waste-basket of Corozal police station.

Thus does the government sink to the petty rascalities of shop-keepers.
Even a government manager on a fixed salary--in work-coupons--will
descend to these tricks of the trade to keep out of the clutches of the
auditor, or to make a "good record." The socialist's answer perhaps
would be that under their system government factories would make only
perfect goods. But won't the factory superintendent also be anxious to
make a "record"? And even government stock will deteriorate on the
shelves.

All small things, to be sure; but it is the sum of small things that
make up that great complex thing--Life. Few of us would object to
living in that ideal dream world. But could it ever be? I have
anxiously asked this question and hinted at these little weaknesses
suggested by Zone experiences to several Zone socialists--who are not
hard to find. They merely answer that these things have nothing to do
with the case. But not one of them ever went so far as to demonstrate;
and though I was born a long way north of Missouri I once passed
through a corner of the state.

As to the other side of the ledger,--equal pay for all, nowhere is man
further from socialism than on the Canal Zone. Caste lines are as
sharply drawn as in India, which should not be unexpected in an
enterprise largely in charge of graduates of our chief training-school
for caste. The Brahmins are the "gold" employees, white American
citizens with all the advantages and privileges thereto appertaining.
But--and herein we out-Hindu the Hindus--the Brahmin caste itself is
divided and subdivided into infinitesimal gradations. Every rank and
shade of man has a different salary, and exactly in accordance with
that salary is he housed, furnished, and treated down to the least
item,--number of electric lights, candle-power, style of bed, size of
bookcase. His Brahmin highness, "the Colonel," has a palace,
relatively, and all that goes with it. The high priests, the members of
the Isthmian Canal Commission, have less regal palaces. Heads of the
big departments have merely palatial residences. Bosses live in
well-furnished dwellings, conductors are assigned a furnished house--or
quarter of a house. Policemen, artisans, and the common garden variety
of bachelors have a good place to sleep. It is doubtful, to be sure,
whether one-fourth of the "Zoners" of any class ever lived as well
before or since. The shovelman's wife who gives five