boilermakers, 32 to 70 cents; bricklayers, 65 cents; car inspector and repairer, 32 to 65 cents; carpenter, 32 to 65 cents; ship caulker, 65 cents; coach cabinetmaker, 65 cents; coppersmith, 32 to 65 cents; ironworker, 44 to 70 cents; lineman, 32 to 65 cents; machinist, 32 to 70 cents; molder, 32 to 70 cents; painter, 32 to 65 cents; pipefitter, 32 to 65 cents; planing mill hand, 32 to 56 cents; plumber, 32 to 75 cents; tinsmith, 32 to 65 cents; wireman, 32 to 65 cents; shipwright, 44 to 65 cents; locomotive engineers earn from $125 to $210 monthly; steam-shovel engineer from $210 to $240; steam engineer, $75 to $200. The hourly rates quoted run as high as 62 per cent greater than the pay for similar work in the United States Navy yards, or private industries.

The canal was estimated to cost $375,000,000. Out of that amount, the part which had gone into wages and salaries to June 30, 1912, was approximately $120,000,000. By the time the canal is finished, and opened for permanent use, in 1914, this item will reach the startling total of $150,000,000. From 20 to 25 per cent of it has gone into salaries of officers and supervisory employees, and from 75 to 80 per cent into wages to skilled and unskilled labor.

The Commission has the work of repatriation of imported employees already under way. While nearly 45,000 workers were imported under contract that provided for their return home when the canal was done, the Commission will not have anything like this number to repatriate as thousands have left voluntarily to new fields of labor or quit the service under conditions

that forfeit their right of return at the Commission's expense. It will not be difficult to get sufficient common labor for the permanent canal.

As the conglomeration of races presents names impossible of uniformly correct spelling, every employee has a numbered brass check for identification, which he must show to get his pay.

CHAPTER XVII

D

COMMISSARY

-QUARTERS—SUBSISTENCE

URING the first year of American operations in

Panama, the problem of food and merchandise supply for the army of workers was not worked out. The Panama Railroad long had maintained a commissary for its employees, but its facilities totally were inadequate, as they existed in 1904, for satisfactory service to the increased thousands of employees and their families.

Chief Engineer Stevens, in 1905, turned his attention to this problem as one, upon the proper solution of which would depend satisfactory conditions of living for the canal workers. By April, 1907, when he resigned, the present commissary and hotel systems, as well as the system of housing the employees, which challenge the admiration of the tourist, had been created, and all that was left to Col. Goethals to do, in this phase of the task, was to enlarge the systems as the organization expanded.

Under Mr. Stevens the Department of Labor, Quarters, and Subsistence covered the whole ground. In 1908, Col. Goethals modified the organization by creating a Quartermaster's Department along Army lines, which had charge of all buildings and the accountability for all physical property of the Commission, the recruiting of labor, storage of material and sup

plies, collection of garbage, distribution of commissary merchandise to employees, and the cutting of grass as directed by the Sanitary Department. A Subsistence Department then was created, which in addition to operating the hotels, kitchens, and messes, was given supervision over the Panama Railroad Commissary. The bookkeeping for the commissary, however, is done by the railroad company and the profits go into its accounts, but as the government owns the railroad, the distinction only is one of bookkeeping.

Merchants in Panama and Colon objected to a government commissary on the idea that it would be a competition not contemplated when the Canal Zone was ceded, and they made overtures to the Commission for taking over the business of supplying canal employees with the necessaries of life. Had this been done an inconceivable amount of dissatisfaction would have resulted, through the ruinously high prices the employees would have been compelled to pay for the privately owned merchandise.

The government has made a profit from the commissary operations because it arbitrarily has fixed the price of commodities at a point which would pay for the construction of storehouses, and the usual expenses of merchandising two thousand miles from the markets of the world. But, owing to the immense quantities in which all articles are bought, and the absence of a grasping policy as to profits, the canal employees customarily buy almost everything more cheaply than the same merchandise sells for in the United States.

For one reason, there is no tariff in the Canal Zone. Foreign made goods are imported without the expense to the consumer that the high protective duties at home necessitate. Irish linens, English and Scotch cloth, French perfumery, Swiss and Scandinavian dairy products, and a wide variety of other European manufactures, make the commissary, with the American merchandise in stock, a great department store which in the fiscal year 1912 did a business amounting to $6,702,355.68.

General headquarters are at Cristobal, on the Atlantic side. The steamships of the Panama Railroad Line every week replenish the food supplies with seasonable offerings from the American markets. The scope of the operations include a laundry, bakery, ice cream plant, ice factory, cold storage, coffee roasting plant, and laboratory for making extracts.

The year 1911 is typical of the scale on which the commissary has been operated since 1906. Importations of principal commodities were as follows: