LIFE AT PANAMA.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 286, 7 June 1909, Page 6

LIFE AT PANAMA.

A picturesque description of ]ift> in the Panama Canal zone is given by a special correspondent of the Standard. The zone presents the strange spectacle of "a gigantic 'tangle of labor and death, whero science is engaged in a terrible fight against the brute forces of Nature, and where, amid the slipshod-lassi-tude of a Latin American people, the highest powers of modern industrialism are in feverish activity." Dirt is flying at Panama, as the Americans say. Work goes on for nine hours every day, and everyone is determined that the canal shall be built by 1915. ■ So well are the builders equipped with machinery, that dt is a common boast that six men in one day can do work that 3000 men could not, some years ago, have got through in a week. There are between 40,000 and 50,0ul) men employed in the zone, so no wonder dirt is flying. Life is so cheap there. Premature explosions of the builders' own mines, or disastrous, discoveries with steam shovels of old unexploded French charges, are. of frequent occurrence. Men are blown to bits, but there is •no time for apprehension — the canal must be built. At first the American workers died from disease as quickly as the French, had done, but scientific methods rigorously applied, have made the zone a fairly healthy country, for the tropics.. , The men live in mpsquito-proof houses, relentless Avar is waged on the mosquito, and . quinine is forcibly administered. The huge wages offered at v first attracted plenty of labor, and now the officials are weeding out 'the foreigners, and reducing wages.. An ordinary locomotive driver still gets between £4.00 and £500 a year. Wages are paid in accordance-* with the risk run by the worker. Thus, a man who works a steam shovel is better' paid than a fully qualified civil engineer, because the- former may be blown up at any moment by an accidentally discovered dynamite charge, while the civil engineer only runs the risk of fever. It is not surprising, in view of these risks, that there is a continual agitation for higher wages.