The Canal Builders

by Julie Greene

  David Montgomery first sparked my interest in the Panama Canal when he asked me to assess the connections between my dissertation research on the American Federation of Labor and politics, and the history of imperialism. Much as I disliked the question, it sure got me thinking. I thank David for his ability to inspire broad intellectual connections across time and space, for sharing my interest in ­working-­class history and empire, and for providing advice on key sections of this book. Five other people encouraged this project and then read the entire draft for me. They provided astonishingly thoughtful suggestions that showed me how I could restructure the book and reshape and sharpen its major arguments. Fred Anderson, Leon Fink, Dana Frank, Aims McGuinness, and James Maffie: this book was terribly lucky to have you involved in such a central way. Fred, a fine craftsman of historical writing, analyzed my manuscript and showed me where improvements could be made. Leon’s scholarship has long influenced me, and he brought a tough wisdom regarding ­working-­class and transnational history to bear that illuminated several important themes. Dana and I originally trained together in U.S. ­working-­class history and have shared a growing interest in transnational methodologies; she has been a font of politically sophisticated criticism for years. She provided advice to the very last moment, helping me think up possible titles as the manuscript went to press. (I still like “Manifest Ditch Diggers”!) Aims’s contributions I have already noted, but I must add that among his many contributions he sent voluminous comments on each of my chapters and nurtured a fuller understanding of the Panama Canal’s place in Latin American and Caribbean history. And James Maffie, whose work on ­Meso-­American philosophy has been for me a model of pioneering interdisciplinary scholarship, read multiple drafts of this manuscript. As this project developed, he has been ready to listen, critique, and help me reenvision. As a philosopher he sees things differently, and his reactions to my writing were invaluable.

  My agent, Geri Thoma, is better than anyone I know at making me laugh even as she gives me advice I ­don’t want to hear. Thank you, Geri, for finding a place for this project and for providing serious help and frank reactions when I needed them. Glenda Gilmore commented insightfully on an early book proposal, helped me recast my plans for how it should be structured, and suggested it for Penguin’s History of American Life series. At The Penguin Press, Scott Moyers provided his savvy perspective on the proposal and an early draft of the manuscript. I owe an especially big debt to Laura Stickney, my main editor at Penguin, who read several drafts of this book and recommended illuminatingly where I should cut and where I should expand. Her big ideas sometimes clashed with my big ideas, but she was as splendid at listening to my perspective as she was at explaining her own. Consequently we found a way to untangle each problem, and the result was a greatly improved book. Even then she kept reading, going over the draft again to look for phrases that could be clearer or smoother. Thanks for all your labor helping me build this book, Laura. I am grateful also to Ann Godoff, Bruce Giffords, Ingrid Sterner, and Darren Haggar at The Penguin Press for their work on this book.

  Some thanks are more intimate, personal ones. I am deeply indebted to my family members for their enthusiasm and support over the years. I wish my father, Hank Greene, could have lived to read this book. I can see him now, walking the land of his Nebraska farm, talking about a hawk he spotted or a good book he read. Some of his ways with the world are my ways too, now. Helen Greene, my mother, has forever modeled for me how to be a strong and compassionate woman of the wider world. As readers of this book will have discovered, she kindled in me an early interest in the Panama Canal and then taught me a final, uneasy lesson about it toward the end. I salute her and thank her for her love, passion, and sustenance. James Maffie has been my ­big-­hearted partner in every life adventure. I love his intellectual energy and enjoy laughing with him at the idiosyncrasies of life. Our daughter, Sophia Florence Meinsen Maffie, was named for a ­great-­aunt I cherished, an audacious homesteader. Sophie never got to meet her ancestor who grew potatoes in the hardscrabble earth of Wyoming, yet she possesses all the bravery, imagination, and determined spark one might expect with such a namesake. Sophie and Jim are the homesteaders of my heart. They need not stake a claim; its landscape has belonged to them for a while now.

