The life of the five thousand American engineers and clerks and foremen, and that of their wives and children, is very much like what it would be at home. Though it is summer all the year round, the temperature seldom rises above eighty-six, and it is always cool and pleasant at night. There are band concerts, and firemen's tournaments,—there is a well-equipped and efficient fire department,—and women's clubs, and church societies, and a Panama Canal baseball league.
Hundreds of sturdy, sunburned American children (for though the English cannot raise healthy white children in India, we can in Panama) go galloping about on little native ponies, or study in the Canal Zone public schools. The pupils of the high school publish a monthly paper called the Zonian. Several patrols of boy-scouts have been organized, and they have the advantage of a real jungle to scout in.
Uncle Sam had no intention of becoming a benevolent landlord and caterer when he went to Panama to dig the Canal. But in order to get the best class of American workingmen, and keep them fit to do their best work, he had to keep adding one thing after another, until now there are government laundries, bakeries with automatic pie, cake, and breadmaking machines, electric-light plants, ice factories, plants for roasting coffee and freezing ice cream; a harness shop, livery stables, printing-press, and an official newspaper, the Canal Record.
If Bill Smith were struck by a flying fragment of rock after a too-heavy blast in the Cut, he would find a first-aid package beside his seat on the steam-shovel, receive free treatment at Ancon or Colon Hospital, and spend
