The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

The enormous discrepancy between white and black society along this same jungle corridor, the point that the Canal Zone was in actuality a rigid caste society, was barely even implied by such observers (which, of course, was in itself another facet of the life and times). And neither did any but a very few question the kind of white community that had evolved, other than to point out, somewhat apologetically, that it was indeed “a sort of socialism.” The statement that the Canal Zone was “a narrow ribbon of standardized buildings and standardized men working at standardized jobs” stands almost alone in all to be found in published or private accounts. To William Franklin Sands, an American diplomat, this new civilization created by his countrymen was simply awful, “a drearily efficient state,” “a mechanization of human society.” “Every American looked and behaved exactly like every other—to the vast bewilderment of the natives, who had previously thought of us as a race of extreme individualists. . . .”