knew how to paint pictures with speeches. he was a magnetic personality. his enthusiasm bold people over. if you wanted to stay mad at roosevelt you had to stay away from him. he would charge new into forgetting whatever it was that made you mad. he said liege army. i always found him an interesting figure. at university we called -- teach american history. i talked-about him in class and always really enjoyed the roosevelt bit when we were talking about progress of this -- it lasted longer than it should because he was such an interesting character.

>> interviews from beaumont, texas are featured all weekend long on booktv. for more information visit c-span.org/localcontent. booktv interview university of maryland professor julie greene about her book "the canal builders". the interview was recorded at the university of maryland in college park. it is about half an hour. >> "the canal builders" is the name of the book. the authors university of maryland professor julie greene. when did the idea of building a canal come up? >> the idea was an old one in american history. at least in the u.s. but even before that, europeans dream of it for centuries. >> always through panama?

>> guest: there was a lot of talk of going through nicaragua or even mexico. but for a lot of reasons the french seized on the idea of panama and the united states debated long and hard about possibly going to nicaragua but some earthquakes and the fact ;ç that the french had done some ;ç construction work in panama mads that a better approach. >> host: when did the french get started? how far did they get? why didn't they complete it? >> guest: the french construction project was very dramatic. they had faced a lot of problems that began in the 1880s and went through much of the decade. they face a lot of problems that the united states just because the united states project started a few decades later the united states was able to overcome some of the problems the french had faced.

the french didn't have as good technological development as the u.s. had. they faced much more trouble in terms of disease. by the time the united states project began in the early 20th century discoveries had been made about what caused malaria and yellow fever in the united states and able to take action to eradicate those diseases. also the united states made the decision, crucial decision to build a canal rather than at sea level canal. >> host: what was the crucial? >> guest: ac level canal was more difficult to accomplish, much more radical digging and structural recreations of the area had to be done for c level so the lock canal was a brilliant decision. >> host: how long is the panama canal?

>> about 40 miles. >> host: how long would it take to traverse it? >> guest: i took a ship through the canal several years ago and it is an all day trip. >> host: because of the locks? >> guest: you wait in line. there are many ships and going through the locks takes time. also the ship goes slowly through the back--the vast lake that dominates the canal. it is of beautiful journey. it was fun to do it on a ship with lots of people pointing out gold hill or other landmarks but by the end of the day you are tired and you have seen so much. you are ready for some there. >> host: a lot of the focus when we talk about the panama canal on president theodore roosevelt and in your book "the canal builders" there's a picture of president roosevelt but he is not the focus of your book.

>> guest: he dominates our memory of the canal. he more than any other single person played a huge role in committing the united states to building the canal but my book doesn't focus on him because i am interested in looking at the working men and women who built the canal. part of what inspired the book was thinking that the united states was brilliant at creating the idea that the canal was a triumphant achievement of technology, leadership of the roosevelt--the selflessness of the united states. i certainly agree that the canal was a superb achievement, what i felt had gotten erased when the labor that was required to build

the canal. george washington -- constructed until was completed in 1914, once wrote years after the canal had been completed everyone talks about it as this incredible technological achievement or break through in medicine, sanitation, he said none of that actually was new about the canal. what was new about the canal was that we discovered new ways of ruling over men and women and preserving order. >> host: ruling them. what did he mean by that? >> guest: he meant the canal zone, as the united states build the canal, was a little country the personal 65,000 people. people came from all over the

world to build the canal. as many as 100 countries. to keep order over those people if you actually make the world of the canal zone homes so that the canal can be built. a lot of governmental innovation, that is what he was most proud of. he was proud of the engineering and the technology but it was about creating a stable society, to do that he had to develop a lot of key strategy. some of which by today's standards were problematic and unsavory. widespread racial segregation we pursue it relied on labor, fast

police force. i should say something about the red -- racial segregation was interesting, workers from so many different countries from thousands from the u.s. who made up most of the skilled labour force, thousands, many more thousands from the west indies. people of african descent from jamaica and barbados, a few thousand from spain, a few thousand from more than europe. a very diverse group and yet the united states structures the labour force using a kind of biracial -- biracial sort of approach similar to jim crow in the united states. there is a photo of the west indian work force in the canal zone. in this biracial approach put white workers, u.s. workers on

the so-called gold wrote -- and backward groups in the west indies were on the silver role and paid in silver. life was very different for those two groups but a lot of what is fascinating about the canal zone is so many workers didn't quite fit into that black versus white structure. the spaniards. fascinating group. the u.s. imported 6,000 spaniards to work on the canal thinking they would prod the black workers to work harder. in fact they did have a lot of energy but in ways that complicated life for the other officials. they were classified as non-white or sometimes referred to as colored or semi white workers. they were excluded from the white hotels and cafeterias,

excluded from white dormitories and the spaniards were very angry about that and they mobilized and engaged in an artist movement. when i am in the archives i am interested in moments of tension between the workers and the officials so you are looking in the archives for evidence of strikes or anything like that. for a long time i saw nothing about that until finally one day i came upon a big box titled labor disturbances and i excitedly opened the box and the box was filled with spanish disturbances. strikes, walkouts, riots. >> host: were their unions for the workers? >> guest: that is a good question. not really. unions were allowed to exist but they were not allowed to strike.

