The USA Canal Zone did not recognize Panama. They operated under the spirit of the USA constitution but not it’s particulars. This added leeway made the labor intensive construction possible, but also allowed the American tradition of not putting live people on stamps to be dispensed with. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp doesn’t look like much. A simple portrait with a last name and a denomination. This is in keeping with the prewar time but understates the achievements of the men who worked on the canal. There were many schemes to build a canal through Central America. The British and the French tried and failed, the Panamanians would have probably tried if and when they ever progressed. The Americans succeeded, due in large part to the engineering and logistical work of the men honored on this series of stamps.
Todays stamp is issue A43, a 30 cent stamp issued by the Canal Zone in 1928. It was part of a 10 stamp issue in various denominations the honored the men behind the Panama Canal. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 70 cents used. Strange that the value is so low, far below the inflation adjusted value of the denomination, ($4.42). We are perhaps not in a time when the long ago achievements of old white guys are properly valued.
The Panama Canal was constructed between 1903 and 1914. The work had been started by a much smaller capitalized failed French venture. Most of the French work had returned to nature. After a few years of fits and starts, it was decided that the US Army Corps of Engineers should run the project, after civilian contractors proved incapable. The project required the construction of locks, canals, and docks required large amounts of engineering skill and large amounts of physical labor at a time when slavery was banned. Contract workers were brought in from Barbados and Jamaica to do the labor. No American blacks were involved.
The contract workers have in the years since generated much controversy. The workers in the Canal Zone were divided into gold coin and silver coin workers, with the gold coin workers being almost all white and silver coin workers being all black. Whites were not allowed to apply for silver dollar jobs and the blacks were only rarely promoted to gold coin status. The coins were of course how they were paid although over time the Gold coin workers were paid in USA paper money and the silver coin workers began to receive American coinage to replace the Colombian coins they were paid early. The Gold Coin workers also received better food and housing and were encouraged to send for their wives at home while the silver coins had to survive on the local economy. When the USA saw that the silver coins were receiving poor food at inflated prices from the Panamanians, a Commissary was set up that sold them imported food at cost. Unionization was banned, strikes dealt with harshly and an attempted West Indian workers association went unrecognized. On a brighter note unlike so many modern projects, it got done and worked as hoped.
The man on todays stamp is Col. Sydney Williamson of the Army Corp of Engineers. He had a degree in Civil Engineering from the Virginia Military Institute. He was hired by General George Washington Goethals to work on the Western End of the Canal. After the canal was completed in 1914, Williamson went into private practice. Goethals called him back into service to work on logistics involved with the American deployment to France. After the War the two men worked together in private practice. Among the post canal projects he worked on were copper smelters in Chile, street cars in Brazil and Argentina, the water supply in Genoa, Italy and the port facilities of West Palm Beach, Florida. He died 7 years after his stamp in 1935.
General Goethals in addition to Canal Zone stamps was honored with a USA stamp in 1939, ten years after his death. The Panamanians have not given either man a stamp. There was a stamp for the failed French effort in 1980, and President Carter is on a few stamps celebrating the USA giving the Canal to Panama in the 1970s. I guess gratitude and success are not things to celebrate in Panama.
Well my drink is empty and I will have a few more pondering a stamp website that could pay me in gold coins, or even silver ones. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting and remember our sponsors and their unobtrusive banner ads.