the great majority are negroes from Jamaica or Barbados, or other parts of the British West Indies. They are very peaceable and law-abiding fellows, but exceedingly lazy, and unbelievably stupid. There is room in their heads for exactly one idea at a time, and no more. One of them was given a red flag by the foreman of a section-gang on the Panama Railroad, and told to go round the curve and stop any train that might come along, while they replaced a rail. He went to his post, and just as they had taken up the rail, a switch-engine came sailing round the corner, flew off the track, and nearly killed two men. When they asked the Jamaican why he had failed to flag it, he replied, "You told me to stop trains. That wasn't a train, it was a locomotive."
When the Irish-American foreman started to say what he thought of him, the Jamaican ran away to the British consul, and complained that he was being called names. These big, strong, black men have to be looked after like so many children. Before we stopped them, they used to sleep in their rain-soaked clothes, waste their lunch-money on perfumery or lottery-tickets, and come to their work half-starved and sickly. Now they get three good hot meals a day, besides better pay and quarters than they ever dreamed of in Jamaica. Besides, they have learned that if they do not work, we can get other men to fill their places.
To stimulate the Jamaicans by competition, we have brought over several thousand peasants from Galicia, in the north of Spain, and these men, being strong and healthy and used to labor in a hot climate for a fraction of what they earn on the Isthmus, do very good work.
