Panama Canal Workers, 1910
The 51-mile-long Panama Canal includes seven sets of locks that can raise and lower fifty large ships in a twenty-four-hour period. Building the canal took eight years and required over 50,000 workers, including immigrants from Spain and Italy and many West Indians such as these men, who accomplished some of the worst-paid, most dangerous labor. Workers endured the horrors of rockslides, explosions, and a yellow fever epidemic that almost halted the project. But American observers hailed the canal as a triumph of modern science and engineering — especially in medical efforts to eradicate the yellow fever and malaria that had stymied earlier canal-building efforts. Theodore Roosevelt insisted on making a personal visit in November 1906. “He made the men that were building there feel like they were special people,” recalled the descendant of one canal worker. “Give them pride of what they were doing for the United States.” Library of Congress.