The Canal Builders

by Julie Greene

  As for the commercial impact of the canal, an American diplomat predicted that its results would “far surpass the dreams of the most enthusiastic,” and most commentators agreed. U.S. railroad entrepreneurs did worry that the canal would hurt their business, and they lobbied the government to allow a decrease in transcontinental rates without a reduction in rates for the towns and cities along the way. The ICC supported their request, noting, “We are witnessing the beginning of a new era of transportation between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts… . The shrinkage of rates via the Canal from New York to San Francisco has put the transcontinental carriers in serious straits.” But most analysts expected the general economic stimulus provided by the canal and cheaper transportation would compensate for any disadvantage to the railroads. The canal, according to George Blakeslee, a professor of international relations at Clark University, would stimulate exports, particularly from the western United States, and industries like coal and steel would benefit. Accordingly, consumer prices would decrease, further stimulating the economy. Ultimately, shipbuilding would be affected favorably as well, and ports like San Francisco and New York would see a great increase in trade. A study conducted by the French government concluded that American industry would be “incalculably benefitted,” while European industry would likely be damaged.

  Most American observers addressed the coincidence of the canal’s opening with the impact of war and concluded that, economically, things could not be better. Edward Marshall noted in the New York Times that together World War I and the canal would open the vast markets of South America to the United States: “That the great European war should have emerged from a nightmare dream of horror into a terrible reality and that the Panama Canal, long regarded as a chimerical extravagance of impractical imagining, should have become a concrete, operative fact almost at the same moment, form a coincidence which may be referred to by future historians not only as one of Fate’s greatest gifts to this incomparably lucky Republic but as an adjustment tending to alleviate a great world disaster.” Across the country chambers of commerce and merchants’ associations feverishly conducted investigations and sought information about Latin markets. Any salesman with knowledge of the Spanish language suddenly became a hot property.34

  Indeed, over the years many commercial clubs traveled to the isthmus so their members might examine conditions and report back to the community. As early as 1907, for example, more than eighty men, representatives from the Commercial Clubs of Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, traveled together to Panama to see “America’s Mediterranean” for themselves.35

  A more muted theme suggested by various writers involved the canal’s effect on American military and foreign relations. Many portrayed the canal as a crucial contribution to world peace, but their arguments faltered in the face of Europe’s war. Far more compelling were arguments proposing that the canal would play a central role in America’s emergence as a major military power. By strengthening the Navy, the canal would have a tremendous impact. Alfred Mahan, whose arguments in favor of greater sea power for the United States had helped move Theodore Roosevelt to launch the canal construction project, wrote in 1911that within two decades the canal would be seen to have changed the U.S. role in the world more powerfully than any other historical event except for the War of 1898. Not only would America’s interests in the world and its need for defense both expand as a result of these events, but the American Navy would soon be second only to Great Britain’s Royal Navy. Perhaps most important, Mahan argued, the world would see a great expansion and strengthening of ­Anglo-­Saxon influence and institutions all along the Pacific, particularly from Alaska to Mexico. By bringing more Americans to the Pacific Coast, the canal would reorient the United States and its commercial and military power toward the Pacific: “More people, more wants; more people, more production. Both wants and production mean more transportation.”36 The editors of World’s Work put the matter more succinctly: The canal’s completion “emphasizes the evolution of a new America. Our splendid isolation is gone… . We have become a colonial power with possessions in both oceans. And now we open under our own control one of the great trade routes of the world.” They quoted Admiral Mahan as saying it used to be common wisdom that congressmen should avoid serving on a committee like Foreign Affairs, as it meant nothing to one’s constituents. The editors concluded: that was a fair observation in the days before the canal, but it certainly did not apply anymore.37

