Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-11-16
LlFE uM f...-.nA LAHAL
How Builders of the Big Ditch
 Are Pairing.

Are Pairing.
 IMPORTANT PROBLEMS SOLVED. None of the Nearly seventeen Thou
 sand Workers That Is Not We'll Fed
 and Housed-How "Gold Men" Differ From "silyer Menv- Where Meal
 Ticket, Reigns.
 It has been the interesting task of a week to learn how employees at work l in the Panama canal zone are faring, writes special correspondent of the New York Herald at Pedro Miguel, ill Panama. This has been done by walk l ing frem point to point where they are ' employed and mixing and living. with ! them. The result is a gratifying sur prise It can be stated that none of the 16,s25 employees of the United States on the isthmus, of whom 2,731 are white, is suffering from insutfi- cient or bad food. poor quarters or neg lect Every one is well fed, we'll housed and looked after with almost i fatherly care even to the nightly ring ing of curfew bell at the big Culebra camp.
 If any one is suffering from any cause in nine cases out of ten he is to blame for it and never should have | left the States. On the whole, the hab- l its of the young men who have accept ed places on the isthmus are surprising 1 ly good Little or no drunkenness is seen, and the men take good care of | themselves.
 l Problems of housing and feeding the men at work seem to have been solved, 1 and they have been vexatious. AS an army fights on its stomach, so does corps of undisciplined, inexperienced ] civilians in foreign land, where the very air is supposed to breathe disease and death But that danger has been grossly exaggerated and is laughed at by Americans who have lived in per i feet health for years on the isthmus.
 As rule, those who have returned home disgusted by short experience at canal building have been men who 1 worry or boys who became homesick and were unused to going without any of the comforts of home. There was time when necessaries were hard to get and conditions tried the souls even of seasoned campaigners, but John F. i Stevens, the chief engineer, hit upon plan to better these conditions and was fortunate in selecting Mir. Jackson Smith as manager of the branch of la bor and quarters, to whom was given i the duty of carrying out his ideas. It was the substitution of hotels and mess halls to be conducted by the canal com mission instead of continuing to allow contractors to feed the men and leav- ing them to rely on fortune to secure comfortable quarters.
 There are now a half dozen of these "I. c. C." or commission hotels, patron ized by the "gold men," as the higher class of white employees are called. This is because they are paid in gold. The laborers, who are mostly negroes from Jamaica and Martinique, are paid in silver and known as silver nien.p They are provided with kitchens and housed in comfortable quarters. The first of the hotels was opened at Coro- gal on Aug. 15. It is a slightly structure with wide porches and galleries and many windows and doors. It has fifty six rooms and 200 men can be fed there There is a similar, but smaller, mess hall at Pedro Miguel, one at Pa raiso and one at Empire, in each of which 100 men can be Accommodated.
 One hundred and fifty more are talk en care of at Zorgona. The hotel at Culebra is an immense building. 250 by 50 feet. three stories high, with an annex nearly as large. Here meals can be given to over 300 at time and rooms to nearly that number. There is another hotel building at La Boca, and four more are in contemplation to be placed at Bas 0blspo, Cristobal, Bohio and Ancon. To each building is given an ample number of bathrooms, which. with the system of sewerage adopted, makes them healthy and attractive as places of residence.
 Without the knowledge of any one of his intention, the Herald correspondent recently took the train at Panama and got of at Pedro Miguel for luncheon. He found about hundred clean cut. earnest American employees sitting in a tidy. cool room at tables that were as well appointed as those of restau rant of tho better class in the States. The meal consisted of soup, kidney stew, boiled beef. mashed potatoes, bread and butter and coffee It was well cooked, wholesome and well served. The charge was the same as to the men. 30 cents. The 90 cents the men pay a day for meals includes the cost of caring for their quarters. which arc furnished free by the commission Under this system the cost of living for the gold employee does not exceed 2T a month. For that sum he gets all a reasonable man could expect. Talks with fellow diners showed them to be fully satisfied with their surroundings and to have no complaint to make about their condition.
 In starting to work out Mir. Stevens plan for commission hotels for men out on the line Jackson Smith adopted a peculiar working basis for determin- ing the size of quarters. He decided that each "gold man" should have one