls sponsored by the ICC at the Hotel Tivoli to official life in India, where the few married women reigned supreme and feared no competition from debutantes.28 Later that year,Cosmopolitan Magazine sent Bigelow to Panama to reassess conditions. His report repeated many of the original charges, and in particular he taunted Roosevelt, urging him to discover for himself the true conditions in the Zone by visiting “disguised as a plain man.”29

  This scuffle between Bigelow and Roosevelt certainly involved a battle of egos, but its impact was larger than the two men. Bigelow’s charges damaged the canal’s public image as well as America’s sense of its role in the world. Perhaps Roosevelt also saw it as weakening his presidency. Resolving the problem required unusual and dramatic action, a public relations campaign of unprecedented force, drama, and sophistication. Roosevelt needed to refocus public opinion on the virtues of the canal project rather than on the scandals; to do so, he employed his talents for mythmaking and public relations as well as the prestige of the presidency. It is certainly no coincidence that Roosevelt chose, soon after Bigelow published his findings, to become the first president to leave the nation while in office.

  On November 8, 1906, Roosevelt and his wife stepped into a carriage at the White House to head for the ship awaiting them in the bay. As he departed, Roosevelt declared, “I want to see how they are going to dig that ditch; how they are going to build that lock; how they are going to get through that cut. It’s a business trip. I want to be able to tell people through this congress as much as I can about that canal.” A special suite on the USSLouisiana accommodated the president and First Lady, with numerous staterooms, bedrooms, a living room, and a smoking room. TheChicago Daily Tribune called it a “floating palace,” especially outfitted to receive and impress representatives of South and Central American governments. Roosevelt’s ship as well as the warships accompanying him received the most advanced wireless technology, and they were in contact with wireless stations at Guantánamo as they crossed the Caribbean Sea. Newspapers noted that Roosevelt would be in immediate contact if needed and that he would be safe. “It is doubtful that even the ghost of the redoubtable Capt. Kidd will care to attempt to board the president’s flagship.”30

  Only hours before leaving for Panama, Roosevelt had ordered three companies of African American soldiers who refused to reveal the identity of men who rioted in Brownsville, Texas, in August 1906 dishonorably discharged. Now, during his trip to Panama, he worked to manage the political repercussions resulting from his decision. Many of those discharged had served for years and been decorated for heroism in the War of 1898. There exploded such public outcry across the United States that the secretary of war suspended Roosevelt’s discharge order. The protests were most forceful in the black community: African Americans in Washington, D.C., refused, for example, to join in singing the song “America” as a protest and demanded that the president rethink his decision. From Puerto Rico, Roosevelt telegraphed his answer: the order stood, and all 157 ­African ­American soldiers must be discharged. Roosevelt thereby became the first president to learn that controversial situations can sometimes be most effectively handled while out of the country.31

  As Roosevelt’s warships steamed their way toward the isthmus, the Canal Zone and port cities of Panama received a scouring. Everything was cleaned, painted, or whitewashed. Extreme precautions were taken to ensure safety and public order. All steamers approaching Panama were inspected, “a number of known Anarchists” and other “suspicious characters” were arrested and imprisoned until Roosevelt completed his visit, and Canal Zone police chief George Shanton, along with a Secret Service officer sent from the United States for this purpose, took virtual command over the police of Panama City and Colón.32

  TheLouisiana docked eight hours earlier than expected, so there was a rush as ICC officials boarded trains in Panama City and headed across the isthmus to greet Roosevelt. The president set foot on a pier covered with palms and bunting and then received greetings from Shanton and ­seventy-­two of his best police officers. Next he boarded a “handsomely decorated” train and made the first of many stops where crowds of people greeted him as schoolchildren paraded and sang patriotic songs. When Roosevelt boarded a ship to tour Panama Bay, he saw every steamer, dredge, and tugboat adorned with flags, and as his ship passed each one, “they saluted, blowing their whistles, while the crews … cheered the President frantically.” In Culebra Cut, Roosevelt received a “21-gun salute” of dynamite explosions as a welcome from the canal employees. In Cristobal he examined the fire brigade and watched as members let loose ­twenty-­one powerful streams of water that washed up over buildings and down the main street of town. Then Roosevelt and chief engineer John Stevens mounted horses and galloped through the town, greeted by cheering crowds at each turn. When Roosevelt entered Panama City, he was escorted by hundreds of mounted police and watched more schoolchildren parade before listening to welcoming addresses by President Amador and other Panamanian officials. Amador declared Roosevelt the “commander in chief of the ­Panaman-­American forces, allied to perform the greatest engineering feat in the world.” Roosevelt responded by saying that this “was the first time in the history of the United States that an American President had placed his foot upon territory over which the flag of his country did not fly. He said he was glad this foreign territory was the Panama Republic and spoke of his affection for the young country.” Newspapers stressed the warmth and enthusiasm with which the Panamanian people greeted Roosevelt.33

  Followed about on the isthmus by an army of journalists, and declaring to them early on that he “felt like the commander of a great and successful army,” Roosevelt enjoyed endless photo opportunities. He worked hard, demonstrating as he had so many times in the past his rugged approach to the challenges of life. He toured housing for workers, cafeterias, hospitals, foundries, and machine shops, spoke with U.S. and West Indian workers, walked the streets of Colón and Panama City, and examined the ground where dams and locks would be built. He visited the
hospitals and found everything, as one journalist put it, in “­apple-­pie order.” Perhaps remembering Bigelow’s challenge that he visit “disguised as a plain man,” he dramatically slipped away from the scheduled investigations several times, supposedly to see how things really looked. One day, as theChicago Tribune reported it, when Roosevelt and his wife “dropped into the 30 cent lunchroom of the canal employés at La Boca and lunched with a grimy, motley crew of shovelers, his conquest of Panama was complete.”34 Roosevelt declared the food to be “as good as any one could wish,” but the stenographer Mary Chatfield wrote wryly to her women’s group back home: “I wonder if he labors under the delusion that they would dare serve him with the same sort of food that they serve to the employes?”35