American Experience (1988–…): Season 23, Episode 6 - Panama Canal - full transcript

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It's been called

one of the Seven Wonders
of the Modern World...



A manmade waterway 50 miles long

that forever altered
the face of the earth.

The Panama Canal exceeded
any country's capacity.

If in 1904 you had asked me
to put money,

I would have said,
"No, it can not be built."

Nobody knew how this was
going to be done.

The geographic location
of Panama,

the Isthmus of Panama,

has always been coveted as a way
of making the oceans meet.

With the building
of the Panama Canal,

the realization of a dream

became an expression
of the power, the strength,

the might of a growing nation.

For nearly a hundred years,



the Panama Canal
has stood for the triumph

of technology over nature.

But when it was built
at the dawn of the 20th century,

it was simply
an audacious gamble...

A colossal engineering project

the likes of which the world
had never seen.

It's a story of inspiration.

It's a story of humanity.

What man can endure with a pick
and shovel to dig the canal.

It used science and engineering
and government

to improve the country
and really improve the world.

But it has a dark side as well.

It is also a symbol of
arrogance, authority and power.

The canal really announced
the United States

as the leading country
in the world.

It demonstrated an extraordinary
will and determination.

They had succeeded
in conquering nature

as no one had ever done before.

In early July 1905,

an American steamship
made its way

towards the Isthmus of Panama,

the narrow ribbon of land
between North and South America

and the two largest oceans
in the world.

Among the passengers on board
was Jan van Hardeveld,

a 30-year-old engineer
from Wyoming.

He'd read in the newspaper about
a new government project...

An ambitious plan to link
the Atlantic and the Pacific

with a canal... and he was
determined to be part of it.

A Dutchman by birth,

Jan was a newly minted citizen
of the United States

and a fierce champion
of his adopted country.

"In America," he liked to say,
"anything is possible."

The building of the Panama Canal
would be no exception.

A heavy suitcase in my hand,
the sweat rolling down my face,

I stumbled along
the wet, slippery track

which I had been told to follow

until I found a place
to turn off.

In the deep darkness
I seemed to have walked miles,

and I never dreamed there could
be such unearthly noises.

To me they sounded like
the howling of demons.

Well, I decided that turning
back looked almost as hard

as going on, so here I am.

Jan van Hardeveld was
just one of hundreds

of young Americans now living
on the isthmus of Panama.

They'd been arriving for months
from San Diego, Cincinnati,

Pittsburgh, Charlotte;

former railroad engineers
and file clerks

and recent college graduates,

all of them eager to be part
of what one observer called

America's "mighty march
of progress."

At this particular moment,

there's a lot of positive
thinking going on

in the United States.

There are these sort
of iconic structures...

The transcontinental railroad,
the Brooklyn Bridge...

All of them accomplishing feats

that naysayers had predicted
could not be done.

So there is this fascination

with human triumph
over adversity.

Americans feel that we are
at the cutting edge.

The idea of building a Panama
canal seized the imagination

of the American public.

This was the great unfulfilled
engineering challenge

of the world.

For nearly 400 years,

people had dreamed
of building a canal

that would slice through
the slender Isthmus of Panama

and make the world's great
oceans meet.

The French had been
the first to try.

The year was 1880,
and Ferdinand de Lesseps,

the legendary builder
of the Suez Canal,

was looking for a second act.

Well, Ferdinand de Lesseps was
a great national hero,

who had done this great,
magnificent thing

of building the Suez Canal.

He was called
"Le Grand Français."

He was endlessly appearing
in the magazines,

with his beautiful wife
and his lovely children.

He was seen as
incredibly virile.

And he was endlessly
touring the country,

where he'd pull in huge crowds
to come and see this...

the hero of Suez.

The thing about the Suez Canal

was that it was a flat, level
passage through a dry desert.

It couldn't have been more
different from the Panama Canal.

If anything,

Panama was the most difficult
place in the whole world

to build a canal.

You've got really thick jungles
full of snakes

and, of course, mosquitoes
that will give you malaria

or yellow fever.

And then you have deep,
almost bottomless swamps.

You've got the thick,
heavy mountain range.

And perhaps worst of all,
you've got the Chagres River,

which is one of the most
volatile rivers in the world.

Despite the warnings of experts
who said it could not be done,

de Lesseps directed his
engineers to carve a canal

through the isthmus.

They spent the
next eight-and-a-half years

locked in a losing battle
against the jungle.

Everything that could
have gone wrong went wrong

for the French at Panama.

There were fires,
there was flooding,

there was an earthquake.

There was continuous epidemic
of yellow fever.

There was a huge amount
of corruption.

When the crash of de Lesseps'
venture finally came,

in 1888, it was thunderous.

In less than a decade,
more than a billion francs...

About $287 million...
Had been all but squandered.

Meanwhile, accidents
and disease had claimed

a staggering 20,000 lives,
most of them West Indians

who had been imported
to do the heavy labor.

De Lesseps, the one-time
hero of France,

was bankrupted and only narrowly
escaped prison.

WALTER LaFEBER:
De Lesseps was broken.

In the last years of his life

he sat looking out a window

with a three-year-old newspaper
by his side.

He had essentially
been driven insane

by the whole experience
in Panama.

For ten years,

the spectacular failure
of the French cast a pall

over the isthmus.

In the eyes of
most of the world,

Panama was a miserable sinkhole,

a place synonymous with
corruption, disease and death.

The Americans took
a different view.

No nation on earth had more
to gain from a canal

than the United States.

The close of the 19th century
had been witness

to its astonishing rise...

The sudden, dramatic expansion
of its industry,

its gathering economic might,

its surprising aggression
against Spain

in the War of 1898.

Now, on the threshold
of the new century,

the brash young country, barely
a hundred years in existence,

was poised to become one
of the world's great powers.

To President Theodore Roosevelt,
who took office in 1901,

the canal was the obvious path
to America's future.

Roosevelt wanted American power
to be projected

outside of the North American
continent,

really for the first time.

The key to this was, for him,
the building of a Panama canal,

which could link the two oceans

and provide a conduit
for sea power.

This was the crucial thing
for him.

LaFEBER:
He saw the canal, essentially,

as the way to protect
American interests,

particularly American commerce.

The United States was the number
one industrial power

in the world.

And when you begin to look
at the world in those terms,

then what you begin
to think about was,

how do you get from New York
to the markets of Asia?

