Problems of Expansion Part 11

[Sidenote: The Porto Rican Question.]

Partly through mere inadvertence, but partly also through crafty design, the wave of generous sympathy for the suffering little island of Porto Rico which has been sweeping over the country has come very near being perverted into the means of turning awry the policy and permanent course of a great Nation. To relieve the temporary distress by recognizing the Porto Ricans as citizens, and by an extension of the Dingley tariff to Porto Rico as a matter of const.i.tutional right, foreclosed the whole question.

I know it is said, plausibly enough, in some quarters, that Congress cannot foreclose the question,--has nothing to do with it, in fact,--but that it is a matter to be settled only by the Supreme Law of the land, of which Congress is merely the servant. The point need not be disputed. But it is an unquestioned part of the Supreme Law of the land, as authoritative within its sphere and as binding as any clause in the Const.i.tution itself, which declares, in the duly ratified Treaty of Paris, that the whole question of the civil rights and political status of the inhabitants in this newly acquired property of ours shall be reserved for the decision of Congress! Let those who invoke the Supreme Law of the land learn and bow to it.

As to the mere duty of prompt and ample relief for the distress in Porto Rico, there is happily not a shade of difference of opinion among the seventy-five millions of our inhabitants. Nor was the free-trade remedy, so vehemently recommended, important enough in itself to provoke serious objection or delay. Cynical observers might find, indeed, a gentle amus.e.m.e.nt in noting how in the name of humanity the blessings of free trade were invoked by means of the demand for an immediate application of the highest protective tariff known to the history of economics! The very men who denounce this tariff as a Chinese wall are the men who demand its application. They say, "Give Porto Rico free trade," but what their proposal means is, "Deprive Porto Rico of free trade, and put her within the barbarous Chinese wall." Their words sound like offering her the liberty of trade with all the world, but mean forbidding her to trade with anybody except the United States.

[Sidenote: Importance of the Question.]

The importance of the question from an economic point of view has been ludicrously exaggerated on both sides. The original proposal would have in itself done far less harm than its opponents imagined and far less good than its supporters hoped. Yet to the extent of its influence it would have been a step backward. It would have been the rejection of the modern and scientific colonial method, and the adoption instead of the method which has resulted in the most backward, the least productive, and the least prosperous colonies in the world--the method, in a word, of Spain herself. For the Spanish tariff, in fact, made with some little reference to colonial interests, we should merely have subst.i.tuted our own tariff, made with sole reference to our own interests. A more distinct piece of blacksmith work in economic legislation for a helpless, lonely little island in the mid-Atlantic could not well be imagined. What had poor Porto Rico done, that she should be fenced in from all the Old World by an elaborate and highly complicated system of duties upon imports, calculated to protect the myriad varying manufactures and maintain the high wages of this vast new continent, and as little adapted to Porto Rico's simple needs as is a Jorgensen repeater for the uses of a kitchen clock? Why at the same stroke must she be crushed, as she would have been if the Const.i.tution were extended to her, by a system of internal taxation, which we ourselves prefer to regard as highly exceptional, on tobacco, on tobacco-dealers, on bank-checks, on telegraph and telephone messages, on bills of lading, bills of exchange, leases, mortgages, life-insurance, pa.s.senger tickets, medicines, legacies, inheritances, mixed flour, and so on and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam? Did she deserve so badly of us that, even in a hurry, we should do this thing to her in the name of humanity?

