File:Panama and the canal in picture and prose (1913) (14780810364).jpg

Identifier: panamacanalinpic01abbo (find matches)
Title: Panama and the canal in picture and prose ..
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Abbot, Willis John, 1863-1934. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York (etc.) Pub. in English and Spanish by Syndicate publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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believe it, he said, when theyhad filled that wheel-barrow, two of the niggerslifted it to their companions head, balanced it andhe walked off with it as contented as you please.The huts in which the negroes live are as a ruleinconceivably small. They are just a trifle largerthan a billiard table, built of wattled cane, and plas-tered over with clay. The roof is usually a thatch 20 PANAMA AND THE CANAL of palm branches, though sometimes ragged stripsof corrugated iron are employed with much less ar-tistic effect. In what corresponds to our tene-ments, the rooming places of day laborers, the yardrather than the house is the unit. So you will seeon a tiny shack about the size of a playhouse for open air, adds to the gayety of life by grouping somany black families in one corral, reduces the highcost of living as our model tenements never canhope to, but makes one black landlord independent,for the possession of a yard with its rooms all rentedleaves nothing needed for enjoyment except a
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MARKET WOMEN AND THEIR DONKEYSThe true industrial forces of Jamaica. Men are seldom seen as carriers or sellers of produce children the sign, Rooms for Rent, which appliesnot to the pigmy edifice bearing it, but to thecluster of huts set down helter skelter in the yard.The people sleep in the huts, incidentally barringthem so far as the flimsy construction permitsagainst any possible entrance of fresh air. All theother activities of life are conducted in the open—cooking, eating, sewing, gossiping. A yard is themost social place imaginable, and the system not. only contributes to health by keeping people in the phonograph and an ample supply of the rum forwhich the island is famous. Racially the Jamaica peasant is a negro, with vary-ing admixtures of white blood. The mongrel breed issteadily increasing and the pure white populationrelatively decreasing. Economically the peasant iseither a day laborer or a servant, and as 40,000 areclassed as servants in a population where the em-plo

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