The Canal Builders

by Julie Greene

  12.A Comrade, “The Isthmian Canal Today,” International Socialist Review 11, no. 1 (July 1910), p. 15.

  13.Stuart Chase, “Portrait of a Radical,” Century Magazine, July 1924, p. 296; Edward T. Devine, “The Canal Builders,” Survey, March 1, 1913, pp. 764–68. For background information on Devine, see Clarke A. Chambers, Paul A. Kellogg and the “Survey”: Voices for Social Welfare and Social Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), esp. pp. 6–11, 29–30, 44. Born in 1861, Devine was one of the pioneers of what Chambers calls “social work journalism.” He headed the New York Charity Organization Society and created the journal Charities, which later became the Survey. Often the analyses of government in the Canal Zone ducked the race question. Others besides Devine found the segregation system to be praiseworthy. Willis J. Abbot described it thus:

  The brilliant idea occurred to someone in the early days of the American campaign that as the West Indians, Panamanians and ­Latin-­Americans generally were accustomed to do their monetary thinking in terms of silver all day labor might be put on the silver pay roll; the more highly paid workers on a gold pay roll. Thenceforward the metal line rather than the color line was drawn. The latter indeed would have been difficult as the ­Latin-­American peoples never drew it very definitely in their marital relations, with the result that a sort of twilight zone made any very positive differentiation between whites and blacks practically impossible.…[O]n the Zone the man is silver or gold according to the nature of his work and the size of his wages.

  See Abbot, Panama and the Canal in Pictures and Prose, pp. 324–25. I am grateful to Mark Pittenger and Thomas Krainz for informing me of the articles by Chase and Devine.

  14.William E. Leuchtenburg, “Progressivism and Imperialism: The Progressive Movement and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1916,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 3 (Dec. 1952), pp. 483–504, esp. pp. 501–3; Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909), at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=117114&:pageno=1 (accessed April 29, 2005), pp. 173, 177.

  15.For statistics on mortality see Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 51; on the number of military personnel, see Richard Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the ­Philippine-­American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), p. xiii.

  16.Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1972); Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 143–46; Welch, Response to Imperialism, pp. 133–49.

  17.Schirmer, Republic or Empire; see also “Address of Mr. Herbert Welsh” at the “Mass Meeting of Protest Against the Suppression of Truth About the Philippines,” at http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/massmtg11.htm (accessed Feb. 6, 2007).

  18.Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the ­Spanish-­American and ­Philippine-­American Wars (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998); Ninkovich, United States and Imperialism, esp. pp. 51–53; on the racial implications of the war and “degeneration,” see Kramer, Blood of Government, p. 146; for Poultney Bigelow’s article see “How to Convert a White Man into a Savage,” Independent 54, no. 2789 (1902), pp. 1159–61.

  19.Schirmer, Republic or Empire; Welch, Response to Imperialism, pp. 133–49; for a fine discussion of Roosevelt’s speech, see Kramer, Blood of Government, pp. 154–57; quotation from the speech may be found in Theodore Roosevelt, Addresses and Presidential Messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902–1904 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), pp. 56–67.

  20.Speech as governor of New York to the Lincoln Club in New York, Feb. 1899; excerpted in Mario DiNunzio, Theodore Roosevelt: An American Mind (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), p. 182.

  21.On John Bigelow’s career, see Margaret Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947); and David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), esp. pp. 187–88. On John and his son Poultney, see Poultney Bigelow’s memoir, Seventy Summers (New York: Longmans, Green, 1925). When his father served as minister to Prussia, Poultney was a boy of nine and became close friends with the future kaiser Wilhelm II. The two boys wandered about the Hohenzollern family estate playing as Indians in the Wild West. See Poultney Bigelow, Prussian Memories, 1864–1914 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915); and “American Tells of Kaiser as a Playmate,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1915, p. SM7, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

  22.A sampling of Poultney Bigelow’s books might include History of the German Struggle for Liberty (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1896); The Children of the Nations: A Study of Colonization and Its Problems (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1901); White Man’s Africa (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900).

