40, and
negroes in general $.30.
That afternoon, when the sun had begun to bow its head on the
thither side of the canal, I climbed to the newly labeled census
office on the knoll behind the police station, from the piazza of
which all native Empire lies within sweep of the eye. "The boss,"
a smiling youth only well started on his third decade, whose
regular duties were in the sanitary department, had already moved
bed, bag, and baggage into the room that had been assigned the
census, that he might be "always on the job."
Not till eight that evening, however, did the force gather to look
itself over. There was the commander-in-chief of the census
bureau, sent down from Washington specifically for the task in
hand, under whom as chairmen we settled down into a sort of
director's meeting, a wholly informal, coatless, cigarette-smoking
meeting in which even the chief himself did not feel it necessary
to let his dignity weigh upon him. He had been sent down alone.
Hence there had been great scrambling to gather together on the
Zone men enough who spoke Spanish--and with no striking success.
Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in uniform, were
three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working Spanish
they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and flush-cheeked
with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say nothing of the
$4.
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