Panama fever (22 page)

On the Pacific side of the Isthmus, much deepening work was needed in the Bay of Panama. This was started out by self-propelled dredges built by Lobnitz and Company of Renfrew, Scotland, which were sailed to Panama under their own steam. The first arrived in May 1883, having covered the five-thousand-mile journey from the Clyde in only a month. Such was the quality of their design and manufacture that they were kept on by the canal builders right up to 1914. Meanwhile, lighter dredges pushed up the valley of the Río Grande. It was steady progress, if less spectacular than that at Colón.

Inland, in
la grande tranchée
, it was a different story, with much more labor-intensive work being required. By the end of 1883 pilot trenches had been run the ten-mile length of the Continental Divide and a contract had been signed with Cutbill, de Longo, Watson and Van Hattum—usually referred to as the Anglo-Dutch Company The excavation work commenced with hand pick and shovel, and the soil was removed in small iron cars, running on portable tramways. Once the trench was a few feet deep, a track was laid connecting with the main line of the Panama Railroad, and upon this steam excavators were brought up mounted on trucks. Most were U.S.-built by Osgood or Otis. These machines commenced digging down in a series of stepped terraces, each about 5 meters wide and 5 meters deep, which was how far the excavators could reach. The spoil was loaded onto flatcars, then taken away. “From morning till night,” reported an American visitor, “trains are moving about removing the excavations of the laborers and of the excavating machines, which latter do their work very well and very cheaply.”

Nonetheless, there remained a lot of hand excavation, and it was here that the majority of the canal laborers were concentrated. In mid-1883, the British consul reported some twelve hundred workers in this small space, mainly Jamaicans, Martinicans, and Italians. “The Anglo-Saxon element prevails a great deal here in the way of officials and clerks,” he went on. The steam shovel operators and mechanics were also British or American.

French ladder dredge

So as well as ordering masses of new machinery, Dingler also determined to increase the number of laborers available to the contractors. There were ten thousand by September 1883, fifteen thousand by January the following year, and by the end of 1884, there were over twenty thousand on the payroll, making a total wage bill of some $40,000 a day. The majority of the workers were from Jamaica.

here was good money to be made on the Isthmus. Most workers earned about $1.50 a day, and as the pay was calculated on a piecework basis, extra labor would bring even more. This was a big deal for the impoverished inhabitants of the West Indian islands, particularly Jamaica. Soon large steamships were making the run from Kingston to Colón as frequently as every four days. Nonetheless, there were near riots at the docks as people fought each other to get a place on a ship. “A stampede took place which is hardly possible to describe,” reported the Jamaican paper
Gall's News Letter
in early 1884 of the scene at Kingston docks. “Men with trunks on their backs, women with little children tugging through the crowd, all trying to gain admission to the ship. In a few minutes the deck was crowded.”

Money being sent home to relations and the return of men from the Isthmus with their fortunes visibly transformed and further fueled Panama Fever on the island. “Now and again,” complained a planter, “you see a great swell with a watch and gold chain, a revolver pistol, red sash, big boots up to his knees, who swaggers about.” Such returnees soon became known as “Colón Man,” an almost mythical figure on the island, the subject of many skits and verses, both admiring and gently ridiculing. “One two three four/Colón Man a come,” goes one. “With him watch chain a knock him belly bam bam bam/Ask him for the time/and he look upon the sun/With him watch chain a knock him belly bam bam bam.”

As the “Panama Craze” spread, even those few with stable and secure jobs joined the rush to Colón. “The infatuation to go seems to have taken hold on the whole of them who are able to go,” reported the
Gleaner.
During the French construction period, some eighty-four thousand made the journey to Colón from Kingston, at a time when the entire population of the island was under six hundred thousand. Whole areas of the island became depopulated, and the demographics of those left behind were radically altered, leading to a decline in marriage and other unions, and women and children taking up the work previously done by men. The birthrate fell, and women became heads of families as never before. Children were frequently left to fend for themselves, as families were split up, often forever.

At the same time, the money coming back from Panama was invested in land, livestock, and housing, leading to rising peasant proprietorship and ownership of goods, appliances, and tools, in all contributing to an economic revival on the island at the end of the century. “Colón Man” also brought home a new, less subservient attitude, his flash dress and accessories “a flag of liberation.”

