The Canal Builders

by Julie Greene

  The canal seemed to inspire fantastic, romantic visions of history and humanity. One man proposed a pageant to the fair organizers around the theme of peace. He imagined a cast of five hundred people acting out the story of humanity, beginning with cavemen and climaxing with the completion of the Panama Canal. It would demonstrate “that in ancient times war was a necessity but is so no longer and that Man’s activities should be constructive, as in building Panama Canal, and not mutually destructive.” Another, more spectacular pageant was proposed by the president of the Festivals Association of the Pacific Coast. Titled “The Wedding of the Oceans,” this pageant of two thousand people would begin with Columbus and march through the history of the Americas (Cabrilho, Balboa, and so on), before climaxing with the exploding of Gamboa Dike. Then the oceans, symbolized as Neptune and Amphitrite, would be joined in wedlock, attended by sea horses, dolphins, Father Panama, and the deities of Earth, Sea, and Sky. Electricity and fireworks would end the pageant in “a blaze of glory.”54

  A poem by Wendell Phillips Stafford, titled “Panama Hymn,” used imagery of marriage to represent the canal. Commissioned for the fair’s opening ceremonies, the poem was set to music and performed by a chorus of four hundred people. It graphically presented an image of man’s triumph over nature:

  We join today the east and west,

  The stormy and the tranquil seas.

  O Father, be the bridal blest!

  The earth is on her knees.

  As thou did’st give our hand the might

  To hew the hemisphere in twain,

  Oh, grant the road we lead to light

  May Never know a chain!

  In freedom shall the great ship go

  On freedom’s errand, sea to sea,

  The oceans rise, the hills bend low,

  Servants of liberty.

  The nations here shall flash from foam

  And paint their pennons with the sun

  Till every harbor is a home,

  And all the flags are one.

  We join today the east and west,

  The stormy and the tranquil seas.

  O Father, be the bridal blest!

  Earth waits it on her knees.

  Although the editor of Sunset magazine found the poem horrible, believing the image of Earth on her knees to be particularly crude (while the image of oceans rising as the hills bent low, he said, made him feel seasick), Charles Moore disregarded his advice, and the poem became the official anthem of the PPIE.55

  The fair brought together most of the famous men who had played an important role in acquiring and building the Zone, as well as many who would become famous in decades to come. William Jennings Bryan, who as secretary of state had negotiated with the Republic of Panama in the aftermath of the Cocoa Grove riot of 1912, visited to help celebrate America’s Independence Day. Newspapers estimated that 100, 000people gathered around to hear the perennial presidential candidate and former secretary of state address the crowd. The day had seen endless marching and Army bands playing in celebration of the holiday. Bryan was greeted with the booming guns of warships as he mounted the podium. Then, in a surprise stunt to honor Bryan, the aerialist Art Smith circled the sky above the grandstand before releasing four doves from his little plane. As the birds winged their way toward the clouds, Bryan stretched his neck to watch. Then he stood and delivered his address, “The Meaning of the Flag.” The Stars and Stripes was draped over his podium, and Bryan caressed the flag at dramatic moments of his speech. Although “the glint of bayonets [remained] in his eyes,” Bryan’s address focused on the need for peace and brotherly love. His voice shaking with emotion, Bryan invoked Jesus of Nazareth and ­old-­time gospel to plea for peace: “God has given us an opportunity ­to-­day such as no other nation ever had, that may never come again, to lift the world out of this bondage of brute force. The measure of individual and national greatness should be service.” And finally: “May the God of our fathers give us light and keep our feet in the path of truth as we strive to fulfill the high mission to which He has called our country.” The United States, he exhorted, was the world’s best hope for peace.56

  Soon thereafter, Bryan’s old nemesis Theodore Roosevelt had his day, literally, when PPIE officials declared July 21to be Theodore Roosevelt Day. The ­ex-­president arrived in an automobile surrounded by cavalry troops. He declared, “You did not have to bring me out here. You could not have kept me away. I feel peculiar pride in this Exposition.” Roosevelt toured the various exhibits during a long day and attended a banquet in his honor before presenting an address on “war and peace.”