  23.Poultney Bigelow, “Our Mismanagement at Panama,” Independent, Jan. 4, 1906, reprinted in Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Certain Papers to Accompany His Message of January 8, 1906 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1906), pp. 79–91. This government publication includes many useful documents related to Bigelow’s charges, including lengthy responses from Secretary of War William Howard Taft and chief engineer John Stevens.

  24.The Independent published ­follow-­up articles on Panama soon thereafter and noted defensively that many other articles had appeared criticizing the canal project before Bigelow’s. See Edwin E. Slosson and Gardner Richardson, “The Independent’s Report on Panama,” Independent, March 15, 1906, pp. 589–96. For Bishop’s quotation, see J. Michael Hogan’s pathbreaking article on Roosevelt’s public relations effort: “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 19 (Winter 1989), p. 81; the essay is also included in Hogan’s Panama Canal in American Politics (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).

  25.Bigelow, “Our Mismanagement at Panama.”

  26.Taft to Roosevelt, Jan. 8, 1906; and John Stevens, “Exhibit A”: both in Message from the President; “Canal in Nine Years Is Shonts’s Promise,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 1906, p. 5, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

  27.“Bigelow Defies Arrest at the Canal Inquiry,” New York Times, Jan. 19, 1906; “May Not Punish Bigelow,” New York Times, Jan. 20, 1906, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Bigelow, Seventy Summers, pp. 217–18, 232, 273–86. Around the time this scandal broke, Bigelow resigned his position at Boston University because of objections to his views “on the negro and on Christian missionaries in the Far East.” He credited this and especially the Senate investigation with making him “in worldly eyes a ruined man,” and he retired at the age of fifty: Seventy Summers, p. vii. We will see below, in chapter 6, that Congress followed up its investigation of Bigelow by investigating the unfortunate Martinican women to determine if they were prostitutes or not.

  28.Slosson and Richardson, “Independent’s Report on Panama”; Edwin E. Slosson and Gardner Richardson, “Life on the Canal Zone,” Independent, March 22, 1906, pp. 653–60.

  29.Bigelow’s article is cited in Hogan, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” p. 82; for the ­follow-­up articles by Bigelow, see “Panama—The Human Side,” pts. 1–3, Cosmopolitan Magazine (1906–7), vol. 41, pp. 455–62 and 606–12, and vol. 42, pp. 53–60.

  30.“Roosevelt on Way to See the Ditch,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 9, 1906, p. 1; “Roosevelt to Say Adieu,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 5, 1906, p. 1; “Floating Palace for President: Suite of Rooms on Louisiana Outfitted to Impress South Americans,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 6, 1906, p. 4.

  31.On the Brownsville incident, see “Negro Troops Disarmed at Roosevelt’s Orders,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 13, 1906; “President Expels an Army Battalion,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 1906; “Roo­sevelt and Taft Said to Have Clashed,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 1906; “Roosevelt Is Firm, and Taft Gives Way,�
� New York Times, Nov. 22, 1906; Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), pp. 321–23.

  32.“President at Panama: Makes a Quick Trip; Anarchists Under Arrest,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 1906; “Canal ‘Tidied Up’ to See Roosevelt,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 14, 1906; on the cleaning up of the isthmus, see also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, p. 494.

  33.“Roosevelt Delivers Warning to Panama,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 1906, p. 1; “Cruise in Panama Bay,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 1906; “President Inspects Canal Workers’ Homes,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 1906; William Inglis, “At ­Double-­Quick Along the Canal with the President,” Harper’s Weekly 50 (1906), pp. 1740–45.

  34.“Roosevelt Delivers Warning to Panama”; “Roosevelt Sees the Dirt Flying; Lunches with Diggers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov. 16, 1906, p. 1.

  35.Inglis, “At ­Double-­Quick Along the Canal with the President”; “Roosevelt Sees the Dirt Flying”; Mary A. Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama (New York: Broadway, 1908), p. 195.

  36.Roosevelt to Kermit, Nov. 20, 1906, in Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children, ed. Joseph Bucklin Bishop (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), pp. 182–83.

