Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1909-02-19
WOMEN HELPING AT PANAMA.
Their Part In Canal Digging Unique
In History.

The part that women are taking in
the building Of the Panama canal is
unique so far as the records show in
the history of great public works. The
record of the Tower Of Babel is of
the briefest and only affords material
for the imaginative paragrapher, who
would also be humorist. The build
ing of the Pyramids is lost in obscur-
ity. The organization Of Chinese So
ciety with it's immutable traditions,
makes the presence Of women along
the slopes, which the Great Wall
climbs and descends and along the
level lengths of the Grand Canal un-
thinkable.
A search Of the records Of the
French attempt to build the canal
gives a no more pleasing or important
account Of the part taken by women
on the isthmus than the story Of how
little Mile. de Lesseps (Tototte) gave
the first stroke to the great work with
gayly decorated pickaxe, brought
from France, by vicariously turning
up the dirt aboard ship, as the low
tide prevented a landing. Thus, after
five days festivities, the canal was
begun.
1.-THE scene Of operations is a jun
gle, intensely hot, swarming with
mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, scor-
pions, centipedes, the home even as
do 90
typhus, dysentery and now made more
deadly by the multitudes Of people
who crowd thither." The description
was not exaggerated.
Now to this same scene hundreds
of American women and children
have gone fearlessly, to live. Henry
Savage Landor says that the Ameri-
cans are monomaniacs on two sub
jects, sanitation and education. This
is an indictment Americans can well
afford to let stand. Thanks to the
medical department of the army, as
represented by Colonel Gorgas, sani-
tation applied to the Canal Zone has
taken away its reproach.
The death rate is less than that of
New York city. Already in conse-
quence a domestic civilization has
been grated on to the colossal under
| taking, and this has been done with
an apparent Inconsistencies of its
larger import and uniqueness in the
history of great undertakings that is
as amusingly naive as it is wholly ad-
mirable.
Calmly these women-wives, moth
ers, helpers-have transferred to the
Canal Zone the social organization of
Dayton, Peoria and Muscatine-of the
countless towns and villages of the
United States. They have taken there
their children, their sewing baskets
and afternoon teacloths, and have set
up as composedly their household
goods under the palms, and beneath
the tropical sun as under the beach,
buckeye and elms and beneath the
shifting skies at home.
Already they have become compo-
nent parts of the great scheme. Their
work is staked out and they follow 1t
with as close devotion to the ultimate
end as the army engineers show in
their labors. That the work is self
imposed does not affect the situation.
In looking after the odds and ends
and in lessening the shock Of an alien
life for thousands of home-bred, hard
working men, in cheering, sustaining
and diverting, in transporting the in
fiuence and example of family life,
they are rendering a service in the
building of the canal not to be esti-
mated in cubic inches or in congress
ional appropriations.
1t is one Of the unforeseen designs
Of Providence that the women's clubs
and their social machinery, which be-
guiled the leisure Of women at home,
should have been so easily adapted to
these new and untried conditions. The
dredges and steam shovels have not
been more quickly effective.
The canal from Colon to Ancon Is
forty-seven miles long. Like beads on
a string, or rather like ganglions on a
nerve whence come the impulses of
action are the small towns that corre-
spond to the sectional divisions of the
work. Each Of these towns has for
| it's inhabitants the battalion of work
ers, their foremen and their more re-
spectacle heads. Each of these towns
has it's community life in barracks,
| its family life, it's homes, it's wives and
| children. Before it lies the great
ditch. Behind are the lowering for
est, swamp and jungle.
To Miss Helen Varick Boswell is
given the credit of carrying to the Ca
nal Zone the machinery Of the wo-
mems clubs, and organizing these iso-
lated groups of women for work. By
federating the clubs all the women
were brought in touch with one an
other. Ancon, Colon, Culebra, EN-
pire, Gatun, Paraiso, Las Cascadas,
Cristobal, Corazal, Pedro Miguel and
the rest touch hands in organized in
terest and common endeavor.
The Canal Record the official jour-
nal of the Canal Zone, which pre-
sents the doings of these women's clubs
with the regularity and exactness that
| it gives to the excavations, presents
the following roster Of the officers of
the federation: President, Mrs. Geo.
E. Goethals; vice presidents, Mrs. Lo-
| rim G. Collins of Christobal; Mrs. Will
| liam l.. Siebert, Culebra; Mrs. Ches-
ter Harding, Colon; recording secre-
tary, Mrs. F. M. Miracle; correspond
ing secretary Mrs. Lewis Baker, Cor
gona; treasurer, Mrs. F. R. Roberts,
Pedro Miguel; auditor, Mrs. ]. c. Bar
nett, Parason; chairman of the ad-