October 10 - With a Push of a Button, Oceans Are Joined

On this day in Labor History the year was 1913.  At 2:02 in the afternoon President Woodrow Wilson at the White House touched of an explosion at the Gamboa Dike in Panama.  With that touch of a button the last barrier to joining the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Panama Canal went up in smoke.  The Chicago Tribunedescribed the scene in Panama, “Then suddenly came the muffled roar of the discharge of 1,600 pounds of dynamite, which sent a shower of water, mud, and rock high into the air, spreading out as it went upward, the whole heavily veiled in a cloud of smoke...As water began to pour through the rent made by the explosion...the crowd sent up a great cheer.” It was a momentous moment in the construction of the canal.  But that moment came at a staggering cost of workers lives. For more than twenty years the French and then the United States worked on the canal project. The US phase lasted for a decade. As many as 45,000 workers toiled on the canal during the peak years of construction.  These workers came from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Panama.  West Indians formed the core of the work crews.   These workers faced stifling heat, brutal work conditions, and poor accommodations.  Workers had to contend with ravaging disease, poisonous snakes and torrential rains.  Workers also faced racial discrimination.   West Indian workers earned half the hourly wages of US and European workers.  They also lived in much more crowded barracks. Worker deaths were so frequent that “frunery trains” ran to bring the bodies away from the construction site.  It is estimated that more than 27,000 men died building the canal.