The Outlook: Uncle Sam's Place and Prospects in International Politics Part 2

The accident of war has done that which international laws and comity forbade. Much as the European powers desired the Philippines, none of them dared to lay hand upon the islands, fearing not the resistance of Spain, but the jealousy of their rivals. The explosion of the Maine thus became a swift and powerful factor in that game of world politics from which we had up to now kept aloof. In the language of the philosopher Dooley, few of our people could have answered, eighteen months ago, whether the Philippines were "islands or canned goods." They played no part in the scheme of our national life. Chance has given them into our hands, and it remains with ourselves to determine whether we are to turn them to account, not only for themselves, but for what they may be made, in their relation to other and larger prizes.

All Europe has listened with mingled incredulity and exasperation to the protests of our anti-expansionists against the annexation of the Philippines. To those who are familiar with the situation in the East and realize the importance of China to the West, it seems incredible that a sane and civilized people should even dream of throwing away so rich a prize, now that chance had thrown it into their hands. Is it hypocrisy or ignorance? Europe can see no other explanation.

But still the opponents of expansion continue to ask, What have we to do with China? Why should the United States concern itself to guard the "open door" in that empire, or to prevent the establishment of "spheres of influence?"--the latter being the polite phrase of diplomacy for chopping up China and dividing the pieces among the great powers.

The plain answer of commerce to these questions is afforded by the statistics of China's foreign trade. Yonder is a vast domain with a population estimated at four hundred and thirty millions--about one-third of the human race--largely dependent for even the simple necessities upon the outside world.

England was the first to batter down the ancient gates of the empire, and she has her reward in that she holds about sixty-four per cent of China's import trade. England's nearest compet.i.tor is the United States, with eight per cent, the remaining twenty-eight per cent being divided among the other powers, with j.a.pan at the head of the list. Our own share does not at first glance appear very large, but it should be explained that as a great proportion of our commodities are carried to China in English bottoms and consigned to English houses, it is cla.s.sified as English business--a part of the sixty-four per cent. The actual discrepancy, therefore, is not so great as the apparent.

Moreover, though the beginnings of our trade with China date from the last century, we have not been an appreciable factor in the market until about three years ago, since which time our trade has increased at a rate of speed which has both surprised and alarmed our compet.i.tors.[2]

[2] The following account of our exports to China was prepared recently by an intelligent and reliable newspaper correspondent. It is of interest in this connection:

Exports of merchandise to China in the fiscal year about to end will be larger than those of any preceding year in our history. Ten years ago our exports to China were less than $3,000,000, and to China and Hong Kong combined little more than $6,000,000. In the fiscal year ending 1899, our exports to China will be more than $13,000,000, and to Hong Kong more than $6,000,000, making a total of more than $20,000,000, or three times that of a decade earlier. That the bulk of exports to Hong Kong may properly be considered as ultimately destined for consumption in China, is shown by the fact that the official reports of the imports into China show that more than forty-four per cent of these imports are from the port of Hong Kong. The 1899 exports to China and Hong Kong combined will show a gain of nearly or quite twenty-five per cent over those of last year, while the total exports from the United States for the fiscal year 1899 will be little if any in excess of those of last year.

This shows a more rapid growth in our exports to this part of the world than elsewhere.

The following table, prepared by the Treasury Bureau of Statistics, shows the value of our exports to China and Hong Kong during the past decade:

_Year ending_ _June 30._ _China._ _Hong Kong._ _Total._

1889 $2,791,128 $3,686,384 $6,477,512 1890 2,946,206 4,439,153 7,385,362 1891 8,701,008 4,768,697 13,469,705 1892 5,663,497 4,894,049 10,557,546 1893 3,900,457 4,216,602 8,117,059 1894 5,862,429 4,209,847 10,072,273 1895 3,693,840 4,253,040 7,856,880 1896 6,921,933 4,691,201 11,613,134 1897 11,924,433 6,060,039 17,984,472 1898 9,992,894 6,265,200 16,258,094 1899 (estimated) 13,500,000 6,500,000 20,000,000

Significant as these figures are, a full understanding of our trade conditions in the far East, and the importance of that market to our prospects, can hardly be gained without a backward glance over the events of the past three decades.

Up to the collapse of the French at Sedan, or perhaps until 1873, Great Britain stood without a rival in trade and manufactures. That year will long be remembered, in England as in America, as the beginning of the era of low prices. In England agricultural products were the first to suffer, on account of the importation of food products from Australia and the Americas. This movement continued to increase and British farms proportionately to suffer until, by 1879, that property, the backbone of English hereditary wealth, ceased entirely to pay. The sending away of money to buy food, together with the fall in the prices of home products, so affected the home supply of gold that, in order to preserve the equilibrium, the English began to realize on their foreign investments.