This is the first time
in American history

where we start
to think globally.

To Roosevelt,
the notion of an isthmian canal

is a key piece of the puzzle
of world empire

and a kind of providentially
ordained

world domination that the
United States is meant to enjoy.

Whoever could connect
and have the two seas...

The Atlantic and the Pacific...
Will be the global power.

"If we are to hold our own in
the struggle for supremacy,"

Roosevelt insisted,
"we must build the canal."

But the rights
to the land in Panama

proved difficult to negotiate.

Panama was a small province
of Colombia.

And once
the United States decided

to build the canal in Panama,

they tried to reach
an agreement with Colombia.

Roosevelt insisted
on a huge amount of control

over where the canal
was to be built.

However, the Colombian
constitution expressly forbids

any sovereignty to be given away
for any part of the country.

And effectively this is what
the Americans were demanding.

LaFEBER:
So, the Colombians
rejected the treaty.

They not only rejected it,

the Colombian legislature
rejected it unanimously.

Roosevelt thought,

"We have one objective,
and we're not going to allow

this small little insignificant
country get in our way."

Roosevelt felt that
the United States should...

leading the way
in improving the world,

even if bits of the world didn't
necessarily want to be improved.

So he had an option.

Either he could just simply
invade Panama and take it,

which he considered doing.

He sent spies
to go and check out

the possibility
of achieving that.

Or there was another option,

and that was for Panama
to declare its independence

under the protection
of the United States.

As Roosevelt well knew,

Panamanian elites had been
plotting revolution for years.

Now, with a nod from Washington,
they made their move.

On the morning
of November 3, 1903,

the rebels seized the isthmus.

Aided by the well-timed
appearance

of an American gunboat
in the harbor at Colón,

their revolution was over
by sundown,

its sole casualties
a foreign-born shopkeeper

and a luckless donkey.

Three days later, the United
States formally recognized

the new Republic of Panama.

The best part was
the way they did it.

Instead of fight against
the Colombia,

they just send bags of money

to pay off all the Colombian
troops to go back to Colombia.

So this was a bloodless
revolution.

Colombia, they didn't imagine
the audacity of Teddy Roosevelt.

"We will make Panama into
a new, independent country.

"They will sign us off
this tract of land,

and then we will have a canal
and they will have a nation."

And that was the birth
of the nation of Panama.

It was arrogant,

but then again
America was emerging

into an international order

where to be a self-respecting
power, you had to be arrogant.

The British were arrogant,
the Germans were arrogant.

God knows the French
were arrogant.

So this self-assertion
by America

was part of a certain kind
of culture.

The treaty later signed
with the Panamanians

gave the United States
effective sovereignty

over the so-called
"canal zone"...

A 500-square-mile swath

that stretched clear
across the isthmus

and cut the new nation in two.

The Panamanian leadership
was of course extremely grateful

to the Americans for their
support in the revolution.

But the honeymoon period
was incredibly short.

As soon as the Americans started
actually laying out

the boundaries of the zone,

the Panamanians realized
that they'd been sold out.

What Roosevelt called

"one of the future highways
of civilization"

was now America's to control.

All that was left to do
was build it.

When the news of the Panama
revolution came through,

it was immediately apparent
that it had been carried out

with the connivance and with the
support of the United States.

And this left the public very
confused and very divided.

There was a feeling

that the underhand and
internationally illegal way

in which the Americans had
contrived the revolution

had somehow sullied
America's reputation.

There were headlines saying,
"Might makes right."

You know, "We are just now
like the Europeans, who are...

who grab land
whenever they want."

And there was a feeling
that something that had made

the United States different,

that had made it better
than the other great powers,

had been lost.

On May 4, 1904,

the American effort in Panama
officially got underway.

To oversee the project
on the ground,

Roosevelt had selected a
seasoned, seemingly unflappable

51-year-old engineer
from Chicago

named John Findley Wallace.

But real authority rested with
the Isthmian Canal Commission,

a presidentially appointed panel
charged with approving

virtually every decision
made in the Canal Zone.

With the national treasury
footing the bill

for the project,

the commission was determined
that not a single penny

be misspent.

Every time you wanted
to do something,

every time you wanted
to hire a cart,

you'd have to fill out a form
in triplicate

and send it to Washington.

And this, of course,
brought utter paralysis

to anything that Wallace
was trying to do.

As yet, the Americans
had no real plan

other than to pick up
where the French left off

and dig a massive ditch
through the isthmus

some 50 miles in length and
about 30 feet below sea level.

Slated to run from Colón,
the harbor on the Caribbean,

all the way south to Panama City
on the Pacific,

the canal would have to cut
through dense jungle,

across the flood-prone
Chagres River Valley,

and then through the steep
mountain pass known as Culebra.

Wallace had only 3,500 men
at his disposal...

1,500 of them new recruits
from the U.S.,

the rest West Indians left over
from the French effort.

With such a token force,

and tons of machinery
badly in need of repair,

he was uncertain how to proceed.

He wanted time...
At least a year, he said...

To experiment with equipment.

And all of the time

there was this huge clamor
from back at home

to make the dirt fly.

Roosevelt wanted action.

So of course
Wallace had to start digging

the minute he got there.

In November 1904, under pressure
from Washington,

Wallace ordered excavation
to begin at Culebra.

To meet the challenge
of the mountains,

he'd imported two Bucyrus
steam shovels...

95-ton behemoths
that could dig up

roughly eight tons of rock
and earth with a single scoop.

But there were not enough trains
to haul the spoil away,

and what trains there were kept
running off the tracks.

It was an impossible situation

for him to deal with
as chief engineer.

The key to the successful
excavation of the canal

was about moving the spoil that
was dug away from the site,

otherwise everything would stop.

If the shovel didn't have
anything to load the earth onto,

the shovel would stop.

"Make the dirt fly"
was a disastrous approach

to the huge engineering
challenge

that Wallace was facing.

The problems only multiplied.

Just weeks into the digging
at Culebra,

three men on the isthmus
contracted yellow fever.

In December,
there were six more.

Yellow fever could cause
internal bleeding,

bleeding from the gums,

and internal hemorrhaging that
would cause the black vomit,

or vomito negro,
which was terrifying.

The yellow fever.

The fever attacking
and killing everybody.

The fever got everybody scared.

Nobody wants to come
to the isthmus to work.