  37.“The President Climbs a Steam Shovel,” New York Times, Nov. 17, 1906; Michael Delevante, Panama Pictures: Nature and Life in the Land of the Great Canal (New York: Alden Brothers, 1907); Inglis, “At ­Double-­Quick Along the Canal with the President.” See also “The Panama Canal as the President Saw It,” Review of Reviews 35 (1907), pp. 66–73.

  38.“Ignore Criticisms, Says the President,” New York Times, Nov. 19, 1906, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Address of Theodore Roosevelt to the Assembled Panama Canal Force, Colón, Nov. 16, 1906: “The Work You Have Done Here Will Remain for the Ages,” http://www.czbrats.com/Builders/speechTR.htm (accessed May 5, 2004); “Address to the Employees of the I.C.C., Culebra, CZ,” http://www.czbrats.com/Builders/EarlyOnes.htm (accessed April 4, 2007); Roosevelt to Kermit, Nov. 20, 1906, in Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children, p. 182; Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama, pp. 195–96. Chatfield’s reaction to the president’s visit is quite interesting. She opened the subject in her letters home by stating: “I will now give you my version of the flying visit of the greatest ruler on earth” (p. 194). She concluded: “We were told that he would visit our office in the afternoon and were instructed to rise when he entered. I told the man that sat opposite me that I would not rise for any ‘mere man’ that afternoon. I felt sure that he [Roo­sevelt] would not waste his time coming up there and he did not” (p. 196).

  39.“Message of the President on the Panama Canal, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress by President Theodore Roosevelt,” Dec. 17, 1906, http://www.czbrats.com/Builders/presmes8.htm (accessed April 4, 2007); J. Hampton Moore, With Speaker Cannon Through the Tropics: A Descriptive Story of a Voyage to the West Indies, Venezuela, and Panama (Philadelphia: Book Print, 1907), p. 265. See also Hogan’s treatment of this topic: “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” pp. 82–84.

  40.William Inglis, “The Progress and Promise of the Work at Panama,” Harper’s Weekly 50 (1906), pp. 1852–56; Hogan, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Heroes of Panama,” pp. 84–86; Delevante, Panama Pictures; Moore, With Speaker Cannon Through the Tropics, pp. 245–46.

  41.“Popularizing the Canal,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 16, 1907; “Commercial Men Praise Ditch Job,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 1907. For more on the businessmen’s trip, see Walter B. Stevens, A Trip to Panama: The Narrative of a Tour of Observation Through the Canal Zone, with Some Account of Visits to Saint Thomas, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba, by the Commercial Clubs of Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, February 18–March 14th, 1907 (St. Louis, 1907); another example of the interest in the canal shown by businessmen is Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, Trade Expansion Tour: Panama Canal, Jamaica, Havana, and Southern Points, February 14 to March 9, 1913 (Cincinnati: printed by Tom Jones, 1913). Taft visited the canal in 1909, albeit with much less fanfare than Roosevelt; see “Canal Progress Praised by Taft,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 8, 1909. On labor representatives’ visit to the Canal Zone, see “Chief of Steam Shovelers to Investigate at Panama,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 4, 1908.

  42.Speaker Joseph Cannon is quoted in “The Speaker Home: Life of His Party,” New York Times, April 8, 1907, p. 2, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Helen Herron Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914), p. 284; on Speaker Cannon’s visit, see Moore, With Speaker Cannon Through the Tropics.

  43.Poultney Bigelow, “An American Panama: Some Personal Notes on Tropical Colonization as Affected by Geographic and Political Conditions,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 38, no. 8 (1906), pp. 489–94; “Panama Meat Is Bad; All Else Is Fine,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1907; “Rainey Sees Canal Graft: Congressman Makes a Bitter Attack on Taft and Others,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 27, 1909; “Congress to Act on ‘Canal Graft’?” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 8, 1908. For other criticism about the construction project, see “Panama a Sodom, Editor Declares: Temperance Worker Holds Roosevelt Responsible for ‘White Slaves’ on Isthmus,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 4, 1907; “Sees War Measure in Canal,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 28, 1909; “Canal Zone Called Satrapy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 26, 1911. See also, for a harsh critique of the government, Chatfield, Light on Dark Places at Panama.