early in the years there was a strike of steam shovel men. i shed the unions were for the white workers. there was no union representation for the 35,000 or so black west indians. the steam shovel men went on strike and the chief engineers took a very hard stance against them. they said basically you are fired. there will be no strike. in the canal zone. so the unions represented some of the skilled workers in and they worked hard to represent them but focused more on lobbying in washington d.c. and trying to make sure congress ? passed measures that would support their work. >> so julie greene, 30,000 west

indian african descent workers, how many white americans worked on the canal? >> guest: 5,000 or 6,000 white americans. >> host: they were so-called skilled laborers? >> guest: they were working as  railroad engineers, conductors, firemen, machinists, carpenters that sort of thing. >> host: just like workers got paid in gold and others got paid in silver? what did that create? >> guest: that created a tax system in the canal zone. it meant the white skilled workers were really privileged workers. they received much higher pay than other workers. they received, series and

received weeks of vacation leave every year and a free steamship ticket home to the united states. the silver workers on the other hand lived in shacks, were fed and cafeterias at a big frost. one guy who procured the food for the workers said we feed the soul for workers like i feed my hogs in omaha. we feed them out of the big trough. they have no seating, they have to sit under a porche in the rain. radically different conditions. you saw evidence of the segregation system throughout the zone. the u.s. built large, series, shops where workers could buy what they needed and very reminiscent of jim crow in the u.s. where big sign on the

entrances, gold versus silver. in that way that sense of segregation and a kind of privilege -- class pillage dominated. >> host: how many died building the canal? >> guest: statistics on that are tough to come up with. i think during the u.s. period the statistics are about 2,000 workers. historians who study the subject believe the mortality rate was quite a bit higher and of course the mortality rate and the injury rate was also very raise specific. the injuries and deaths were much more likely to be among the west indian groups. there was a sense that if you were a west indian worker and you finished your time on the construction without having a

major injury or major illness you were a very lucky man indeed. there is one of the things i found in the legal records of the canal, stories of injured west indians who went to the courts to try to get payment for their injury. there was a sad story of a man who lost an eye. his name was isaac mckenzie, 24-year-old guy went to the canal zone to work on the canal and got a job working on the gigantic, amazing locked gates. he was hired to go down inside the lock gates and help direct the big bolts and that white skilled workers would hammer in from the outside. he wasn't sure he wanted the job

because there were no lights down there and is sad story was revealed to me through these legal records. one day he went down in there and the skilled worker on the outside hammered the screw in and it didn't go in straight. they told him to go down there and help direct it. he gets down close to it. to white worker shouts watch out then. said he shouts as he is taking his arm back to pound hammer and and the bolt goes through isaac mckinsey's i. a horrible tragedy. what is interesting about isaac mckenzie is he went to court to demand payment for this accident $10,000. the court said yes. the company was responsible for

this injury. but the court said you'll lost one eye so your life will be ok so we will only award $500. isaac mckenzie got a lawyer and took all the way to the supreme court of the canal zone which didn't give him $10,000 but gave him a pretty hefty award for young west indian man finding that the company was responsible for the damages. a story like that about isaac mackenzie gave me a way to understand the experience of the west indian workers. they tended to be such a tough group to trace because they weren't top officials. they were not writing reports. they were often the most silent but cases like that help me see that west indians did

strategizing. they did find ways to mobilize and use whatever resources they could to achieve there end. >> host: who ran the canal zone. was the authority? >> the united states government. >> host: under autonomous canal zone authority? we talked about the supreme court. >> guest: there was a separate judicial system but it was part of the appellate courts of the united states government. the chief engineer of the canal zone had remarkable autonomy. he reported to the secretary of war who was william howard taft. >> host: george washington goebbels was the president of the canal zone? >> guest: yes. he had tremendous authority. like it said about himself, he was a benevolent dictator. it was a very paternalistic

system. he was admired by many in the canal zone because he did run things very efficiently. it was a very orderly zone. he got the canal built faster than many thought it could be done. he prided himself on being a fatherly figure to the zone of workers. he would meet sunday morning with anyone who wished to meet with him from the lowliest washerwoman to a wheat supervisor and foreman but his authority, as fatherly as he might be his authority was complete. one observer said we all like the chief engineer but we know not to disagree with him or criticize him. if we do disagree with him we