The fear.

Don't go down to that project
because you may not come back.

The horror that maybe
death is stalking us

the same way it stalked
the French.

Within three months,
500 of the Americans flee.

In January,
as the epidemic spread,

Wallace tried to project
confidence

and made a show of riding around
the Canal Zone with his wife.

Then it became known that
the couple had quietly imported

two metal coffins.

"I am thoroughly sick
of this country

and everything to do
with the canal,"

one American wrote his mother.

"Tell the boys at home
to stay there,

even if they get no more
than a dollar a day."

By June 1905,

nearly three-quarters
of the American labor force

had fled the isthmus.

Overwhelmed and suffering
from nervous strain,

Wallace soon resigned his post.

The project looks doomed.

The project comes
to a standstill

and Theodore Roosevelt
goes nuts.

LaFEBER:
It looked as though

what was going to happen
to the United States

had been exactly what happened
to France.

And this is traumatic
for Americans,

how dangerously close to failure
the whole U.S. enterprise is.

The Americans had been in Panama
for more than a year,

and $78 million already
had been spent.

But so far, only about 15
million cubic yards of spoil

had been excavated,

which left hundreds of millions
still to be removed.

At the rate things were going,
one worker guessed,

the canal would not be finished
for 50 years.

I'm convinced that there
isn't a place in the world

that can beat this isthmus
for rain.

It rains so much
that, honest to goodness,

my hat is getting moldy
on my head.

I haven't had on a dry pair
of shoes in weeks.

Jan van Hardeveld
arrived in Panama

just as Chief Engineer Wallace
was leaving,

and for the first few weeks,

it was hard not to wonder
if he'd made a mistake.

He'd put more than 2,000 miles
between himself and his family...

Left his wife Rose alone
with the children...

And all for a project
that was floundering.

Dear Rose, the food is awful
and cooked in such a way

that no civilized white man
can stand it

for more than a week or two.

I grew careless last week
and before I realized it,

I was one sick hombre...

Stomach out of order and
my blood full of malaria bugs.

I'm taking no more chances
than I can help

of being sent home wrapped
in a wooden overcoat.

Morale in the Canal Zone
was at an all-time low

when, at the end of July 1905,

Wallace's replacement as chief
engineer finally turned up.

His name was John Stevens and
his reputation preceded him.

Some years before, as a surveyor
for the Great Northern Railroad,

he'd trekked hundreds of miles
through the Rockies

to plot out the line's passage
over the Continental Divide.

Word had it that he'd since
built more miles of railroad

than any other man alive.

Now, he'd been asked to rescue
the largest government project

in American history.

John Stevens was an absolutely
brilliant railroad engineer.

Very much a frontiersman.

He'd fought wolves and Indians.

He had survived in incredibly
harsh environments.

And he arrived in Panama,

and he took a look around

and he saw everywhere
disillusionment and fear.

"I believe,"
Stevens later wrote,

"that I faced about as
discouraging a proposition

as was ever presented
to a construction engineer."

Stevens noticed straightaway
that part of the problem

was what he called "the idiotic
howl" to make dirt fly.

He had enough experience
to realize

that on a project of this
enormous, unprecedented scale

he would have to spend
a very great amount of time

just getting the whole thing
ready.

So, therefore, even though
he knew that Roosevelt

and the press back in the United
States would be horrified,

he ordered the digging to stop.

For Stevens, the first order
of business

was to retool
the Panama railroad,

which had been built
in the 1850s

and was by now so decrepit
that he once described it

as "two streaks of rust
and a right-of-way."

Stevens realized
that this was going to be

a huge exercise in logistics.

The job of building
the canal would be

very much a job of just moving,
removing, hauling out

thousands of carloads of dirt.

He understood that the railroad
was going to be

the heart of the effort.

In the system Stevens
ultimately devised,

the railroad would function
as a giant conveyor belt,

and its position would
shift continuously

to accommodate the work
as it progressed.

To speed the relocation along,

he seized on an ingenious
innovation...

A swinging boom mounted
on a flat car

that could lift and move yards
of existing track

without first
having to take it apart.

Then he traded the rail cars
for open-sided flats

fitted with a plow,

which could empty a 20-car train
in about ten minutes.

By Stevens' estimate,

the two rigs would do the labor
of 900 men working by hand.

The cleverest little trick
that he did

was to plan the work so that
the digging would start

at either end of the nine-mile
Culebra Cut

and move towards the middle,
which was the highest point.

This meant that when
the empty spoil trains

came into the Cut they would be
climbing up to the shovels,

and when they were full

they would have the benefit
of the gradient to take away

their enormous loads.

Engineering at its simplest
and most brilliant.

At first, the project's most
formidable challenge

seemed to be the mountain pass
at Culebra.

To dig the canal there,

the Americans would have to bore
down as much as 300 feet

through rock, gravel, clay
and earth

along a corridor some nine miles
in length.

As Stevens put it to a
colleague, "At Culebra,

"we are facing a proposition
greater than was ever undertaken

in the history of the world."

But after a few months
on the isthmus,

at the height
of the rainy season,

Stevens began to realize that
the Chagres was an obstacle

every bit as daunting.

Throughout the summer
and fall of 1905,

he watched as the swollen river
surged over its banks

again and again,

flooding the works
all up and down the line.

Gradually, it began
to dawn on him:

if he and his men built
a sea-level canal

as the French had
attempted to do...

And Washington was now
expecting...

The Chagres would menace
its operation

for more than half of each year.

Stevens realized building
a sea-level canal

would almost certainly condemn
the American canal to failure

just like the French.

Stevens was totally horrified
by this.

He went to Washington.

He hated politicians,
he hated going on a boat,

he got horribly seasick.

But he went to Washington
and he talked face to face

with Roosevelt and convinced
him, convinced the president,

that a sea-level canal
would be total madness.

How can you get a boat to move
from one side to the other side

and to cross the mountain?

Stevens and the rest
of the American engineers

would need to find a new way
to do it.

The answer was a lock canal...

A highly engineered,
mechanized waterway

that would solve the multiple
problems of Panama all at once.

First, to control the Chagres,

a massive dam would be
built at Gatun,

creating an artificial lake
some 85 feet above sea level,

roughly in the middle
of the canal's planned route.

In order to get to this lake,

the ship would be raised
by a series of locks.

These locks are each going to be
these huge concrete structures

more than three
football fields long.