All the English-speaking world, outside some members of the United States Congress perhaps, long since found a more excellent way. It is simplicity itself. It legislates for a community like Porto Rico with reference to the situation and wants of that community--not with reference to somebody else. It applies to Porto Rico a system devised for Porto Rico--not one devised for a distant and vastly larger country, with totally different situation and wants. It makes no effort to exploit Porto Rico for the benefit of another country. It does make a studied and scientific effort from the Porto Rico point of view (not from that of temporary Spanish holders of the present stocks of Porto Rican products) to see what system will impose the lightest burdens and bring the greatest benefits on Porto Rico herself. The result of that conscientious inquiry may be the discovery that the very best thing to provide for the wants and promote the prosperity of that little community out in the Atlantic Ocean is to bestow upon them the unmixed boon of the high protective Dingley tariff devised for the United States of America. If so, give them the Dingley tariff, and give it straight. If, on the other hand, it should be found that a lower and simpler revenue system, better adapted to a community which has practically no manufactures to protect, with freedom to trade on equal terms with all the world, would impose upon them lighter burdens and bring them greater benefits, then give them that. If it should be further found that, following this, such a system of reciprocal rebates as both Cuba and the United States thought mutually advantageous in the late years of Spanish rule, would be useful to Porto Rico, then give them that. But, in any case, the starting-point should be the needs of Porto Rico herself, intelligently studied and conscientiously met--not the blacksmith's offhand attempt to fit on her head, like a rusty iron pot, an old system made for other needs, other industries, a distant land, and another people.

And beyond and above all, give her the best system for her situation and wants, whether it be our Dingley tariff or some other, because it is the best for her and is therefore our duty--not because it is ours, and therefore, under the Const.i.tution of the United States, her right and her fate. The admission of that ill-omened and unfounded claim would be, at the bar of politics, a colossal blunder; at the bar of patriotism, a colossal crime.

[Sidenote: Political Aspect of the Const.i.tutional Claim.]

The politics of it need not greatly concern this audience or long detain you.

But the facts are interesting. If Porto Rico, instead of belonging to us, is a part of us, so are the Philippines. Our t.i.tle to each is exactly the same. So are Guam and the Sandwich Islands, if not also Samoa; and so will be Cuba if she comes, or any other West India Island.

First, then, you are proposing to open the ports of the United States directly to the tropical products of the two greatest archipelagos of the world, and indirectly, through the Open Door we have pledged in the Philippines, to all the products of all the world! You guarantee directly to the cheap labor of these tropical regions, and indirectly, but none the less bindingly, to the cheap labor of the world, free admission of their products to this continent, in unrestricted compet.i.tion with our own higher-paid labor. And as your whole tariff system is thus plucked up by the roots, you must resort to direct taxation for the expenses of the General Government.

Secondly, as if this were not enough, you have made these tropical laborers citizens,--Chinese, half-breeds, pagans, and all,--and have given them the unquestionable and inalienable right to follow their products across the ocean if they like, flood our labor market, and compete in person on our own soil with our own workmen.

Is that the feast to be set before the laboring men of this country? Is that the real inwardness of the Trojan horse pushed forward against our tariff wall, in the name of humanity, to suffering Porto Rico? What a programme for the wise humanitarians who have been bewitching the world with n.o.ble statesmanship at Washington to propose laying before the organized labor of this country as their chosen platform for the approaching Presidential campaign! They need have no fear the intelligent workingmen of America will fail to appreciate the sweet boon they offer.

[Sidenote: The Patriotic Aspect of it.]

But if the question thus raised at the bar of politics may seem to some only food for laughter, that at the bar of patriotism is matter for tears. If the islanders are already citizens, then they are ent.i.tled to the future of citizens. If the territory is already an integral part of the United States, then by all our practice and traditions it has the right to admission in States of suitable size and population. Is it said we could keep them out as we have kept out spa.r.s.ely settled New Mexico? How long do you expect to keep New Mexico out, or Oklahoma, or Arizona? What luck did you have in keeping out others--even Utah, with its bar sinister of the twin relic of barbarism? How long would it take your politicians of the baser sort to combine for the admission of the islands whose electoral votes they had reason to think they could control?