  APPENDIX

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  TOTAL POPULATION DISTRIBUTED BY PLACE OF BIRTH, SEX, AND PERIOD OF FIRST RESIDENCE IN CANAL ZONE

  NOTES

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  INTRODUCTION

  1.On the number of people who attended the PPIE, see Robert W. Rydell, All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 209. Over the course of the twentieth century, Nahl’s poster was joined by many other depictions of the canal in prose, poetry, and visual imagery. One of the most memorable is at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Completed in 1935, William Andrew Mackay’s grand mural illustrates the construction project. It highlights leadership provided by a handful of men (Theodore Roosevelt, the chief engineers John Stevens and George Goethals, and the sanitation officer William Gorgas) and provides depictions of the gigantic locks and the steam shovels from the Pacific and Atlantic sides joining together in a final act of excavation. Mackay’s mural presented the canal as a victory made possible by American technology and the peerless leadership offered by individual men. See “The Murals in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall,” American Museum of Natural History Library. For published depictions of the canal that mirror these themes see, for example, Donald Barr Chidsey, Panama Passage (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946); John Hall, Panama Roughneck Ballads (Panama and Canal Zone: Albert Lindo, Panama Railroad News Agency, 1912); Willis John Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose (New York: Syndicate, 1914).

  2.David McCullough, “Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” transcript of remarks delivered on Feb. 15, 2005, at Hillsdale College’s National Leadership Seminar, published in Imprimis: The National Speech Digest of Hillsdale College 34, no. 4 (April 2005). The newsletter states it has a readership of more than 1.6 million people per month. I am grateful to Donna Stevens for sending me this newsletter. See also David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), which received the National Book Award and the Francis Parkman Prize, among others.

  3.George W. Goethals, Government of the Canal Zone (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1915), pp. 2–3; see also Goethals to his wife, March 22, 1907, George Washington Goethals Papers, container 3, Family Correspondence, Library of Congress.

  4.See Bertolt Brecht’s poem “A Worker Reads History,” on p. xiii before this introduction. The poem can also be found in Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poems, trans. H. R. Hays (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1947), p. 109.

  5.Hall, Panama Roughneck Ballads; see especially “The Canal Builders,” pp. 34–38, and “The Price of Empire,” pp. 65–66.

  6.Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the ­Spanish-­American and ­Philippine-­American Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998); David Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1981); Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default (New York: Henry Holt, 1998); Walter LaFeber, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 2: The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982); Louis Pérez, The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

  7.Alfredo Castillero Calvo, ed., Historia general de Panamá (Panama City: Comité Nacional del Centenario de la República, 2004); John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903–1979 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).

  8.William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (Cleveland: World, 1961), p. 416; “A National Disgrace,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 1903, p. 8.

  9.Shelton Stromquist, Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Maureen A. Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).

  10.Amy Kaplan, “ ‘Left Alone with America’: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture,” in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993); William Appleman Williams, “The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy,” Pacific Historical Review 24 (Nov. 1955), pp. 379–95; Paul A. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and ­Anglo-­Saxons: Race and Rule Between the British and U.S. Empires, 1880–1910,” in The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives, ed. Julian Go and Anne L. Foster (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 43–91. For important examples of the “new imperial” history, see, among others, Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Eric Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Eileen Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the History of U.S.–Latin American Relations (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998); Go and Foster, American Colonial State in the Philippines; Ann Laura Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006); Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Vicente L. Rafael, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); Aims McGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); Harvey Neptune, “White Lies: Race and Sexuality in Occupied Trinidad,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2 (Spring 2001); Jana Lipman, Guantánamo: A ­Working-­Class History Between Empire and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

  11.Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 6; see also LaFeber’s new preface to the 1998 edition of this book, also published by Cornell University Press. Other works that have shaped my approach to these questions include, in addition to those cited above, William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America’s Present Predicament, Along with a Few Thoughts About an Alternative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell, 1972); Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion 1890–1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982); Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

  12.Isabel Hofmeyr’s comment can be found in “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (Dec. 2006), p. 1444; other works that discuss or employ transnational methods, besides those cited above in note 10, include Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006); Kristin Hoganson, Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); David Thelen, “The Nation and Beyond: Trans­national Perspectives on United States History,” Journal of American History 86 (Dec. 1999), pp. 965–75; Eric Rauchway, Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007).