They're going to hold tens of
millions of gallons of water.

They're going to raise ships up
over the American continent,

in effect.

What it was was to set up
a steps, a series of steps,

hydraulically elevate the ship,

where the boats will go up
a step, come across.

It would sail across
the artificial lake,

go through Culebra Cut,
which, of course,

now didn't need to be cut out
nearly so drastically,

and then would descend again
in steps

down into the Pacific and away.

To build the lock canal
in Panama,

the Americans would not only
have to dam

the turbulent Chagres

and create the largest
artificial lake in the world,

they also would have to design
locks nearly three times longer

than the longest ever
constructed.

The plan was wildly ambitious.

But Roosevelt had backed it,

and Stevens was confident
it could be done.

"There is no element of mystery
involved in it,"

Stevens reported to Washington.

"The problem is one of
magnitude, not miracles."

To Jan van Hardeveld,

the Canal Zone now seemed
infused with a sense of purpose.

Assigned to supervise
a work gang in the Culebra Cut,

he spent his days building track
for the spoil trains,

while all around him
roads were being paved

and streetlights installed,

wharves and warehouses built,

dormitories and dining halls
banged together.

The time had come, he decided,
to send for his family.

Dear Rose,

the slowness of work would be
discouraging

if I were not certain that
our government can and will

accomplish whatever it sets out
to do.

That is why, since you have made
no objection,

I have made my decision to stay.

And I am happy to be able
to tell you

that the quartermaster
has at last assigned me

to married quarters.

The house is an old one
at Las Cascadas,

the village where I am now
working.

It was the first house built
here by the French,

and is marked
"House Number One."

It was late winter, 1906,

when Rose packed up
her belongings,

said her goodbyes to Wyoming,

and set off with her children
for Panama.

She hadn't laid eyes
on her husband

in more than half a year.

She spent most of the voyage
laid low by seasickness.

But as their destination neared,

she felt a sudden rush
of enthusiasm.

"This will be our chance,"
she told her children,

"to be among those
who make history."

Your Papa is helping to build
the big canal,

the waterway that has been in
the minds of men for centuries.

It will unite the two oceans,
the Atlantic and the Pacific,

and alter the course of the
ships that sail upon them.

This canal, when it is finished,

will change the face
of the earth.

Of all the challenges
confronting John Stevens,

none was so urgent as the need
for workers.

By his estimate, the canal
project would generate

some 20,000 jobs in 1906 alone.

Of those, 5,000 were positions
for skilled workers...

Blacksmiths, carpenters,
drill operators, plumbers...

And they were reserved
for white U.S. citizens.

But the vast majority
of the jobs

in the Canal Zone
were unskilled.

Thousands of men were needed
to cut brush, dig ditches,

load and unload equipment
and supplies.

The French had relied on the
West Indians for manual labor.

Stevens had other plans.

Stevens, when he'd done

all his railway building
in the United States,

had mainly used Chinese labor.

He considered
that to be the best.

When he got to Panama,

he saw that the workforce was
mainly West Indian

and he didn't like or trust
the West Indians at all.

John Stevens wasn't happy
about relying on West Indians

because he, you know, sharing in
the racial beliefs of the day,

he saw them as too lazy,
not intelligent.

Stevens kept up a continuous
campaign to recruit elsewhere.

He experimented with workers
from Spain and Greece and Italy.

But in the end, he had to take
men wherever he could find them

and nowhere did he find more
than in the nearby islands

of the West Indies.

I landed here on the 21st
of January, 1907.

On the appearance of the place,

I felt like I'll go
right back home

because everything
looked so strange and...

you know, different to being
brought up at home,

so I felt like I'd go back home,

but it wasn't so easy
to do that.

Recruitment proved
especially successful

on the tiny island of Barbados,

where jobs were scarce,
pay was low

and young men were an easy
target for American advertising.

They created what was called
the "Panama Man,"

which was to get someone
that went to Panama

and bring him back and
he will be the advertiser.

When he came back to Barbados
from Panama,

he came back with white
trousers, white jacket,

gold teeth, panama hat,

a big smile and money's
in their pocket.

And all the other guys that's
on the plantation take a look

and say, "Boy, I better go down
to Panama and get mine, too."

I had some friends and
they all was getting ready to go

and they wanted me to go,
and I joined them.

And I left from St. Lucy,

went to Bridgetown
to the transportation office

and I signed up there
for a trip to the canal.

I had no recognition
of what was going to happen.

I couldn't conceive.

I hadn't yet seen the canal,

I hadn't yet seen no part
of the operation

until after I reached
employment.

Then I begun to realize what a
stupendous affair this would be.

Panama was perceived as
the way of getting riches,

but what they did not know
was the price

that they had to pay to do that.

The journey from Barbados took
an average of eight to ten days.

Then came the shock
of the Canal Zone.

West Indians found as they got
to the Canal Zone

that things were very different

from what they had known
in Barbados.

The United States created
a very regimented world.

They had shacks and they had
bunk beds on all four walls.

All four walls had bunk beds,
three layers of bunk beds.

Very harsh facilities.

That was part and parcel

of that type of society
that was created.

As the Barbadians soon learned,

everything in the Canal Zone
came down to how you were paid.

Skilled workers...
Invariably white...

Received their wages in gold,

unskilled workers... who were
largely black... in silver.

So-called "Gold Roll" employees
enjoyed privileges

such as paid sick leave
and laundry service

and holidays off.

For "Silver Roll" employees,
there was nothing of the kind.

From this emerged a system
of segregation on the works

whereby everything was marked
either "silver" or "gold"

whether it was the toilets,
whether it was the post office,

whether it was a shop
or a drinking fountain.

I remember my stepfather
talking about it.

It was a kind of a polished-up
segregation.

It didn't say black and white,

but you understood that
if you weren't a gold roller

and you were a silver roller,
that you were on the black side.

It worked exactly like it worked
in the United States.

In the States, they called
the system for black "colored."

In Panama,
they call it "silver."

With the segregation, that was
a whole dehumanizing strategy,

and that gave the moral
justification for viewing them

as beasts of labor.

In the West Indies, Stevens had
found exactly what he needed...

A seemingly inexhaustible supply
of men

willing to endure
harsh treatment

and heavy physical labor

in exchange for as little
as ten cents an hour.

They knew that they had to send
money home.