But it is said that Porto Rico deserves admission anyway, because we are bound by the volunteered a.s.surance of General Miles that they should have the rights of American citizens. Perhaps; though there is no evidence that he meant more, or that they thought he meant more, than such rights as American citizens everywhere enjoy, even in the District of Columbia--equal laws, security of life and property, freedom from arbitrary arrests, local self-government, in a word, the civil rights which the genius of our Government secures to all under our control who are capable of exercising them. If he did mean more, or if they thought he meant more, did that ent.i.tle him to antic.i.p.ate his chief and override in casual military proclamation the Supreme Law of the land whose commission he bore? Or did it ent.i.tle them to suppose that he could?

But Porto Rico received the irresistible army of General Miles so handsomely, and is so unfortunate and so little! Reasons all for consideration, certainly, for care, for generosity--but not for starting the avalanche, on the theory that after it has got under only a little headway we can still stop it if we want to. Who thinks he can lay his hand on the rugged edge of the Muir Glacier and compel it to advance no farther? Who believes that we can admit this little island from the mid-Atlantic, a third of the way over to Africa, and then reject nearer and more valuable islands when they come? The famous law of political gravitation which John Quincy Adams prophetically announced three quarters of a century ago will then be acting with ever-increasing force. And, at any rate, beside Porto Rico, and with the same t.i.tle, stand the Philippines!

Regard, I beg of you, in the calm white light that befits these cloistered retreats of sober thought, the degradation of the Republic thus coolly antic.i.p.ated by the men that a.s.sure us we have no possessions whose people are not ent.i.tled under our Const.i.tution to citizenship and ultimately to Statehood! Surely to an audience of scholars and patriots like this not one word need be added. Emboldened by the approval you have so generously expressed, I venture to close by a.s.suming without hesitation that you will not dishonor your Government by evading its duty, nor betray it by forcing unfit partners upon it, nor rob it by blind and perverse neglect of its interests.

May I not go further, and vouch for you, as Californians, that the faith of the fathers has not forsaken the sons--that you still believe in the possibilities of the good land the Lord has given you, and mean to work them out; that you know what hour the national clock has struck, and are not mistaking this for the Eighteenth Century; that you will bid the men who have made that mistake, the men of little faith, the shirkers, the doubters, the carpers, the grumblers, begone, like Diogenes, to their tubs--aye, better his instruction and require these his followers to get out of your light? For, lo! yet another century is upon you, before which even the marvels of the Nineteenth are to grow pale. As of old, light breaks from the east, but now also, for you, from the farther East. It circles the world in both directions, like the flag it is newly gilding now with its tropic beams. The dawn of the Twentieth Century bursts upon you without needing to cross the Sierras, and bathes at once in its golden splendors, with simultaneous effulgence, the Narrows of Sandy Hook and the peerless portals of the Golden Gate.

XI

"UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS"

This speech was delivered at the Farewell Banquet given by over four hundred citizens of San Francisco to the second Philippine Commission, on the eve of their sailing for Manila, at the Palace Hotel, April 12, 1900. The t.i.tle is adopted from the phrase used by the President of the Commission in his response; to which a leading journal of the Pacific coast, "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer," promptly added that the address "spoke for the whole people of the United States," and was "the concrete expression of a desire that animates nine tenths of all our citizens." Judge Taft frankly stated his concurrence in the views expressed (though he held some legal doubts as to whether the Const.i.tution of the United States did not extend, ex proprio vigore, to the new possessions), and he pledged the Commission against the influence of political considerations.

"UNOFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS"

The kindness of your call shall not be misinterpreted or taken advantage of. Quite enough of my voice has been heard in the land, and that very recently, as some of you can testify to your cost. There are others here with far greater claims upon your attention, and I promise to be as brief as heretofore I have been prolix.

The occasion is understood to be primarily one of congratulation and personal good will. It is evident that San Francisco thinks well of the Pacific coast member of this Commission, and none the worse because he seems to have been chosen for the post merely on account of his being peculiarly fit for it. The city gladly takes the rest of you on faith, believing that the same rule of selection must have been applied in the cases with which it has not the happiness to be quite so familiar.

