It is doubtful, to be sure,
whether one-fourth of the "Zoners" of any class ever lived as well
before or since. The shovelman's wife who gives five-o'clock teas
and keeps two servants will find life different when the canal is
opened and she moves back to the smoky little factory cottage and
learns again to do her own washing.
At work, "on the job" there is a genuine American freedom of wear-
what-you-please and a general habit of going where you choose in
working clothes. That is one of the incomprehensible Zone things
to the little veneered Panamanian. He cannot rid himself of his
racial conviction that a man in an old khaki jacket who is
building a canal must be of inferior clay to a hotel loafer in a
frock coat and a tall hat. The real "Spig" could never do any real
work for fear of soiling his clothes. He cannot get used to the
plain, brusk American type without embroidery, who just does
things in his blunt, efficient way without wasting time on little
exterior courtesies. None of these childish countries is man
enough to see through the rough surface. Even with seven years of
American example about him the Panamanian has not yet grasped the
divinity of labor. Perhaps he will eons hence when he has grown
nearer true civilization.
But among Americans off the job reminiscences of East India flock
in again.
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