The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-18

- - - - i ing generally. there was no warrant for complaint about the food Donns- Don Any man accustomed to handling large masses of men knows that some oI them, even though otherwise very good thing, and usually about their food. Scholboys, college boys, and boarders in boarding houses make similar com plains; so do soldiers and sailors. on this very trip, on one of the warships, a seaman came to complain to the sec- ond watch ofilcer about the quality of the cocoa at the seamen's mess. saving as pointed out't him that there was sugar on the table and he could always put 1t in, to which he responded that that was the cooks business and not his! think that the complaint as to the food on the Isthmus has, but little more foundation than that of the sailor in derstand that one real cause of com plaint was that at the Government hotels no liquor is served. and some ot the drtRIns mea sinS the Government hotels Is steadily ins oreasing.
 Chinese and Other Labor.
 Of the nineteen or twenty thousand do excellent work Their fore men told me that they did CTS. They keep healthy and no diff- eulty is experienced with them in any way. Some Italian faborers are also employed in connection with the d@Till- @ as high priced as at present in the United States, it has not so far proved practicable to get any ordinary labor" CTS from the United States. The Amer lean wage-workers on the Isthmus are the highly paid skilled mechanics of the types mentioned previously. A italians, and especially to procure more Spaniards because of the very satfsfac- tory results that have come from their employment; and their numbers will be increased as far as possible. It has not proved possible, however, to get them In anything like the numbers needed for the work, and from present appear ances we shall in the main have to rely, for the ordinary unskilled work, partly upon colored laborers from the West Indies, partly upon Chinese labor. It point out that the American working man in the United States has no com cern whatever in the question as to whether the rough 6 work on the a1ssIs istn. sr, any event, is done by aliens from one country with a black skin or by aliens from another country with a yellow as efficiently and as quickly as possible; provided always that nothing is done that Is inhumane to any lab0rers, and tAdL tHASEASTCS WALu LuS WdEGo of or lowers the standard of living of our own workmen. Having in view this principle, I have arranged to try several thousand Chinese laborers. This Is desirable both because we must try to find out what laborers are most efficient, and, furthermore, because we should not leave ourselves at the mercy present the great bulk of the unskilled labor on the Isthmus is done by West India negroes, chiefly from Jamaica Barbados, and the other English uos- sessions. One of the Governors of the lands in question has shown an un- friendly disposition to our work, and has thrown obstacles in the way of our getting the labor needed; and 1t is highly undesirable to give any outsiders the impression, however ill-founded, that they are indispensable and can dic- tate terms to us.
 Negro LaboEers and Quarters.
 The West India laborers are fairly, but only fairly, satisfactory. Some of the men do very well indeed; the bet- ter class, who are to be found as fore men, as skilled mechanics, as police ordinary day laborerS are also good But thousands of those who are brought over under contract Cat our expense) go of into the Jungle to live, or loaf around Colon, or work so badly after the first three or four days as to cause a serious diminution of the amount of labor performed on Friday tioned many of these Jamaica laborers as to the conditions of their work and what, if any changes they wished. received many complaints from them, but as regards most of these complaints they themselves contradtcted one an-