The First Diggers- The “Silver Roll”

Above we have an old "French Canal"
image from 1886 of a West Indian
excavation crew in the Paso Obispo Cut.
Image thanks to
www.canalmuseum.com

The black employees or the “Silver Roll” labor force, as it was named from the beginning, constituted the bulk of the work force on the US Government's Canal Zone and canal construction projects at any time in the history of those projects. In fact, it had been so since the inception of the works and into the creation of what would become known as the “Canal Zone” area of Panama.

In their majority the West Indian laborers who had been contracted, largely as regular employees, would reach the ranks of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Initially, the Jamaicans, who were looked upon as skilled employees, were then the workers who met the hordes of laborers freshly arriving at the piers. Many non contracted Jamaicans, those who had not come in under contract from their homeland, in fact, were the men who would reach the work sites and pickup points first to welcome them as they were hired on the spot.
Nevertheless, as the works progressed and out of eagerness to demonstrate their skills, the pioneering Jamaicans were called upon to be the black bosses and group leaders, amongst the thousands of black workers who often resembled hordes of ants as the labor force would descend upon the excavation sites. At this time it was not unusual for the arriving Westindians, many having paid their way to arrive, to see Black men driving heavy equipment such as gigantic shovels, earth movers with the largest of buckets, and bulldozers designed to reduce even the most stubborn of mountains. The thousands of tons of earth and rock being moved by these industrious men were then piled onto waiting locomotives being attended to, again, by completely Black crews. From the engineers to the brake and flag waving signal men they, the black men, moved the trains in and out of the area after being filled.

As in the beginning, the times required the use of men who could withstand the harshness of the deathly climate and an environment of working conditions that proved to be no respecter of color, race or class. These men worked under conditions of extremely hot and humid temperatures, under torrential rains for most of the twelve moths of the year. The conditions, however, did take its toll on even the hardiest of Black West Indian workers as evidenced by the horse driven hospital coaches and the funeral trains that were kept quite busy.

On the job accidents such as men falling off trains, or the numerous dynamite explosion accidents that ripped their bodies apart were very frequent. The stoicism and sheer hardiness of the men, however, kept the works advancing and soon Blacks were being recruited as office workers, hospital and medical assistants and other field staff, which required assorted clerical skills. This crucial period between 1900 and 1910, required that people acclimatize quickly, if they did at all survive.

The year 1905 would find a black labor force really content to be employees of the so awaited works on the Inter-oceanic Canal. To endure years of unemployment and now be employed as leaders of the newly recruited workers who would assist in meeting the arriving boatload of contracted blacks from islands all over the Caribbean was now a welcomed challenge. The Jamaicans were the experienced and capable black foremen, for whites from the United States at this time were very few, and if they lasted for more than a year and did not die in this rugged and merciless climate, they would be counted among the white “Gold Roll” foremen.

Black citizens from the U.S. were not encouraged to work, and if, by chance, they were hired, they were treated as Silver Roll employees even though they were Black American Citizens. Historical records reveal that in the beginning of the canal works resumed from the French period, there was sparse representation of any American citizen at all on the work force.

As it was during the French Dig, so it was with the American project- the Westindians, as a workforce, were the bosses and foremen to the throngs of Black, Chinese and Hindu laborers. They engineered the works in the great holes known as the Cuts and were recognized as the First Diggers. In fact, since the periods of U.S. mercantilist security pacts, through the American Railway period (1848) and into the second or American canal dig, they were there to power the preliminary works that needed to be done before the boatloads of black laborers would take their first step on Panamanian soil in the later months of 1903 even before the country had been officially recognized as a free republic.

This story will continue.