The greatest panic in history followed. Previous to 1876 England had always been able to maintain her expanding currency and supply the arts with the gold brought in to pay for her exports. In 1877 the tide turned, and the whole ensuing decade actually showed a net export of gold amounting to $11,000,000, besides what went into the melting-pot.

Contraction and the fall of prices continued, and in proportion the sale of foreign securities. By 1890 England had brought back enough gold to restore her balance, but at what a cost to the debtor nations! Argentina and Australia collapsed in turn, the former pulling down the great Baring concern. In 1893 disaster overtook the United States, and it is scarcely exaggeration to say that the Republic was shaken to the center.

Then came the demonetization of silver in India and the falling rupee, followed by distress amounting almost to the dissolution of society.

Such, in brief, is the history of the movement which has resulted in the t.i.tanic struggle for the few remaining open markets of the world.

Falling prices and reduced profits mean increase of production, which in turn require new markets. We in the United States had been careful to secure the home market to ourselves, but in this crisis the home market proved sadly inadequate. Our manufacturers must needs go forth and compete with European wages and standards of living for the markets of the world.

The story of their success is one of the romances of industry and trade.

In the face of a natural hostility aroused by our own tariffs, and compelled to pay for a higher standard of living, our manufacturers have gone into the markets of the world and undersold their European compet.i.tors at every point. Carrying coals to Newcastle were child's play in comparison with what these modern captains of industry have accomplished. The story is told in the statistics of our export trade: In 1898 the balance of trade in our favor was $2,000,000 for every working day, or more than $600,000,000. For the first time since the War of the Rebellion, the interest on our securities held in England is not enough to pay for our exports, and the extinction of our floating debt abroad is clearly foreshadowed.

But how long is this to continue? With our experience of tariffs we need not be reminded that low prices do not command markets. Continental Europe does not like us. We saw that during the Spanish war, and we have heard it since in various impatient declarations of hostility, at Berlin or Vienna, far more significant than official a.s.surances of distinguished consideration. Indeed, if Germany, or France, or Russia does not openly break with us, it is because fear or prudence is stronger than inclination. The moment any one or all of them combined feels able to slam the door in our face without fear of reprisals, the door will be slammed.

Germany and more especially Russia are straining every nerve to establish in China "spheres of influence," which is the polite phrase of diplomacy for cutting up the Celestial Empire and dividing the pieces among the powers. England, on the other hand, favors maintaining the integrity of China and the "open door" of commerce to all comers. It may be that England's preference is due to the reasonable fear that at the "spheres-of-influence" game she may be (if she be not already) beaten by her continental neighbors; whereas with an "open door" her chances would be as good, if not better than the others. If so, England is as disinterested as her neighbors--and no more so. Each and all are after China. "China for trade!" is the slogan. Even the pretense of missionary design has been dropped, so desperate is the struggle; for China, with her four hundred and thirty millions of people, is the sole remaining market of the world. If Germany and Russia get it, they will shut out England, and the United States as well. Can they do it?

In his recent tour across our continent, Lord Charles Beresford openly advocated the co-operation of the United States and England to secure an undivided China and the "open door." His argument was simple. England alone might not, and the United States alone certainly would not, be able to secure this end. Together they could hardly fail. Not that Lord Charles advocated open war. On the contrary, he pointed out that not a cent need be spent nor a gun fired. It only needs that the two great English-speaking nations should declare their joint policy, saying to all the rest of the world: "China must not be cut to bits. The empire which has stood for four thousand years must remain." Then to China herself: "We have saved you from destruction. In return you must keep your market open to all the world, letting us build railroads, telegraphs, ca.n.a.ls, what not, throughout your territory. If you don't, we--England and the United States--will do it for you."

It is an attractive programme. Lord Charles Beresford may be too confident--he may even be not entirely candid--when he professes that there is no possibility of war in the joint policy he advocates. But all the chances favor his side of the argument. At any rate, I believe it is worth trying. Such a policy means much for the United States. It means a share, and an honorable share, in the great game which is to engross the powers at the outset of the twentieth century. It means a chance, and a good chance, for a market for our surplus products. That market we _must have_. How else are we to get it? Suppose we hold aloof and see their gates and the gates of China shut in our faces by the powers of Continental Europe, even as we have closed our gates against them and their products--what are we to do with our surplus? What are we to do if that surplus be thrown back on our hands? We should have our choice of (1) going flat and hopelessly bankrupt, as no nation was ever bankrupt before; or (2) reducing our scale of living to the German, perhaps even the Russian standard. It would be a hard choice.