That was the reality.

Ten cents an hour was much more
than they would make

in the Caribbean.

By the close of 1906,

Stevens had a labor force of
some 24,000 men at his disposal.

And though he'd
never wanted them,

more than 70% were West Indians.

Rose van Hardeveld had made
her family whole again

by coming to Panama.

But she was one of very
few American women

in the Canal Zone,

and she'd never been
so lonely in her life.

Jan put in more hours on the job
than he ever had in Wyoming,

leaving Rose to cope with
the miseries of jungle living

all on her own.

In the local stores,
she remembered,

"not one edible thing
looked familiar,"

and she wound up feeding her
children a steady diet of fruit,

beans and soggy crackers.

The house smelled
of bat droppings,

and it was overrun
with lizards and insects.

"Slowly but surely my natural
fortitude was giving way,"

Rose later wrote,

"and I was becoming a nervous,
fearful woman."

Then her youngest,
whom the family called "Sister,"

came down with a fever.

Her round face was pale,

and the cold sweat stood out
in beads all over her body.

It was malaria and dysentery,
and a dreary time we had of it.

She became a limp,
feverish little bundle,

crying night and day.

All the time I was becoming
lower and lower in spirits

and less able to cope.

By the time Sister
finally recovered,

Rose had been driven
to the verge of collapse.

"I believe it was
the consciousness

of what would happen
to the children," she wrote,

"that kept me from going
to pieces."

The story was the same
all over the Canal Zone.

Malaria, dysentery, pneumonia...

But nothing was worse
than yellow fever.

Each year, epidemics swept
across the isthmus,

killing men by the hundreds,

inciting panic,
utterly paralyzing the work.

When the Americans arrived in
Panama, it was obviously clear

that there had to be
a medical officer.

And one of the leading
yellow fever specialists

was an army doctor called
Colonel William Gorgas.

Gorgas had made his name
as a frontier doctor

in the United States.

And on one of his postings,
he caught yellow fever.

And he recovered and
thereafter he was immune.

And he decided to make
it his life's work

to battle this terrible disease.

For centuries,

yellow fever had been thought
to be caused by filth,

and efforts to combat
the disease

had revolved
entirely around sanitation.

But during a posting in Havana,

Gorgas had developed
a new protocol.

Working from an obscure theory
in a Cuban medical journal

that blamed yellow fever
transmission

on infected mosquitoes,

he had carried out an extensive
eradication campaign in Havana.

Over the course of one year,

yellow fever cases there had
fallen by more than 95%.

Kill the mosquitoes,
Gorgas argued,

and yellow fever would
disappear.

Gorgas arrived in Panama
absolutely 100% convinced

that the mosquito theory
of yellow fever transmission

was correct.

Gorgas put a proposal together

to implement a plan similar
to that which he had done

in Havana.

His project was a lot bigger,
though,

because in Havana he just had
to clean up one city.

But in Panama he had to clean up
two urban areas

separated by 500 square miles
of swamp and jungle.

Gorgas put together
a $1 million proposal

and submitted it to
the Panama Canal Commission.

And they approved $50,000.

$50,000.

They just didn't get
what he was trying to do.

The gentlemen of the commission
simply didn't believe

the mosquito theory.

They called it
the "veriest balderdash."

There was a feeling that we
needed a sensible doctor,

not this sort of crazy Gorgas
with his wild mosquito theories.

And actually one of the leaders
of the Canal Commission

tried to get him fired and
replaced with a friend of his

who was actually an osteopath

with no experience of
tropical medicine at all.

On the eve of Gorgas's
dismissal,

President Roosevelt
received a visitor

at his home at Oyster Bay...

His personal physician,
Dr. Alexander Lambert.

"You are facing one
of the greatest decisions

of your career,"
Lambert told him.

"If you fall back on the old
methods you will fail,

"just as the French failed.

If you back Gorgas,
you will get your canal."

Lambert appeals
to Roosevelt's ego

and he says, "This canal is your
project and it's your choice."

And Roosevelt buys it.

He says, "Get behind Gorgas
and give him the authority

and the resources he needs."

And so mosquito eradication
can begin in earnest.

With the blessing and backing
of chief engineer Stevens,

Gorgas launched the most
expensive public health campaign

in history.

William Gorgas is
an army officer.

So the cleanup effort
was conducted

with military discipline
and precision.

He spends $90,000 on screening.

He goes about
screening off patients

so that mosquitoes
cannot bite them

and transmit their case
of yellow fever.

And he goes about fumigating the
houses throughout the Canal Zone

to kill adult mosquitoes.

And then the more
extensive effort

is to find mosquito larvae
in all of the water sources

in town and kill the larvae.

Gorgas had discovered

that if you pour oil on top
of the water,

you smother the mosquito larvae.

He called them wrigglers.

So he had to go through
every single house,

every shack in Panama City
and Colón...

All along the line
of the canal...

And find every single water
tank, every little puddle,

and get them covered with oil.

Gorgas's team is swarming all
over the Panama Canal Zone.

They had to screen gutters.

They had to put lids
on water cisterns.

Gorgas even got a law passed
to make it a five dollar fine

to have a wiggler in your home.

He is at war
against the mosquitoes.

And he's going to kill them
to the last.

By August 1906, the monthly
tally of new yellow fever cases

had fallen by nearly half,
to 27.

A month later, the count
was down to just seven.

Then, on November 11,

Gorgas called his staff
into an autopsy room

and told them to take
a good look at the corpse

on the table.

It was, he rightly predicted,

the last yellow fever victim
they would ever see.

The idea that Gorgas was able
to conquer this problem

is still kind of
unbelievable to me.

He ended up tracking down
individual mosquitoes,

which is unbelievable in this...
this jungle,

where it essentially
never stops raining.

And it worked.

And it saved thousands of lives.

Really was a huge part

of what made the digging
of the canal possible.

By the fall of 1906,

Stevens' carefully designed
excavation system

was running at peak efficiency.

It had taken him the better part

of an exhausting year
to prepare.

He'd overseen the construction
of thousands of buildings,

hired thousands of men,

spent thousands upon thousands
on new equipment and supplies.

Finally, the real work of
building the canal was underway.

Over the months
and years to come,

millions of cubic yards
of rock and earth

would have to be loosened
and dug and loaded

and hauled away...
Enough spoil, it was said,

to build a Great Wall
like China's

clear across the United States.