  44.Nikki Mandell, The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Bradley Rudin, “Industrial Betterment and Scientific Management as Social Control, 1890–1915,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 17 (1972–73), p. 62; Stuart D. Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Andrea Tone, The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); the quotation about efficiency comes from Sarah Comstock, “A Woman of Achievement: Miss Gertrude Beeks,” World’s Work, Aug. 1913, p. 445; Beeks to Ralph Easley, Saturday, 1903, National Civic Federation Papers, reel 417, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as NCF Papers).

  45.Marguerite Green, The National Civic Federation and the American Labor Movement, 1900–1925 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1956); Christopher J. Cyphers, The National Civic Federation and the Making of a New Liberalism, 1900–1915 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002).

  46.In 1917, after Easley’s first wife had died, he and Beeks married. See Comstock, “Woman of Achievement,” p. 448; Rudin, “Industrial Betterment and Scientific Management as Social Control,” p. 62; Gerd Korman, Industrialization, Immigrants, and Americanizers: The View from Milwaukee, 1866–1921 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967), pp. 90–91; Beeks to Easley, Saturday, 1903, NCF Papers, reel 417; see also Green on Beeks’s activities in National Civic Federation and the American Labor Movement, esp. pp. 276–77; on her ­anti­suffrage and antisocialist activities, see Cyphers, National Civic Federation and the Making of a New Liberalism, pp. 78–79.

  47.“Welfare Work for Government Employes,” National Civic Federation Review, Sept. 1907, pp. 10–16. On voluntary welfare activities as a “political ideology” for the NCF and for Beeks particularly, see Tone, Business of Benevolence, p. 43.

  48.“Conditions in the Canal Zone,” National Civic Federation Review, Sept. 1907, p. 9; Taft to Goethals, May 16, 1907, NCF Papers, reel 376, Subject Files, Panama Canal.

  49.“Panama Labor Inquiry,” New York Times, June 8, 1907, p. 8, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; details on weather from New York Times, June 8, 1907, p. 18; no author or date but presumably by Gertrude Beeks, “Steam Shovel Work and Steam Shovel Men in Panama,” NCF Papers, reel 376, Subject Files, Panama Canal; “Conditions in the Canal Zone,” p. 9; Comstock, “Woman of Achievement,” p. 448. Beeks also published a short summary of her lengthy report in an article titled “The Nation’s Housekeepin
g at Panama,” Outlook, Nov. 2, 1907, pp. 489–93.

  50.“What a Woman Saw in the Canal Zone,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 1907, p. 3, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

  51.Gertrude Beeks, “Conditions of Employment at Panama,” National Civic Federation Review, Oct. 1907, pp. 2–19, esp. pp. 2, 3, 14. The complete report is also available in NCF Papers, reel 376, Subject Files.

  52.Beeks, “Conditions of Employment at Panama,” p. 4.

  53.Ibid., pp. 5–6, 13–14. Regarding the servant problem, Beeks noted that janitor service in bachelor dorms was also unsatisfactory. Some men complained that a mop had never been used in their rooms.

  54.Ibid., p. 13.

  55.Ibid., pp. 6, 16. In a response to this issue of falsely representing conditions to Europeans, the ICC labor recruiter LeRoy Park argued that the hotel picture had clearly stated on it the words “Employes’ Hotel” and that ­no ­one ever referred to Europeans as anything but laborers. So it was not, in fact, a misrepresentation, he claimed: Park to Jackson Smith, June 24, 1908, Isthmian Canal Commission Records, RG 185, 28-­A-­5, National Archives, College Park, Md. (hereafter cited as ICC Records).

  56.Beeks, “Conditions of Employment at Panama,” p. 10; “Rebuttal of Miss Gertrude Beeks,” Nov. 15, 1907, ICC Records, 28-­A-­5, p. 9.

  57.Beeks, “Conditions of Employment at Panama,” p. 8.

  58.Ibid., pp. 9, 15; the quotation is on p. 16. Beeks’s comment about treatment of American citizens is quoted in Jackson Smith’s response to her report, Smith to Goethals, June 18, 1908, ICC Records, 28-­A-­5, “NCF Investigations.”