get deported real fast. >> host: what would you say was the level of labor unrest in the building of the canal? i am thinking about the auto strikes of the 30s, founding of the uaw. anything of that level? >> not really. it was an orderly zone. goebbels was very strategic and effective that using thing like deportation and arrest and imprisonment to enhance productivity. an executive order was passed by president roosevelt which gave goebbels complete authority to deport everyone not contributing productively to the construction project. generally speaking, workers found other ways to the --

except for those pesky spaniards of the day struck and rioted. they were causing trouble throughout the construction era but that was the key exception. >> host: where they needed? >> guest: the more they rioted and protested, the less the government felt they were needed. by 1911-1912 the u.s. government stopped bringing in the spaniards and let the go, more troubled. >> host: we're talking to professor julie greene about her book "the canal builders," making america's and higher at the panama canal. you talk about the archives. where are the archives you found on the panama canal? >> guest: that was a fun part of

a project funded archival sources. the biggest single source of information on the building of  the canal was in college park, maryland at the national archives. >> host: right here in the neighborhood. >> guest: a tremendous amount of information at the national archives and college park and also financial archives in downtown d.c. with of the legal records of the canal zone. how was the first historian to look at some sources like the legal records. it was amazing to look at those because they shine bright light into a range of activities, alleged legal activities and sometimes civil disputes and divorce cases between husband and wife.

everything from that to robbery and murder. sometimes looking get legal records, opening envelopes that had been returned to offenders of envelops that literally never been opened. i was looking at probate records, killed in the construction project and some working man, personal set of keys would fall into my lap and i would find myself wondering what bores those keys had once unlocked. that was amazing to find for me. also did research in panama itself looking at records related to riots that broke out between u.s. canal employees and panamanian police in the red light district of panama city. >> host: that is where i wanted to go next.

what was the relationship between the canal zone and the country of panama? >> guest: it was a complicated relationship. the republic of panama in many ways, the building of the canal was a tremendous boost. the united states government, in order to build the canal, conducted a lot of sanitation, e elimination of disease throughout panama, built sewers. the you as des lot of things that were beneficial to panama. at the same time, panama bridal the best, the degree of u.s. control and intervention. the united states got quite involved in panamanian elections. whenever there were disturbancess they would send u.s. military there and one of the important rules that panama played especially in panama city and cologne was the u. s

tolerated the creation of red light districts, barre's, solutions, gambling, prostitution because officials like gogol's knew his workers with the kind of chance for escape for letting off steam. food is a safety valve so these red light districts became a very important part of disorderly counterpart to the orderly world of the canal zone. and as employees and military personnel from the u.s.-dominated canal zone would go to let off steam in panama city or cologne, a lot of times there would be trouble. the u. s folks were known for causing trouble, for getting drunk sometimes and as a result

sometimes fighting and riots would break out between the two groups. >> host: tell me about the city of balboa. >> guest: it was created by the u. s to how's the administration. >> host: the white workers. >> guest: yes. was a very lovely town. sort of the image i remember from it depict very much as a town that represents the u.s. empire. shows off the pride of the u.s. in having created the canal and created really the sense of the u.s. as a sort of pluralist leader of world civilization. >> host: large differences in living conditions between the skilled white workers and the others? >> guest: quite large. the u. s is very proud of its ñ

work in creating a sense of ñ civilization, respectability for the white workers and their wives. many thousands of working men's lives travel to the zone to keep house for their husbands. and so in the u.s. encouraged that because the presence of housewives would make the zone feel not like the labor camp or transient but respectable and civilized so the u.s. and encourage wife to go and want to encourage wife to go it needed to be sure the conditions were decent enough for those wives. for west indian workers it was very different very much. more like shacks. very often windows without screens on them in an environment where mosquitos

could spread malaria. not to have screens on the window would be a very remarkable faint -- thing. one vote and my book shows stagnant water is going to breed mosquitos carrying disease. so yes. the conditions for west indian workers for a very different from that for the white skilled workers. the thing is too the west indian workers found their lives improved by the work they did at calzone. if you compare their living standards and pay to the white workers it was pretty bad but if you compare it to when they faced in barbados or jamaica this was not just an inventor for them but a chance to improve their lives and many of them were able to save money and send money home and studies have

shown. they bought some land and become self-sufficient in their -- >> guest: what medical care did the workers have? >> guest: there were vast hospitals. very advanced medical care for the time and necessary because g disease continued throughout the u.s. period. it was a big danger to the construction project. even though malaria and yellow fever were under control, malaria continued and pneumonia continued. pneumonia was a huge problem. it was said that pretty much every west indian at some point fell ill with pneumonia or malaria, had tsp