From Washington,
Theodore Roosevelt was watching.

Despite the progress in Panama,

his pet project lately
had come under fire

with critics howling about
alleged graft and corruption

and American boys supposedly
ruined by prostitution

and drink.

What the president needed now
was a new story

for the nation's front pages.

LaFEBER:
He's got a very big
P.R. problem.

But if anyone knew how to deal
with a P.R. problem,

it was Theodore Roosevelt.

And Roosevelt decides
that he'll go down to Panama

and see what's going on
firsthand.

It's the first time an American
president, while in office,

leaves the United States.

"I want to see how they are
going to dig that ditch,

"how they are going to build
that lock,

how they are going to get
through that cut,"

Roosevelt told the press.

"It's a business trip.

"I want to be able to tell
people as much as I can

about the canal."

T.R.'s trip to Panama
tells you a lot

about his mastery of new media.

He knows that if he goes to
Panama it will be a media event.

Newspaper reporters
are doing stories

on exactly what his stateroom
looks like on the ship,

where he's going to stop
along the way.

You know, even before
he gets to Panama,

it has captured the attention
of the country.

The presidential vessel dropped
anchor at Limón Bay

on November 14, 1906,
an entire day ahead of schedule.

Everything had been scrubbed
and whitewashed

and made ready for his visit.

There were choirs lined up,
there were balls and parties,

but even before the welcoming
party started up their songs,

he was already on the isthmus.

He had snuck away from his boat

and was poking around
in the hospitals

and in the barrack rooms.

Roosevelt was determined

that nothing would be hidden
from him.

He deliberately went when
Panama was at its wettest.

And it rained and rained and
rained as it only can in Panama.

The rains are coming down
and he's, you know, saying,

"That's bully great"
to have so much rain

because he wants to see
Panama at its worst.

Everywhere he went he would make
impromptu speeches,

urging the workforce to be men

and to fight for this
fantastic achievement

that would cover the
United States with glory.

He made the men that were
building there

feel like they were
special people,

gave them pride
of what they were doing

for the United States.

He had this amazing energy.

The people who were designated
to show him around

were totally exhausted
after the first few hours.

For Roosevelt, the biggest draw
in the canal zone

was the Culebra Cut, where each
month Stevens and his crew

set a new excavation record.

He got his look
early on the second day.

With a flock of newspaper
photographers hard on his heels,

he marched up to one of the
mammoth Bucyrus steam shovels,

asked the operator to slide
over, and hoisted himself

into the driver's seat.

One of the most famous
photographs ever taken

of a United States president.

It's a great photo that really
announced the key themes

of the United States
in the Canal Zone.

Peerless leadership, American
industry, efficiency,

technology, science was going
to master the canal project.

It was going to do what France
never could have done.

In all, the president spent
12 days on the isthmus...

12 days that Rose van Hardeveld
and many other Americans

would remember as the turning
point for the canal.

We saw him once,
on the end of a train.

Jan got small flags
for the children

and told us about when the train
would pass,

so we were standing
on the front steps.

Mr. Roosevelt flashed us one
of his well-known toothy smiles

and waved his hat
at the children

as though he wanted to come up
the hill and say hello.

I caught some of Jan's
confidence in the man.

"Maybe this ditch will get dug
after all," I thought.

Late on the night
of January 30, 1907,

18 months into his tenure

and at the close of yet
another 14-hour day,

John Stevens sat down at his
desk in his office near Culebra

and composed a letter
to Theodore Roosevelt.

"Mr. President," he wrote,

"you have been kind enough
on several occasions

"to instruct me

"to address you directly
and personally,

"and I will in this case.

"The 'honor' which is
continually being held

"as an incentive for being
connected with this work

"appeals to me but slightly.

To me, the canal is
only a big ditch."

It was an extraordinary thing
to send to a president.

He said he didn't like Panama,

he never wanted the job
in the first place,

he'd had enough
and he wanted to go

and do something far more
lucrative elsewhere.

Roosevelt looked at this letter
and was absolutely furious.

He'd been in Panama talking
to the workforces

that they were
all martial, soldiers,

they must stick to their tasks.

And now the leader that he had
backed was resigning.

But I think Stevens
was utterly exhausted.

And the incredible scale

of the problems that he
inherited from Wallace...

Really it's amazing that he
lasted as long as he did.

Wallace had worn out and quit,
Stevens had worn out and quit.

Roosevelt basically said,
"I want a military man

who can't quit until
I tell him he can quit."

Who has absolutely no choice.

That's how it's got
to be from now on.

And that's what he got
in Goethals.

George Washington Goethals was
48, an expert in hydraulics,

and one of the finest engineers
in the Army Corps.

He was also... as Roosevelt
now made plain...

The chief engineer who would see
the canal through to completion.

As Goethals told a friend,

"It's a case of just plain
straight duty."

He arrived on the isthmus
in late March 1907.

A month later,
the steam shovel men...

The backbone of the entire
excavation effort...

Went out on strike, demanding
a wage increase

of more than 40%.

They were already the best paid
people on the isthmus.

And Goethals basically
pulled the plug on it.

He decided he was going

to gradually recruit
strikebreakers.

Hiring new crews
would take time.

Meanwhile, the digging
ground to a halt.

Two weeks passed, then four.

Still, Goethals refused
to negotiate.

Instead, he sent
the strikers packing.

None of them would be
permitted to return to Panama.

He could deport anyone
from the isthmus

who was in any way causing
any kind of trouble whatsoever.

Anyone who complained,
asked for more money

would simply be got rid of.

By the time the Bucyrus shovels
finally went back to work

in July,
manned by new operators,

Goethals had made his point.

As he later put it,
"The outcome showed conclusively

"that defection
by any one class of men

could not tie up
the whole work."

George Goethals became known
as the Czar of Panama.

He not only ran
the engineering effort,

he also ran the canal zone
government, the post office...

Everything reported
directly to him.

He had total power
on the isthmus.

His express mission was that
everything was subservient

to getting the canal made.

By the time Goethals took over,
the Americans had been in Panama

for three years, and the bulk
of the work still lay ahead.

On both the Atlantic and Pacific
sides of the isthmus,

the lock basins
had yet to be dug

and the locks themselves
constructed.

At Gatun, the site where
the Chagres would be dammed

to form the lake, a foundation
of solid rock had to be laid

before building
could even begin.