  Robustly, amid cheers from the audience, Roosevelt evaluated the nation he had worked to build to greatness. He defended his actions in 1903: “In everything we did in connection with the acquiring of the Panama Zone we acted in a way to do absolute justice to all other nations, to benefit all other nations, including especially the adjacent States, and to render the utmost service, from the standpoint alike of honor and of material interest, to the United States.” The project had doubled the efficiency of the U.S. Navy, but if unfortified, it would become a great menace to the security of the nation. “The canal is to be a great agency for peace; it can be such only, and exactly in proportion as it increased our potential efficiency in war.” As the canal went, so went the nation. The United States must prepare for war, Roosevelt argued, and quickly and efficiently. He decried the way his nation was continuing “with soft complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world,” lacking a strong army or navy and trained officers to lead them. He especially attacked the “professional Pacifists, the ­peace-­at-­any-­price, ­non-­resistance, universal arbitration people [who] are now seeking to Chinafy this country.” Although he did not name Bryan, it was surely clear to listeners whom he meant. And as if in further response to Bryan, Roosevelt ended powerfully by reading verses from the Bible that echoed his concerns: “But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity.” The San Francisco Examiner reported that when Roosevelt finished with this last Bible verse, he was met with a moment of stunned silence, and then the crowd of sixty thousand broke into cheers and ovation. The applause continued until he had left the stage and his automobile had passed through the exit gates of the exposition grounds.57

  President Woodrow Wilson and ­ex-­president William Howard Taft were among the many who toured the fair. George Washington Goe­thals visited and proclaimed, “This is the first International Exposition to commemorate a contemporaneous event. I came to it with the picture in my mind of other great expositions and I found that this one was worthy of the Canal it commemorates.”58 Future presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt served on the board that planned the exposition. The fair became a cultural crossroads, bringing together Helen Keller, Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Fatty Arbuckle, Harry Houdini, Buffalo Bill Cody, William Randolph Hearst, Al Jolson, Samuel Gompers, and many other famous Americans.59

  Amid the grandeur, pageantry, and posing that took place during the world’s fair in San Francisco, two great themes were notably absent. The first was the role played by the Republic of Panama. As a young nation that had ceded control to the United States over the Panama Canal Zone, making the construction project itself possible, as an ally providing resources and labor, as a site of competition and contestation with the United States, as a refuge for canal employees desiring adventure and amusement, and as home to thousands of West Indian canal diggers, Panama had played a central and distinctive role. Yet no building at the exposition displayed the glories of Panama. The Republic of Panama built a pavilion, but it did so unenthusiastically because participation in the fair required a great infusion of money and the U.S. government refused to reciprocate and support the fair Panama planned to hold on its own territory. At one point Panama’s government halted construction of the pavilion at the PPIE
to protest the U.S. decision but finally agreed to finish the job. PPIE officials had sought to make peace with the Panamanian government by inviting its representatives to attend ­opening-­day festivities, but the U.S. State Department refused even to allow this small gesture. Instead, a luncheon was held to honor Panama’s official representative, Don Lefevre, and afterward he addressed PPIE president Charles Moore and other notable officials on his country’s sentiments regarding the canal and the exposition.60

  Lefevre’s speech included the polite praise of the United States one might expect at such an event, and yet his comments betrayed a cool and jaundiced perspective on his country’s powerful neighbor. He urged listeners not to see him as a stranger, because “I come from the country that made this Exposition a possibility.” My young republic, he declared, “furnished the name of ‘Panama’ for the ­Panama-­Pacific Exposition.” Lefevre praised the “energy, the intelligence and the greatness of the Nation that has built the canal,” yet he insisted that “we should not forget the important share that Panama and its people have taken in this unparalleled undertaking. We have had our territory pierced in two through the powerful arm of Uncle Sam, to make way for two oceans that will look friendly into each other.” Americans, Lefevre declared, should not forget that the Republic of Panama had “put in your hands the Key to the Commerce of the Coast swept by the Ocean of the future.”

