The Panama Canal Agency took charge of picking the workers and getting them to from Barbados to the Canal Zone. Recruiting took place in Trafalgar Square, in Bridgetown, conveniently near the main police station. Today the place is called National Heroes Square (although a lot of people use the old name) right outside the Parliament building.
Agents went out into the crowd to interview and select potential workers. A doctor then checked the potential workers, selecting those who would receive a contract. In 1907, Arthur Bullard described the scene as follows:
Several policemen kept the crowd in order and sent them up into the recruiting station in batches of 100 at a time. As the men came up, they were formed in a line around the wall. First, all those who looked too old, or too young, or too weakly, were picked out and sent away. Then they were told that no man who had previously worked on the canal would be taken again. Then the doctor told them all to roll up their left sleeves and began a mysterious examination of their forearms. He saw that a few men had been vaccinated by him already, and these were sent away. One protested that a dog had bitten him there. Then, he went over the whole line gain for trachoma, rolling back their eyelids and looking for inflammation. Seven or eight fell at this test. Then he made them strip, and went over them round after round for tuberculosis, heart trouble, and rupture. About 20 of 100 were left at the end.
The selected migrants reported back to the docks a few days later. After a second medical examination and a check to insure that every emigrant had a number that matched the one on their contract, they boarded the steamers, where they had to find deck space and food for themselves during the 12 day voyage to Colón. According to a report presented to the Barbados Legislative Council, the atmosphere on the docks was fairly hostile towards the ruling class. The crowds would “abuse whites and aggressively denounce them” before boarding.
The anger was understandable, given the situation the emigrants were leaving. Ironically, the departure of so many angry young men gave plenty of leverage to those who stayed behind. One prospective emigrant was heard telling his co-workers, “Why you don’t hit the manager in the head and come along with we?” His co-workers refrained from assaulting the manager, but there was a wave of plantation labor disputes, and the following song became fairly common:
We want more wages, we want it now
And if we don’t get it, we’re going to Panama
Yankees say they want we down there
We want more wages, we want it now
And what do you know? Wages went up. By 1910, the American consul in Bridgetown reported that agricultural workers received 30¢ per day, a 25% rise in nominal wages over the 1900 level. More importantly, unpaid labor — remember the located labor laws? — basically disappeared. Planters reacted to the new environment. First, they started to employ tenant women in the fields. Second, they modernized production. In 1910 there were no modern sugar centrals on the island — intead, windmill-powered presses wasted upwards of 30% of the raw material. By 1921, in contrast, 19 modern sugar centrals had entered operation. Third, they mobilized politically to halt emigration.
Barbados had seen the emigration movie in the 1870s, when Guyanese and Trinidadian labor brokers began recruiting on the island. That time around, it ended with the Emigration Act of 1873, which effectively prevented labor recruiters from operating in Barbados. (My wife’s grandfather is from Barbados, but he left for Trinidad in the early 20th century.) Emigration fell from 2,676 in 1873 to only 613 by 1876.
This time the movie ended differently. In 1906, the Barbadian parliament passed a bill giving Governor Gilbert Carter the power to halt emigration. Two angry public demonstrations convinced the Governor to take the then-extraordinary measure of publicly proclaiming that he had no intention of using his new powers. The parliament then demanded that he appoint a commission of inquiry into emigration; he refused. Five years later, in 1911, Carter retired and returned to Britain. The new Governor, Leslie Probyn, appeared to bow to planter pressure by declaring a ban on labor recruiting for Panama ... but he took no action to enforce it. Barbadians continued to leave for Panama.
Emigration, then, had palpable economic effects on Barbados. It raised wages (albeit to still-low levels) and prompted the renewal of the sugar industry. That is not nothing. But there was another effect. In fact, that other effect was why Governor Carter refused to appoint a commission of inquiry ...
Comments