  13.Key works on Panama and the construction of the canal that have influenced this project include Castillero Calvo, Historia general de Panamá, especially the following essays: in vol. 3, bk. 2, Carlos Bolívar Pedreschi, “Negociaciones del Canal con los Estados Unidos: 1904–1967,” pp. 25–41; and in vol. 3, bk. 1, Gerardo Maloney, “Significado de la presencia y contribución del afro antillano a la nación panameña,” pp. 152–71, and Marco A. Gandásegui, “Los movimientos sociales en Panamá: primera mitad del siglo XX,” pp. 185–208; Gerstle Mack, The Land Divided: A History of the Panama Canal and Other Isthmian Canal Projects (New York: Knopf, 1944); Marco Gandásegui, Alejandro Saavedra, Andrés Achong, and Iván Quintero, Las luchas obreras en Panamá, 1850–1978, 2nd ed. (Panama City: CELA, 1990); Alfredo Castillero Calvo, Conquista, evangelización, y resistencia: Triunfo o fracaso de la política indigenista (Panama: Mariano Arosemena: Instituto Nacional de Cultura, 1995); Major, Prize Possession; McCullough, Path Between the Seas; Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985); J. Michael Hogan, The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986); 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); Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  14.On these themes see, among others, Bender, Nation Among Nations, ch. 4. The ­so-­called ­Spanish-­American War is now often referred to as the ­Spanish-­American-­Cuban-­Filipino War. As even this cumbersome title does not fully grasp the spatial reach of the conflict (Puerto Rico, Guam, and so on), I refer to it simply as the War of 1898.

  15.Useful sources on the Open Door Notes include LaFeber, Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 2, pp. 169–76; Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 45; Bender, Nation Among Nations, pp. 182–245; Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1972).

  PROLOGUE: PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT’S STEAM SHOVEL

  1.Roosevelt declared to William Howard Taft, “I have always felt, that the one thing for which I deserved most credit in my entire Administration was my action in seizing the psychological moment to get complete control of Panama.” Quoted in John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903–1979 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 63. In his autobiography Roosevelt declares, “By far the most important action I took in foreign affairs during the time I was President related to the Panama Canal.” Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), p. 512. Roosevelt’s description of his journey to Panama comes from Joseph Bucklin Bishop, ed., Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), pp. 174, 176–77. See also Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002).

  2.Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children, p. 174.

  3.Ibid., pp. 180–81.

  4.Ibid., p. 183.

  5.For a fine description of a Bucyrus steam shovel at work, see Willis John Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose (New York: Syndicate, 1914), p. 212; see also David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), pp. 496–97; and J. Michael Hogan, The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy (Carbondale: Southern Il
linois University Press, 1986). My interpretation of Roosevelt’s role in making the canal a grand symbol of American power predates my reading of Hogan’s book, but his treatment of the matter is similar to mine, and, indeed, it is very eloquent on the subject. See esp. chs. 1 and 2.

  6.Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 170–215; Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Dana D. Nelson, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998); Gary Gerstle, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (Dec. 1999), pp. 1280–1307.

  7.In the 1890s, Roosevelt served on the U.S. Civil Service Commission and the New York City Police Commission and as assistant secretary of the Navy. Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt; Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1936); Eric Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

  8.On the anti-imperialists, see Robert Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The ­Anti-­imperialists, 1898–1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968); Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

  9.Theodore Roosevelt, “Washington’s Forgotten Maxim,” address as assistant secretary of the Navy before the Naval War College, June 1897, in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: P. F. Collier, 1897), vol. 13, p. 284.