  Among the dreams indulged in about the canal, perhaps none speaks more powerfully to Americans’ quest for a strong sense of national identity than the common notion that the “kiss of the oceans” would unite and homogenize the people of the United States. In a world where pressures and anxieties generated by a host of social changes associated with industrialization seemed to fragment the nation, the great triumph of the canal, and the social and economic benefits it promised, seemed capable of reuniting the American people. Every region of the country appeared poised to benefit and rediscover its connection to the broader nation, but perhaps most emphatically the South. As the historian Alfred Richard noted, the canal seemed to enhance the sense among Southerners that their interests were closely tied to those of the nation as a whole. The former Confederate colonel T. P. Thompson pointed out in Leslie’s Weekly that the canal’s completion would be celebrated in the jubilee year of peace between North and South. He listed the many benefits the canal would bring to the South: “Before the fiftieth anniversary of … Appomattox we of the Southland expect a generous stream of immigration in this direction, and when we invite the remnant of the G.A.R. [the Grand Army of the Republic] to celebrate here, as we intended to do, fraternizing with the U.C.V. [the United Confederate Veterans] in the jubilee year of peace between the States, we also expect to have many of the sons of those who wore the Blue here residing in our midst at that time.”38

  A short story by the writer O. Henry popularized this notion that the canal might reunite North and South. In “Two Renegades,” O. Henry created a Yankee named Barnard O’Keefe who falls ill on the isthmus while helping Panamanians mobilize for independence from Colombia. He is healed by a grizzly old American doctor who still swears loyalty to the Confederacy. Soon thereafter, O’Keefe is captured by Colombia for his revolutionary activities. The Confederate doctor intervenes and says he can save O’Keefe, but only if he foresakes his Union sympathies and pledges allegiance to the Confederacy. Facing no other option but a firing squad, O’Keefe finally agrees and pledges to serve the Confederacy faithfully. The Confederate doctor then pays a ransom to free O’Keefe, using money he still has from the Confederate States of America. He urges O’Keefe to hightail it back to the United States, before Colombia discovers the ransom has been paid with useless Confederate cash. O’Keefe catches the next ship back, but for years afterward he can still be found in the South, marching and waving the Confederate flag on days of commemoration. In this way O. Henry, a native of North Carolina, portrayed the Isthmus of Panama as the handmaiden of unification and redemption for North and South.39

  “THE COMING OF A CONQUEROR”

  Americans approached the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 ready to celebrate the “eighth wonder of the world” in grand fashion despite—or perhaps because of—the horrors associated with World War I in Europe. During a trip to the East, Charles Moore, the president of the exposition, had announced the fair’s raison d’être: it would be a celebration of America’s “greatest achievement, the dream of the ancient navigators fulfilled.” He declared bluntly: “Theme: Energy of man, progress of the race, has offered unusual inspiration to the artists, architects, et al., of the world.” Future president Herbert Hoover noted the particular utility of the planners’ vision: “In these days of stifling struggle our people need something to bring back to them the heritage, not only of the combat of immediate fathers in the upbuilding of the West, but also to bring to the people that they have a heritage of race.”40

>   The fair, as the historian Robert Rydell has argued, was suffused with images of racial progress, conquest, and social Darwinism. Explicit references to empire were, for the most part, noticeably absent. Its surrogates, however, were everywhere: the ­Panama-­Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) celebrated civilization, progress, humanity, triumph over nature, and brotherhood. More prosaically, it highlighted the technological, industrial, scientific, and artistic brilliance of the United States. The PPIE celebrated the great city of San Francisco, reborn from the ashes of the 1906earthquake (another epic triumph over nature). And most of all, the PPIE ecstatically celebrated itself. No fair had ever been more important, more financially successful, more visited, more beautiful, more encouraging of world peace—or, depending on one’s point of view regarding international affairs, more effective at preparing the nation for war. Indeed, it was quite an occasion. The fair cost approximately $ 50million to build, and its organizers boasted that, thanks to the many millions who visited, they had set a new world’s record by making back every bit of the money spent.41

