Panama and What It Means Author:John Foster Fraser General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1913 Original Publisher: Cassell Subjects: Panama Panama Canal (Panama) Panama Canal Canal de Panama Descripciones y viajes History / Latin America / Central America Transportation / General Travel / United States / General Travel / United States / South /... more » South Atlantic Travel / United States / West / Pacific Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III THE RAW MATERIAL The authorities would not employ cheap white labour from the States. They had an idea that the prestige of America would suffer if low-paid white citizens had to work alongside the mixed breeds on the Isthmus or amongst the blacks. Nor did they ship any of the black population from the Southern States. Probably the owners of the cotton fields objected to the withdrawal of workers. What is more likely is that the coloured folk, full of suspicion about the unhealthiness of the climate, would only have been attracted by very high pay, with the consequence that when they were sent back from Panama to the States they would have been dissatisfied. The Americans turned to the West Indies for the supply of unskilled labour. The healthiest of the islands is Barbados. It has a packed black population, stalwart and healthy, which finds difficulty in advancing much in prosperity above starvation point. Here was an almost illimitable well, where wages were lower than those paid in the cotton fields of the Southern States, and where plenty of workers could be obtained at a remuneration which would not satisfy the American nigger. When they were no longer wanted they could be shipped back to Barbados ; if then there was dissatisfaction about the wages, that would not be the...« less