So, in great measure, the Philippines mean for us a foothold in the East and a strong leverage on China. Would our co-operation be sought at this time, as it has been, not only by England but by Germany, if George Dewey had not sailed his ships into the harbor of Manila on the night of the 30th of April, 1898, dodging the sunken mines and torpedoes, that he might on the morrow fire "the shot heard round the world?" On that day and since then the world learned that we are a nation not only of shopkeepers and money-grabbers, but also of fighters; that in a prolonged war we stand unconquerable, irresistable. A year and a day ago we were a nation; to-day we are a power, and have only to a.s.sert ourselves as such.

Doubtless it was in perfect good faith that Professor Bryce wrote, a few weeks ago:

"The United States has already a great and splendid mission in building up between the oceans a free, happy and prosperous nation of two hundred millions of people....

The policy of creating great armaments and of annexing territories beyond the sea would be an un-American policy and a complete departure from the maxims--approved by long experience--of the ill.u.s.trious founders of the Republic."

But I fancy the ill.u.s.trious founders of the Republic would see the wisdom, were they living to-day, of securing that advantage which the fortunes of war has thrown into our lap. I doubt if even their wisdom could have pointed a way whereby we could relinquish the Philippines without also letting go our prestige, if not also our honor. How can we abandon them, either to internecine strife and anarchy, or, more probably, to the cupidity of the powers whose statesmen recognize the value of the islands, and have no compunctions of conscience as to how they may be secured?

But I appeal to the founders of the Republic for another and yet a stronger argument for holding fast to all our new possessions, whether in the Pacific or in the Carribean Sea. In the society of the ill.u.s.trious dead let us go back for a little s.p.a.ce over the years that have elapsed since the civil war. I am no pessimist; on the contrary, I see in every man and every thing, however evil--so that the Lord gives them a place in His own great scheme--an agency for good. But I do not find it easy to look back with pride or even patience upon the last five and thirty years of this century. To me they appear the most inglorious in our history. They have been years of unequalled material growth, but, I think, they have been years of unequalled moral deterioration also. We have waxed fat, arrogant and unG.o.dly. We have lost respect for the law.

We have learned to wink at corruption in high places. The tongue of scandal wags unrebuked at the great, the exalted. Greater fortunes than were ever known before have been piled up; but if wealth and extravagance have attained to new forms of luxury, so want has learned a keener edge of suffering. We have seen labor in armed revolt and anarchy showing its ugly head. Our federal Senate reeks with disrepute. The golden calf has been set up in the market place, the forum, even in the sanctuary.

This, to be sure, is but one side of the picture; there is another and a brighter side. The period I speak of has been athrill with intense activity, for good as well as evil. If vice has been active, so have the agencies of virtue. Churches, colleges, charitable and reform societies have sprung up and grown as never before. When the call to arms came last year it was answered on every hand--by the pampered favorites of wealth and luxury as well as by the sons of toil.

Patriotism has not been dead, but sleeping. In time of peril we have never lacked Deweys, Roosevelts, Funstons, Hobsons, to fulfill the traditions of the race. Our fault has been the absence of that patient, unsleeping vigilance which is the price of honest government--not in war but in the humdrum days of peace.

Perhaps it was only human that when the rebellion had been crushed and the Union restored, we should relax somewhat the strain of those four dreadful years and turn to long-neglected private fortunes. The field lay fallow; a vast public domain was opened; virgin forests awaited the axe. In the flush of general grat.i.tude for the preservers of the Union the floodgates of public expenditure were opened wide, and its outpouring was not always watched with too keen an eye. Too often the Republic was generous before it was just.

Moreover--and this is the point I wish especially to make--we had no jealous or aggressive neighbors to vex our frontier. The powers of Europe tore a leaf from the experience of Napoleon III. when Mr. Seward warned that presumptuous monarch out of Mexico, and left us to enjoy in peace our new prosperity. The men who had been serving their country at the front came home to mind their own private concerns. Seeing the Republic preserved and safe from intrusion, they turned to money-making with the same ardor that had carried them to victory in war. Intent upon this new occupation, they left politics to the politicians. The latter were not slow to see their opportunity. Millions of immigrants, unused to the franchise, untrained in the duties of citizenship, came in at our open doors. Tens and hundreds of thousands settled in the cities, where they became the convenient tool of the "boss."