  The building of the exposition involved a huge effort stretched over four years, and it emerged as a microcosm of struggles that existed in American society and in the construction of the Panama Canal. Many of the workers who toiled to build the fair buildings and landscape the grounds were unionized. Their unions, however, were devoted to the grand cause represented by the fair, and they were eager to display that devotion. In 1912the San Francisco Labor Council and the Building Trades Council wrote jointly to Charles Moore: “Labor realizes that the PPIE is an institution dedicated to Progress, in the name of humanity, peace, and civilization, held for the purpose of commemorating the greatest engineering feat in the world’s history.” Furthermore, “all the achievements of modern civilization that are to be placed upon exhibition in the PPIE have been produced by labor.” Therefore, unionists declared they would not limit output, would not push for higher wages or shorter hours, would not engage in jurisdictional disputes, and would cooperate with any workers brought to the fair by foreign countries. Organized labor even disavowed its ­long-­term devotion to exclusion of Asians. The Asiatic Exclusion League declared that “organized workers of the U.S. should use the opportunity afforded by the PPIE for furthering the cause of unity and brotherhood among the nations.” Toward that end, the league declared, it would welcome all visitors and discontinue all ­anti-­Asian activities.42

  Motivating the unions’ cooperative spirit was also the National Association of Manufacturers, or NAM, which mobilized to limit union power and lobbied Moore and the other fair directors to build the grounds with thoroughly open shop policies. Moore stood against the pressure. He allowed unions and cooperated with them. Yet he may well have used the NAM’s visible lobbying and its multiple ways of applying pressure (from Pinkerton spies to threats that employers would not participate in the fair) to encourage concessions from labor.43

  The question of Asian—particularly Japanese—exclusion was more difficult for the PPIE organizers. In 1913a fight erupted in California over the Alien Land Bill, which proposed to bar aliens ineligible for citizenship (that is, Asians) from owning land. Charles Moore became outspoken in opposition to the bill, and some white farmers who favored it wrote bitterly about the subject. A farmer named Schmidt complained to Moore, “I see you rich men are fighting it [the ­anti-­alien land bill] and you are trodding upon us in favor of the Japanese.” He added, “Must we white farmers be driven away to make room for the Japanese? How would you like to be a poor farmer and have for neighbors a lot of grinning Japs. They have already driven white people away in some part of this state.” He concluded that it was unpatriotic to sell land to Japanese farmers and that America must not “kneel down” to Japan.44

  Japan had threatened to pull out of the exposition if the land bill passed. Its leaders also issued formal complaints about the mistreatment of Japanese citizens by exposition employees and officials. Moore and other organizers believed their fair would fail if Japan did not participate, and they also worried about the consequences for America’s trade relations. As American consul general Thomas Sammons stressed, the PPIE was important to the United States in part because of its potential ability to strengthen commercial ties with Japan. Racist incidents would eliminate any such potential. Sammons worked to prevent conflict, negotiating a plan with the consul of Japan whereby the builders of Japan’s site at the fair would keep Japanese and American workers segregated from each other. If Americans were needed for a specific task, Japanese workers would be removed until the former finished their job.45

  While PPIE officials worked to negotiate polite relations with the governments of China and Japan, racial tensions emerged daily at the fair. A concession called “Underground China” included depictions of female slavery and dens in which Chinese addicts seduced white people into smoking opium. The Republic of China and Chinese Americans protested vociferously about the exhibit.46 As at other world’s fairs, an air of social Darwinism and notions of racial progress and hierarchy pervaded the PPIE, and like others it included exhibits of various “inferior” peoples: Samoans, Hawaiians, Somalians, and Mexicans, in addition to the Chinese and Japanese. Sculptures, paintings, and postcards broadcast the fair’s themes, including racial progress. The most popular sculpture at the fair, by James Earle Fraser, graphically depicted racial triumph and defeat. Titled The End of the Trail, it shows a Native American on his horse, slumped over so far as to be nearly falling off, an emblem of a vanquished race. Author Juliet James wrote at the time that the sculpture portrayed not just the end of the trail but “the end of the Indian race… . His trail is now lost and on the edge of the continent he finds himself almost annihilated.”47