Meanwhile, to keep the river

from continually flooding
the works at Culebra,

a massive dike had to be put up
at Gamboa.

And then, there was
the Cut itself.

Excavation had so far managed to
widen it by over a hundred feet,

but the immense task of digging
down had barely begun.

With Goethals in charge,
the Culebra Cut would become

a round-the-clock operation,

with as many as 6,000 men
at work at any given time.

If we arrived there now,

I think the first thing would
strike us would be the noise.

There would be
maybe 300 drills going.

There would be 60 or 70 shovels,
each with three or four trains.

There were constant explosions.

And all of this noise would
reverberate off the walls.

As well as the noise,
it was immensely hot,

up to as much as 120 degrees.

Very soon it became known
as Hell's Gorge.

And more than anything,
it was incredibly dangerous.

The Culebra Cut was the most
challenging part to dig

because you had to get down
through so much earth

that became so much mud
when it rained

as it did almost nonstop for
nine months out of the year.

And there were just
constant landslides.

They'd hear this tooting
of the whistles...

blaring out, and they'd know

that something went wrong,
a slide.

So they had to use pick
and shovels to dig them out.

They knew that the next slide
could come down on them too

and bury them too.

The mountain didn't want to be
crushed the way they did it,

and the mountain fought back.

The slides came without warning,
again and again,

wiping out months of work
in an instant,

twisting track and machinery
beyond recognition,

literally burying men alive.

Nearly all of the victims
were West Indians.

There were no safety guidelines.

There was no labor guidelines.

Every day, men died.

It was a regular situation.

So now they have to bring in
more men and more men

and more men.

Assigned to the most punishing
and hazardous work in the Cut,

the West Indians were the ones
on the ground,

hauling lumber and ties,
shoveling earth,

laying the dynamite that was
used to blast

through the mountains.

They had to drill these holes,
you know, through the rock.

And after they get down
to a certain depth,

they fill it with dynamite.

Then, when they are ready,
they give you warning

so that you go and take shelter.

Three, four, five places
start to blast.

Big rocks going up in the air.

What happens,

sometimes somebody
make a mistake

and touch the wire,

and that guy is gone up too.

It happened a Sunday morning

when the pay car was there
paying men.

Pay car and all was
in the explosion.

A couple of hundred men in that,
a couple of hundred men.

You see bits of men here,
and the head yonder,

and all those... picking it up
for days.

Boy, that wasn't an easy day,
I tell you, Sunday morning.

My grandfather told me

the guys that go up front
with the dynamite,

that they would leave with
their buddies their belongings,

because they never know if they
are coming back up.

It was a daily situation

that today, this morning,
you have breakfast,

and somebody at that table
having breakfast

may not be there
for that evening,

so it's that type of situation.

Now that I am old and sometimes
I sit down there,

and these things are
recollection, you know.

And what I went through
on the Panama Canal

and I'm still alive.

I raise my hands to God.

I say, "Thank God, thank Him."

Because I could have been...

I could have been dead
several times.

As the weeks went by,
the death toll rose.

Eventually, Goethals had
the railroad tracks extended

all the way out
to Mount Hope Cemetery

so that the bodies could be
buried more easily.

Meanwhile, with each
passing month,

the cut at Culebra grew deeper.

With the darkness came noises
so weird and uncanny

as to make the flesh creep
with the strangeness of it all.

The very worst was the wailing
for the dead

that came from the labor camp
below us.

When one of their number died,

the friends and kindred
of the deceased would drink rum

and wail, and sing
Old English gospel hymns.

No matter how fast asleep
I might be,

when the first sound
of that eerie screeching

slapped the air, I was wide
awake and out of bed.

It was like the dance
of the witches.

Looking back later,
Rose van Hardeveld would marvel

that she and Jan had ever gotten
used to living in Panama.

More than once, she recalled,

their commitment to the project
had wavered.

And after Jan's closest friend
was killed,

they actually had considered
going home.

"Why should we stay any longer?"
Rose remembered thinking.

"The canal could get built
eventually without us."

The Americans had

a very serious problem
in that the white workforce

were largely arriving and pretty
much leaving straightaway.

They didn't like working
in Panama.

And right up until 1907,

there was something like 100%
turnover in white staff.

This was a potentially
deal-breaking problem.

And the answer to it was

to provide every single home
comfort that they could.

For Rose and Jan,

the inducement to stay came
in the summer of 1908

in the form
of a newly built cottage

on a pretty, tree-lined street.

"The house was clean and
comfortable," Rose remembered,

"just about the type of home

a man in the States would try
to provide for his family."

As time passed, there were
other improvements as well:

ice boxes and electricity
and YMCA clubhouses,

built by the government
and outfitted with card rooms,

pool tables and libraries.

There were dances
on Saturday nights

and baseball games on Sunday,

more than three dozen churches

and scores of clubs and
fraternal organizations...

The Brotherhood of Railroad
Train Men and the Odd Fellows,

Sojourner's Lodge
and the Knights of Pythias.

As Rose remembered it, all the
perks had their desired effect.

American men stayed
in Panama longer,

their wives and children
came to join them,

and friendships
in the Canal Zone deepened.

"We drew together in a sort of
compact clique," Rose recalled.

"And nothing else seemed
quite so important

"as this immense project

"moving gradually and steadily
to completion.

This was our life."

The canal project increasingly
became looked upon by Americans

as kind of a utopian
representation

of the United States.

There are these glowing
journalistic accounts of it...

The workers are happy, everyone
is well fed, contented.

The reality was that it was
a very autocratic state.

No freedom of speech,
no rights to a union,

more power being asserted
at every step.

The United States government
was creating

an efficient factory workforce

for this incredible
earth-shifting project

on the Isthmus of Panama.

There was no democracy at all.

But at the same time,
things got done.

Mountains were moved.

It worked.

By 1911, the Americans were
finally making real progress

on the canal... and headlines
all over the world.

Suddenly now, tourists from
everywhere were flocking

to Panama to see the engineering
marvel of the age.

What the Americans were doing
with the canal,

said one awed visitor,

was "the greatest liberty
ever taken with nature."

No aspect of the construction
compelled such fascination

as the gargantuan locks...

The so-called "mighty portals
to the Panama Gateway."

These locks are these huge
concrete structures

with these incredibly elaborate
culverts.