But it is an occasion, I am authoritatively a.s.sured, of no political significance whatever. It embraces in its comprehensive impulse of greeting and good wishes Republicans and Democrats and Dewey men; men who hold the offices, men who want the offices, and men who say, "A plague on both your houses!"--men who indorse the course of the Administration, and men who believe the acquisition of the Philippines a mistake. I shall not attempt to disguise from you the fact that this last is not an opinion that I individually hold. Still, I can respect the convictions of those who do.

But evidently we can have no concurrence to-night on our extra-continental policy, since the differences are so wide on vital points. Yet the organizers of this testimonial made no mistake. There is a common ground for our meeting. We are all citizens of the Republic, grateful for our high privilege and solicitous that the Republic shall take no harm--all Americans, proud of the name and eager that it shall never be stained by base or unworthy acts. There is no one here, of whatever political faith or lack of faith, who is not a patriot, anxious for our country on these new and untried paths it must walk--most desirous that all its ways may prove ways of pleasantness and all its paths lead to honorable peace.

Well, then, gentlemen, what is it that a company thus divided in opinion, and united only in patriotic aspirations, can agree in looking to this Commission for? What do the American people in general, and without distinction of party, look to them for?

Did I hear a public opponent but personal friend over there murmur as his reply, "Not much of anything"? Alas! we may as well recognize that there are political augurs who are ready to give just that as their horoscope, and even point to their useful predecessor, the last Commission, for presumptive proof! In fact, there are occasional grumblers who would look for more from them if they were fewer. These skeptical critics recognize that sometimes in a mult.i.tude of counselors there may be safety, but also recall the maxim that councils of war never fight. If the truth must be whispered in the ear of the Commissioners, there are here and there very sincere, capable people who are growing a bit weary of a multiplicity of commissions. They say--so cynical are they--that, in all ages and countries, the easiest method of evading or postponing a difficult problem has been to appoint a commission on it and thus prolong the circ.u.mlocution.

For a first thing, then, on which we are all united, we look hopefully to our guests to redeem the character of this mode of government by commission. For we a.s.sume that they are sent out to the archipelago to govern; and just at present we don't know of any part of the country's possessions that seems more in need of government.

We all unite in regarding them as setting sail, not only charged with the national interests, but dignified and enn.o.bled by a guardianship of the national honor. Thus we are trying to put ourselves in Emerson's state of mind about a certain notable young poet, and unite in hoping that, to use his well-known phrase, we greet them at the beginning of a great career.

We certainly unite in earnestly wishing that they may make the best of a situation which none of us wholly like, and many dislike with all their hearts: the best of it for the country which, by good management or bad, rightfully or wrongfully, is at any rate clearly and in the eyes of the whole world now responsible for the outcome; and the best of it, no less, for the distracted people thrown upon our hands.

We cannot well help uniting in the further hope that their first success will be the re-establishment of order throughout regions lately filled with violence and bloodshed; and that they can then bring about a system of just and swift punishment for future crimes of disorder, since all experience in those regions and among those people shows that the neglect to enforce such punishment is itself the gravest and cruelest of crimes.

Nor can any one here help uniting in the hope that their next and crowning success will some way be attained in the preservation and extension of those great civil rights whose growth is the distinction, the world over, of Anglo-Saxon civilization; whose consummate flower and fruitage are the glory of our own Government.

I am even bold enough to believe that, however it might have been twelve months ago, or but six months ago, there is no one here to-night, recognizing the changed circ.u.mstances now, who would think they could best secure those rights to all the people by calling back the leader who is in hiding, and his forces, which are scattered and disorganized, and by now abandoning to such revengeful rule the great majority of the islanders who have remained peaceful and orderly during our occupation. For the present, at least, we unite in recognizing that they are forced to retain that care themselves; forced to act in the common interest of all the people there, not in the sole interest of a warring faction in a single tribe--in the interest of all the islands for which we have accepted responsibility, not simply of the one, or of a part of the population on the one, that has made the most trouble.