  Many of the exhibits on the PPIE’s midway, officially called “The Zone,” were unsuccessful, particularly those featuring “native villages.” The Samoan Village closed early, even though it “provided a glimpse of the life of a race thousands of years behind civilization.” A village of Somalians—“thin, black, and ­hollow-­cheeked wanderers,” as the PPIE’s official chronicler, Frank Morton Todd, described them—was considered boring and tame by fairgoers, even though the residents performed “a great deal of violent ­flat-­foot dancing and spear shaking on their ballyhoo stand.” When the concession closed, the Somalians were slow to vacate the site, so exposition guards forcibly removed them. They were then taken to Angel Island and deported.48 The Hawaiian Village was particularly uninspired; when the Hawaiian commissioner objected that it did not represent the lives of Hawaiians, fair organizers changed the name to “Hula Dancers.” Even then, the secretary of the Hawaiian Promotion Committee protested that the hula dancers were not Hawaiians but “fat” women from Chicago who had painted their skin brown.49

  If patrons grew tired of observing exotic cultures from around the world, or the beautiful sculptures and palaces meant to instill an awesome appreciation of beauty and civilization, innumerable other exhibits demonstrated the wonders of modern technology, industry, and science. To delight and amaze visitors there were the Palace of Food Products, the Palace of Transportation, the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy, the Palace of Varied Industries, the Palace of Machinery, the Palace of Industrial Arts, and buildings erected by individual corporations like the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Employers big and small displayed their products and inventions in exhibits throughout the different palaces, from Henry Ford’s assembly line in the Palace of Transportation (which turned out a car every ten minutes to the pleasure of large crowds) to Gillette Safety Razor, Westinghouse, and Miss Curtis’ Snowflake Marshmallow Creme. The Heinz exhibit showed ­fifty-­seven varieties of the company’s food products and gave out free pickle pins. ­Harley-­Davidson showed off the fastest motorcycles in the world. The Excelsior Auto Cycle company presented dozens of bicycles. At the Western Electric exhibit, electrical appliances were displayed along with a gigantic desk telephone and big lamps accompanying a sign that declared, “Ev
ery time the lamps flash a Western Electric telephone is manufactured.” Paralleling the spatial transformation symbolized by the completion of the Panama Canal, Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first transcontinental telephone call by ringing the exposition from New York City in early 1915. More transcontinental calls were made every day thereafter.50

  It was left to the Panama Canal to bring together the many themes floating about at the PPIE: the technological genius, geographical and commercial transformation, promise of ascendant industrial might, and the vast benefits to civilization, brotherhood, and world peace. As a souvenir book reminded readers, the reason for the splendid world’s fair was “The colossal achievement of mankind, the building of the Panama Canal.”51 There was Perham Nahl’s brilliant poster depicting the canal as the thirteenth labor of Hercules serving as the PPIE’s main advertisement. Likewise, the architecture and sculptures of the fair were meant to “tell the story of the unification of the nations of the East and the West through the construction of the Panama Canal,” according to the contemporary writer Frederic Haskin.52 A sensational centerpiece of the fair, just inside the main entrance, was the Fountain of Energy, which depicted America’s triumph over the isthmus. Juliet James wrote of the aquatic sculpture, “The theme is Energy, the Conqueror—the Over Lord … the indomitable power that achieved the Waterway between the Oceans at Panama.” At the center of the fountain, “Energy himself is presented as a nude male, typically American, standing in his stirrups astride a snorting charger—an exultant ­super-­horse needing no rein—commanding with grandly elemental gesture of extended arms, the passage of the Canal.” The fountain’s sculptor, A. Stirling Calder, described his intentions in depicting the triumphant male figure: “His outstretched arms have severed the lands and let the waters pass. Upon his mighty shoulders stand Fame and Glory, heralding the coming of a conqueror.”53