Under our system government is by parties, and parties imply the existence of the "machine," an inst.i.tution which, like fire, is a good servant but may become a terrible master. So long as the machine is operated for the good of the party and the party for the state, the best results are possible. But when state or city become subservient to party and party to machine, such corruption is inevitable, as has been brought to light more than once in our metropolis. And New York is no worse than Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Cincinnati. All our large cities and some of our states are governed by irresponsible pirates, who marshal their perfectly organized bands of the ignorant and vicious, in defiance alike of law and of the plain will of the intelligent and well-intentioned majority; for these latter, we must a.s.sume, are in the majority. It is only because they have been absorbed in their private affairs that they have allowed the sacred prerogative of government, the delicate machinery of the state, to become the special privileges of unscrupulous men whom they would scarcely trust inside their houses.

This dreadful price we have paid for thirty years of "peaceful isolation."

It is the theory of democratic government that the majority rules.

Sixty-five years ago, de Tocqueville after his memorable tour through our country recorded his "firm belief" that for the Republic to be virtuous and progressive, we had "_but to will it_." "It depends upon themselves," he wrote, "whether the principle of equality is to lead them to knowledge or barbarism, servitude or freedom, prosperity or wretchedness." The French philosopher spoke truly, and it is true now.

If we have sunk into an ign.o.ble servitude to the baser elements of society, it is because those of the better sort have "willed it"--not designedly, but through a no less reprehensible apathy and blindness in respect of their obligations to the state.

I may be sadly in error, but I believe the present low tone of our internal politics to be due to the long and peaceful isolation of the Republic. So I hold the comparative cleanliness of English politics, and especially of the government of their cities, such as London, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, etc., to be a natural result of England's activity in the high politics of the world. The continual danger, in theory at least, of encroachment or invasion upon the limitless frontier of that vast empire acts as a stimulant to patriotism and invests even the petty politics of city and parish with an interest beyond that of spoils. It is said that England is never wholly at peace.

In every continent her standard is raised. Her nerves of sensibility and self-interest run to the uttermost parts of the earth. They are rooted in the hearts of her bravest and best, as well as of the lowliest and most unworthy, and all join in common patriotism reaching from pole to pole, not only of the material world but of the social fabric. Therein is England's strength. Kipling's lines are apropos:

"What should they know of England Who only England know?"

We have no need to follow abjectly in the footsteps of England; I would not have the Republic walk behind any other nation. We must work out our own salvation. And we can. Latent in the heart of our people is the spirit and the power for greater things than the world has ever seen.

Our place is in the vanguard of civilization. We have but to take it. I have tried to show that self-interest in material things pulls us in the same direction as does that higher, spiritual interest, the aim and desire to be great of heart as well as body; to be clean, dignified--a power for good. We have suffered from what may well be called the perils of too great security. In our engrossing pursuit of wealth we have neglected higher things. I venture to quote the words of a South Carolina judge, delivered in a recent lynching case, which seem to me to touch the heart of the matter.

"We have made improvements," said he, "in our manufactures; our railway systems have been improved; we have spent money on our schools. But with what result? Swiftly moving railways, whirling machinery, crowded factory towns and schools--all these are infinitely inadequate to the glory and civilization of the people. _Is our moral fibre growing weaker?_ The law has lost its sanct.i.ty during the past forty years, and the essential foundation of all civilization is respect for the law....

We can all do something, but first of all we must recognize and humbly confess our shortcomings--the sooner the better. We can have no real civilization until we turn our faces to the light."

Is this indictment too severe? I believe not. Here in the North we are not greatly vexed with lynchings; our disrespect for the law a.s.sumes other forms. But the same weakening of the moral fibre is to be observed everywhere as in North Carolina. We too have need of humility; we must confess our shortcomings. We have but to ask ourselves, What would it avail civilization if we were to give to Santiago de Cuba, or Manila, or Honolulu a government as essentially corrupt as that which we tolerate in New York or Chicago? Shall we offer to the savages of Luzon or Mindanao for a model the spectacle of a government from which the rich, the virtuous and the intelligent almost wholly abstain, shirking their duties and relegating their most sacred prerogative to the ignorant and depraved?

But if, on the other hand, we set up good government in the colonies, how long shall we be content with misrule at home? Not long, I promise you. "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life," says the wise man, "that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." No less true is this of nations. The eyes of the world are upon us and the conscience of civilization will hold us strictly accountable. As we deal with those ignorant wards whom the G.o.d of Battles has given into our keeping, even so shall we be dealt with. And in uplifting them from barbarism so shall we be uplifted.

What n.o.bler business is there, for man or nation? And who should lead in it if not ourselves? First, though, let us approach the work in true humility, confessing our own faults and shortcomings. Guard us, heaven, against the triple sin of pride, arrogance, and self-conceit. Let us ever keep in mind those n.o.ble words of the young Laureate of Empire, written for England at the climax of her greatness, but no less fitting for ourselves:

"If, drunk with power, we loose Wild words that have not Thee in awe-- Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds, without the Law-- Lord G.o.d of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget!"