  Lefevre’s brief remarks concluded on a dark note. The selfless civic actions of Panamanians had transformed the isthmus into a peaceful republic, making possible the Panama Canal. The canal in turn had destroyed many old Isthmian villages, including Gorgona, where America’s own Ulysses S. Grant had camped as a young quartermaster on his way to California. Lefevre spelled out just a few of the personal and social costs to Panamanians: “Many families of natives which lived for years in the picturesque cabins where they were born, have been compelled to abandon their homes and to see gone forever the beloved spot of ground on which they stood … [now] covered by the rising waters of the Gatun Lake.” If the United States was a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Republic of Panama might be compared to the “mythical bird which opened its breast to give life to its ­off-­spring.” In this metaphor the economic and political power of the United States was Panama’s offspring. Panama not only gave birth to the canal and to a newly ascendant America but also “tore its entrails to feed international commerce and to strengthen the ties of brotherhood of the world.” He hoped the canal would not only shorten the distances of the globe but also bring men closer together and make prejudice toward others disappear forever. To the officials of the PPIE this must have seemed a shockingly frank perspective on America’s grand canal and exposition.61

  Besides the Republic of Panama, another remarkable absence at the fair was the workingmen and workingwomen who actually built the canal. Whether any of the construction era’s unsung heroes managed to tour the fair and celebrate their achievements has been lost to history. Surely there must have been a steam-shovel engineer or two, a nurse, or perhaps a typographer who found a way to wander through the grounds. But in all the imagery and gay celebrations of the fair, one sees no references to them. The star attraction of the entire world’s fair—a model version of the Panama Canal—demonstrates this erasure of the human labor that made the canal’s construction possible. The company that built the model lavished an astonishing amount of resources as well as the latest technological developments in order to reproduce the canal in exquisite and ­awe-­inspiring detail. The model canal covered nearly five acres of land, cost $ 250, 000, and required 225men working at construction for seven months. The landscaping work employed an additional 60women, who spent five months planting trees, bushes, and grass. Workers reproduced the canal, locks, and surrounding cities and geographical landmarks over a vast area that looked roughly like a football field. Above and around this reproduction twelve hundred people at a time could be transported via a moving walkway (the longest one in the world at the time, at 1, 440feet), with joints built in to allow the rounding of corners. The platform was divided into little traveling opera boxes, with two tiers of seats in each one. Spectators sat in the comfortable chairs, placed telephone receivers at their ears, and listened to lectures from a series of 45rpm phonographic records that employees placed on or off the record player as the moving walkway passed the different sights of the canal. The record player sent its message to telephone transmitters, which then sent the message on to the receivers at each seat. Combining phonograph records and telephone technology to communicate the information seemed quite new and impressive. It had been developed in the laboratory of Thomas Edison.

  The model included ingenious details to communicate precisely the workings and feel of the canal. Little ships steamed through the canal, small trains chugged along the landscape, and electric mules pulled the ships through the lock gates. There were lighthouses and hospitals and the administration buildings of the ICC. Towns like Colón and Cristobal were represented with hundreds of tiny buildings, three to six inches in height, with glass windows. They were placed on top of glass so they could be illuminated from underneath. The major parks of Cristobal and Colón were also represented, with each of three main varieties of palm trees included as well. The model showed landmarks like Gold Hill and Mount Hope Cemetery as well as dry docks and hydroelectric plants. Culebra Cut was of course displayed, including the terracing done along the sides of the cut to discourage further slides. The model’s designers included Chiriqui Prison and the ruins of old Panama when depicting the region around Panama City. They even took care to show abandoned towns like Pedro Miguel, half submerged under the waters of Gatun Lake, and they showed where old towns like Empire had once existed.62