Official reaction to these huge changes was mixed. “We are not of those who think it a calamity that so many of our people are going to the great Canal Work,” wrote one of the mouthpieces of the ruling plantocracy,
the Jamaica Witness
, in early 1884. “It is a great enterprise this, the joining of two great oceans… We wish it God speed; and we feel rather proud that we can supply so large a portion of those who are to perform that necessary toil… Let them go by all means. It will give many a lesson in labour which they never had before—a hard day's work for good wages. Many will gain money, and return to acquire property; and they will be more men than they ever were, men who have felt their manhood, and who will more than ever prize their position and privileges as citizens of a great Empire.” But as early as mid-1883, Jamaican plantation interests in London were lobbying the secretary of state for the colonies to restrict “the great outflow from the Colony of labourers, artisans, and respectable young men, who are properly described as the bone, sinew and hope of the country.”

The planters spread stories about the terrible risks of disease in Panama, and that the Company ran a brutal regime, but were unable to stem the tide. The
Witness
explains: “the dangers and drawbacks of life on the Isthmus are counterbalanced by material advantages of an appreciable character.” As one of the West Indian work songs has it:

Kill my partner

Kill my partner

Kill my partner

Somebody's dying every day.

I love you yes I do, you know it's true,

And when you come to Panama how happy you will be,

‘Cause money down in Panama like apples on a tree.

On the Isthmus, the West Indians found themselves doubly vulnerable as foreigners working for a foreign company. There was no labor law in Colombia except for the “freedom to work,” and the workers’ backgrounds mitigated against concerted labor action. Churches, community burial clubs, and mutual support organizations were established, but there was little organization in the workplace. Eight or nine strikes broke out on the Isthmus during the 1880s, yet these tended to be confined to the port or railway workers, whose stoppage could cause serious delays and backlogs for the steamer companies. The employers, however, found the Colombian authorities sympathetic to their side, and several strikes were broken up by soldiers. More than anything, though, the flood of new arrivals meant that there were always men to replace those who tried to improve their wages or conditions. Instead, to the frustration of the Company, the men would simply move to another area in order to get better pay, or to be with their friends. “They have a way of shifting for themselves,” the
Star and Herald
reported in early 1884, “and selecting their own masters and places of work… go[ing] about from section to section wherever they can best suit their own particular ideas as to wages and other circumstances.”

Panama had a sensitive racial and social mix ill-suited to such a huge influx of “aliens.” The arrivals from Jamaica, who came from a cultural background radically different from that of Panama or greater Colombia, were seen as a threat and deeply resented. Antagonism was exacerbated by the hardships of the construction camp setting. As the number of Jamaicans grew, so too did instances of disturbances and bloodshed along the line of the canal. In March 1883, five Jamaicans and three Colombians were killed in fighting at Culebra, Obispo, and Matachín, and the British consul requested armed protection for British subjects. But the attitude of the soldiery was just as antagonistic as that of the Colombian workers: “I perceive that these men are partial in their protection and disorderly and brutal in their conduct,” the consul wrote.

Tension now simmered all along the line. “Both sides are armed,” said the
Star and Herald on
April 3, 1883, “both prepared, and alike expectant … the works between Matachín and Gorgona… are practically deserted.” More by accident than design—Colombians started refusing to work with Jamaicans—the two warring parties now lived and worked in separate areas, but friction was still building through the following year, threatening to spill out into open armed conflict.

or the moment, however, these labor troubles were not the greatest of Dingler's worries. In spite of the progress since he had taken over, the project was now beset with very serious difficulties. For one thing, the harbor and warehouses at Colón could not cope with the huge volume of machinery and supplies being imported. Often, steamers would have to be unloaded by lighters, “a ruinously expensive method,” wrote a visiting reporter from the
New York World.
“The cost of coal is increased two thirds. It is worth £3 per ton in the harbour and £5 when landed.” Furthermore, the railway, in spite of a great expansion of rolling stock, did not have the capacity to move machinery inland as fast as it was arriving. So valuable equipment was left out on the waterfront at the mercy of the climate. “Damage amounting to thousands of dollars daily is known to be going on,” reported a visiting journalist. The machinery itself came from many quarters—France, the United States, Belgium, and elsewhere. It was constantly being modified and used in experimental, often ingenious, combinations, but much of it was found to be unequal to the task. A growing accumulation of discarded, inoperative equipment along the canal line testified to earlier mistakes. A later American engineer, piecing through the abandoned French plant, would describe it as “of a character and complexity to defy description …some parts could only be classed as freaks. Apparently every crank who possessed influence was allowed to exploit his notions in the furnishing of machines to the company.” The experimentation and increasing number of small contractors combined to produce a host of contradictory specifications for spare parts, railroad track, and truck gauge. At one time there were eleven different types of flatcar running on six different gauges. It was as far from a “joined-up system” as can be imagined.