They are this enormous
engineering challenge,

the biggest engineering project
there has been

in the history of the earth
until then.

In all, some five million bags
and barrels of concrete

went into the building of
the locks, dams and spillways.

Mixed on site and deposited
into enormous six-ton buckets,

the concrete was then hoisted
by crane, delivered by cableway

and poured from above.

The amount poured
at Gatun alone...

Some two million cubic yards...

Could have built a wall
12 feet high

and long enough to encircle
the island of Manhattan

more than four times.

This was far bigger locks

than had ever been
constructed before.

And really it was about...

it was about just doing
everything much bigger.

There were a couple
of very clever ideas,

one of which was to have
the lock gates hollow

and watertight,
so therefore buoyant,

which meant that far less
of the weight had to be carried

by the locks' hinges.

Although they were
80-some feet high,

they were so precisely balanced,

they could be operated by a
single 40-horsepower motor.

The whole operation was
powered by electricity.

And this was
in very early days for...

This was before many factories
were electrified.

And this electricity was
generated nearby

by the water from the spillway,
by hydroelectric,

and this powered
all of the systems

that made the locks work.

The locks were the mechanical
marvel of the canal.

"These locks are more
than just tons of concrete,"

said one observer.

"They are the answer of courage
and faith to doubt and unbelief.

"In them are the blood and sinew
of a great and hopeful nation,

"the fulfillment
of ancient ideals

and the promise
of larger growth to come."

In the spring of 1913,
nine years almost to the day

after the Americans started work
on the Panama Canal,

they began at last to finish it.

In May, steam shovels number 222
and 230 dumped their last loads

and met in the center
of Culebra Cut.

In June, the last spillway
at Gatun Dam was sealed,

allowing the waters
of Gatun Lake to rise

to their full height.

In August, the dikes at either
end of the line were blown,

and the oceans rushed inland
to the gates of the locks.

In September, the first trial
lockage was made...

From the Atlantic harbor
at Colón

all the way up to the lake.

By summer's end, there was only
one remaining dry span

in the channel... the nine-mile
stretch of Culebra Cut...

And that was to be flooded
on Monday, October 10.

Early that afternoon, a crowd
began to gather at Gamboa,

on the edge of Gatun Lake...

Workers and their families,

visiting dignitaries
from the United States,

tourists from as far away
as Europe and East Asia.

At 2:00 p.m., in a stunt devised
by a newspaperman,

President Woodrow Wilson was
scheduled to push a button

at his desk in the White House,
releasing by telegraph

a current that would blow up
the Gamboa dike

and send the waters of Gatun
Lake rushing into the Cut.

We could easily see the dike

with men still
working around it.

Not many yards to one side was
the gash of the Cut,

not very deep here.

The small waves lapped eagerly
at the edge,

as though the lake was also
waiting to let go

of its overload of water.

Tension mounted.

As Jan van Hardeveld
put it to Rose,

the event would either be

"a historic success
or a historic failure.

No one knows."

At Gamboa, the clock struck two.

There was a reverent silence.

No one spoke at all.

There was a low rumble,
a dull, muffled "boom!"

A triple column shot high
in the center, turned,

and gracefully fell to both
sides like a fountain.

From the multitude came
a spontaneous long, loud roar

of such joy and relief

that I felt sure I would
remember the sound all my life.

As the water poured out
of the lake into the Cut,

hats came off.

We saw Jan and the engineer in
charge of the Cut shake hands.

They were both crying.

We were crying, too.

The canal's official opening was
scheduled for August 15, 1914.

12 days before,
a ship called the Cristobal

made a final practice run

and became the first
seagoing vessel

ever to successfully cross
from the Atlantic Ocean

to the Pacific
through the Panama Canal.

It's pretty amazing going
through the locks.

You nose forward
into this space.

Then 26 million gallons of water
pour by gravity

through underground culverts
into that lock

and raise you up 30 feet or so.

It's an amazing, beautiful,
dramatic experience.

And when you're on the ship

and you feel it rising up

and you move,
you feel it rising up

and you're witnessing
what's happening...

The ship climbing a mountain.

I mean, that is mind boggling.

It had taken ten years of
ceaseless, grinding toil,

an outlay
of more than $350 million...

The largest single federal
expenditure in history

to that time...

And the loss
of more than 5,000 lives.

But the successful completion
of the Panama Canal

had defined the United States
to the world

and announced the arrival of a
new power for the new century.

It was a symbol to Americans.

This is what American power,
technological know-how,

determination,
managerial organization,

all of those things that
Americans prided themselves on...

And still do
to a certain extent...

This is what it can do
for the whole world.

After 500 years of people
dreaming, now it was done.

Atlantic and Pacific oceans
were forever united.

The United States was now
firmly established

as the most powerful nation
on earth.

It all occurred at such
a pivotal moment in our history.

The failure of the French effort
was very much

the sort of the dying gasp
of the Victorian age

that had been dominated
by Europe.

With the opening
of the American canal,

the power in the world
had shifted irrevocably

and the American century
effectively could begin.

Though the Panama Canal was
arguably his greatest legacy,

Theodore Roosevelt never saw it
once it was finished.

An expedition to South America
kept him from attending

the canal's official opening,

and he never again visited
the isthmus.

Of the tens of thousands of West
Indians who had come to Panama

to build the canal, most simply
returned home again...

Quite often with not much
more money in their pockets

than they'd had when they left.

The building of it was a harsh
nightmare for the diggers.

But it's one of the wonders
of the world,

and it's with pride
that my grandfather

and his contemporaries
look across at that,

knowing that it's one
of the biggest enterprise

that the world had ever seen

and that they have
participated in that.

They did it.

For Jan and Rose van Hardeveld,

the years in Panama had
been an epic adventure.

Of all the Americans who had
been employed on the isthmus,

Jan was one of the very few
who had been there

since the beginning.

And, as Rose remembered,

the award he'd earned for long
service, the Roosevelt Medal,

was always in his pocket.

Sometimes in the evening,

she would find him staring off
into the distance,

turning the tiny scrap of metal
over and over in his hand.

I couldn't help thinking

of those who worked beside me
who lost their lives.

I thought of the many times
when I nearly gave in to doubts

that the canal
could ever be completed,

that it was ever meant to be.

But most of all,
I was remembering

how my answer to my own doubts,
every time,

was my faith in my country.

I have always believed
that America could accomplish

anything she set out to do.

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