There can be little disagreement in this company on the further proposition that, in like manner, they must act in the interest of all the people here. In the interest of the islanders, they will soon seek to raise the needed revenue in the way least burdensome and most beneficial to the islands; but in the interest of their country, we cannot expect them to begin by a.s.suming that the only way to help the islanders is to throw products of tropic cheap labor into unrestricted compet.i.tion with similar products of our highly paid labor. In the interest of the islanders, they will secure and guarantee the civil rights which belong to the very genius of American inst.i.tutions; but in the interest of their country, they will not make haste to extend the privilege of American citizenship, and so, on the one hand, enable those peoples of the China Sea, Chinese or half-breed or what not, to flood our labor market in advance of any readiness at home to change our present laws of exclusion, while, on the other hand, opening the door to them as States in the Union to take part in the government of this continent. If, in the Providence of G.o.d, and in contempt of past judicial rulings, the Supreme Court should finally command it, this Commission, like every other branch of the Government, will obey. Till then we may be sure it will not, in sheer eagerness and joyfulness of heart, antic.i.p.ate, or, as Wall Street speculators say, "discount," such a decree for national degradation. But in their own land, and, as far as may be, in accordance with their old customs and laws, the Commission will secure to them, if it is to win the success we all wish it, first every civil right we enjoy, and next the fullest measure of political rights and local self-government they are found capable of sustaining, with ordered liberty for all the people.

There, then, is the doom we have reason to expect this Commission to inflict on these temporarily turbulent wards of the Nation! First order; then justice; then American civil rights, not for a cla.s.s, or a tribe, or a race, but for all the people; then local self-government.

But if your guests begin this task with the notion that they are the first officials of a free people ever given such work, and must therefore, American fashion, discover from the foundation for themselves,--if they fancy n.o.body ever dealt with semi-civilized Orientals till we stumbled on them in the Philippines,--they will waste precious time in costly experiments, if not fail outright. It isn't worth while thus to invent over again everything down to the very alphabet of work among such people. We can afford to abate the self-sufficiency of the almighty Yankee Nation enough to profit a little by the lessons other people have learned in going over the road before us.

From such lessons they will be sure to gather at once that if they now show a trace of timidity or hesitation in their firm and just course, because somebody has said something in Washington or on the stump, or because there is an election coming on, they will fail.

In fact, if they do not know now, as well as they know what soil they still stand on and what countrymen are about them, and if they do not act as if they knew, that, no matter what the politicians or the platforms say, and no matter what party comes into power, the American people have at present no notion of throwing these islands away, or abandoning them, or neglecting the care of them, they have not mastered the plainest part of their problem, and must fail.

Above all, if there is a trace of politics in their work, or of seeking for political effect at home, they will fail, and deserve to fail. In this most delicate and difficult task before them there is no salvation but in the scrupulous choice of the very best fitted agency available, in each particular case, for the particular work in hand. If they appoint one man, or encourage or silently submit to the appointment of one man, to responsible place in their service among these islanders, merely because he has been useful in politics at home, they will be organizing failure and discredit in advance.

But they will do no such things. Not so has this body of men been selected. Not such is the high appreciation of the opportunity offered that has led you, Mr. President of the Commission, to abandon your well-earned and distinguished place at home to begin a new career at the antipodes. Yet more--I, at least, can certify to this company that not such is the sense of public duty you inherited from your honored father, and have consistently ill.u.s.trated throughout your own career.

You will not fail, because you know the peril and the prize. You will not fail, because you have civilization and law and ordered freedom, the honor of your land and the happiness of a new one, in your care--because you know that, for uncounted peoples, the hopes of future years hang breathless on your fate. And so, gentlemen of the Commission, good-by, and G.o.d-speed!

In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the sh.o.r.e, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!