  For all the meticulous detail the model included, the tens of thousands of men and women who built the canal, their labors and toil, the malaria and dynamite explosions, their making do with spoiled meat and ants in their fruit pies, were nowhere to be seen. In this sterile landscape, spectators saw no residents of the current cities of the Zone or the port cities of Colón and Panama City, nor any of the thousands of employees who maintained and ran the canal. The model canal depicted the elements Theodore Roosevelt had stressed about the project: the marvels of engineering and technology and the transformed geography of the isthmus.

  A journalist described how it felt to visit the canal in this way: “We seat ourselves in a revolving gallery and as we look into the arena below we lose our sense of distance and feel the sensation of peering over the edge of a balloon. We adjust the automatic telephone and a voice … tells us that we are above Miraflores locks. … Tiny ships nose into the docks and traverse the canal. Wireless messages snap and crackle.” This observer noted the absence of people, but it ­didn’t seem to bother him: “It does not require much imagination to see pygmy toilers sweating under the tropical sun, or to hear the clank of machinery and the ‘­sput-­sput’ of laboring engines as the steam shovels bite their way through the stubborn earth.” He left the miniature canal with a “feeling of reverence” for this project that joined two oceans.63

  The Panama Canal concession proved to be one of the fair’s great success stories. In the first five days of the fair, fifty thousand people toured the model canal. The San Francisco Call wrote, “This big attraction in the joy belt has proved to be one of the magnets to attract the thousands of pleasure seekers.” Like the fair itself, the model canal was said to be most beautiful at night, as all the buildings, lighthouses, ships, and buoys were illuminated.64 Laura Ingalls Wilder described in a letter home to her husband how wonderful the concession was, with the electricity managed somehow so that the sky appeared to be at twilight with stars gradually coming out. In a popular children’s book by Elizabeth Gordon, What We Saw at Madame World’s Fair, twin sisters observe that the model canal is “far and away the most educational and interesting thing at the Fair, and helped us to understand really why Madame World was so anxious to have the Canal cut, and why there is
so much rejoicing over it.” The feminist writer and reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman reported on the “marvellous mechanics” of the model and inquired, “Could scientific ingenuity farther go?” The model thus gracefully complemented Perham Nahl’s poster: the canal construction involved labor, to be sure, but the labor of technological innovation, the labor of a nation, the labor of an empire. Individual laboring men and women shrank like pygmies in significance compared to the broader themes of the project and the nation that made it possible.65

  IN DECEMBER 1915 the fair, in all its brilliance, came to an end. On the last day nearly 300,000 people crowded in for a final chance to see the sights. As sunset hit, the thousands of lights shined one last time; near midnight a few thousand people gathered to sing “Auld Lang Syne.” When the clock struck midnight, PPIE president Charles Moore pushed a button to turn off all the lights, a bugler atop the Tower of Jewels played taps, the aerialist Art Smith spelled out “Farewell PPIE” in smoky letters above them, and hundreds of bombs were set off along the marina to mark the closing of the exposition.66 Now it was left to the remaining years of the century to demonstrate history’s rich use of the Panama Canal’s meaning and symbolism.

  EPILOGUE

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  THE CONSTRUCTION of the Panama Canal played a pivotal role in forging America’s ­self-­definition as a nation and as a world power. As a symbol of American efficiency, enthusiasm, and contributions to world civilization, the Panama Canal hovered over the twentieth century like a phantom. It connected the acknowledged strengths of the United States in medicine, technology, and industry to expansionist aims and in this way helped make Americans more comfortable with their country’s new role as a world power. The construction project also became a model for the most prosaic issues of how to exercise power—how to rule over men and women in America’s new sites of empire—and how a ­nation-­state might effectively operate in an increasingly global economy.