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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (March 23, 1899)
Cbc Conservative * Chinese immigration was 154,688ngninsfc , to 883 for. Ten years ago congress pre cipitously passed a law prohibiting oven the voluntary immigration of Chinese to this country , for the solo purpose of suppressing in the United States a sys tem of cheap contract labor. On the Scott bill for Chinese exclusion the U. S. senate voted , September 7 , 1888 , 87 yeas , only 8 nays. So late as 1892 , on the Geary exclusion act , congress voted in the house 178 for , only 48 against. Despite this we have annexed the Ha waiian islands , a territory in which cheap contract labor is the dominating characteristic of the laboring popula tion so dominating , so overwhelming as to seem to our commissioners a ne cessity to the industry of those islands and now it is proposed to add 10 million Filipinos. "The Anglo-Saxon in America has never shown a disposition to ally him self with the aborigines has evinced no faculty for dealing with inferior races , as they are called , except through a process of extermination. From the earliest days at Wessagusset and in the Pequod war , down to the very last elec tion held in North Carolina from 1623 to 1898 the knife and the shotgun have been far more potent and active instru ments in his dealings with the inferior races than the code of liberty or the output of the Bible society. " Nor is the policy of island expansion or imperialism justifiable or defensible from even a merely mercenary point of view. In the past six years England's trade has not appreciably increased , while that of the United States has , and within the six years mentioned , some 15 to 20 per cent. "What does this mean ? It means that , as proved by the United States and Germany , colonies are not necessary for the expansion of trade ; and , as proved by Great Britain , colonies do not pro tect a nation against loss of trade. Every well informed man knows that the leading British statesmen of this generation have called the attention of their people to the burdens of colonial administration Lord Charles Beres- ford to the contrary notwithstanding. The noble lord's mission may bo sum med up thus : " ' "Will you walk into my parlor ? " said the spi der to thu lly , 4 "Tis the prettiest little parlor that over you did spy. ' " Moreover the alleged fitness of the British for such service has been at tained by hundreds of years of exper ience. If Americans have ever dis played any ability in this line I am not aware of it. I have said that colonies have ruined Spain. In the report just made by Mr. Peletan to the French chamber of deputies , he said that France spent 80 millions of dollara annually on colon ies. What benefit , he demanded , did France reap from those 80 millions or rather 90 , for the estimates were always exceeded ? In 1897 French exports to the colonies amounted to 118 millions , and , assuming the profit to bo 20 per cent , the cost price was 95 millions. This gave a net lo s of about GO millions. Ho was aware that the west Africa col onies were remunerative but why em bark in adventures in which there was nothing to be gained 1 This system of conquests at a certain loss was an ab surdity unprecedented in history. Never before had a nation expended GO million dollars and many lives for the singular advantage of ruling by force over distant populations. The root of the evil is that there is no colonization , but only military occupation ; and con flicts between the colonists and the mili tary authorities have been of constant occurrence. As to our exports to the Philippines , they are too insignificant to bo thought of , having averaged less than 180 thous and dollars for eighteen years 1880 to 1897 , inclusive ; and the amount for the last year , according to the published official record of the treasury depart ment , was only 127 thousand dollars and the average for five years past has been only 4-100 of 1 per cent of total exports. If wo need the Philippines and a navy to maintain the prestige of our com merce there , as alleged statesmen tell us , how many islands , and how largo a navy do we need to maintain the pres tige of our commerce with the United Kingdom of Great Britain , etc. , and Continental Europe ? To the latter countries the United States , without either islands or navy , exported during the fiscal year 1897 , more than 7,700 times as much as to the Philippines , and 22 times as much as to the entire Orient ; and our exports to the Orient consist more largely of the precious metals than of produce or manufactures. Mani festly we need Ireland , the Azores , Guernsey , Heligoland , etc. But further considering the purely sordid and mercenary view : whence is to come our profit from expansion to and imperialism in the Philippine is lands ? From what source are the reful gent rays of glory to emanate ? If , as said iu the United States senate by the Hon. "William Mason , of Illinois , there were only something to steal we might give ourselves over to the alluring , se ductive worship of the Almighty Del lar. But the whole group would bo of no more commercial value to the United States than the smallest island suitable for a coaling and naval station. "We could not possibly enjoy a monopoly of trade with the islands , and the supposed point of vantage in the Philippines (7,000 ( miles from homo to begin with ) as a distributing center for our trade with the Orient is not discernible. Hong Kong , the southernmost Eng lish trade center for China , is G50 miles northwest of Manila. Shanghai is 800 miles north of Hong Kong ; Hankow is 800 miles west of Shanghai , and Chefu Wei-hai-Wei on the Shantung pen insula , the last station taken by Great Britain to insure communication with the north central portion of China , reached from the Gulf of Pechili , is also 800 miles north of Shanghai. From this it will be seen that the Philippines , where our glory , our expansion and our militarism are to shine with such bril liant luster , are 2,800 miles distant from the northern commercial centers of China , and therefore are futile as a point of vantage. Manifestly what we need in the Orient is Corea ! "Why not take that so as to bo fully "in the swim" with Russia and Great Britain ? Commercial growth , let it not be overlooked , does not at all depend upon territorial or colonial expansion. Wo have had the greater part of the trade of Hawaii , yet did not own the islands , and Great Britain enjoys the larger part of the trade of the Philippines , yet does not own them. Great Britain probably controls eighty per cent of the foreign trade of China , not because she has col onies , but because her people have so far been the best traders in the world excepting the Dutch ; for the same reason that she carries in British bottoms toms nearly all the foreign tonnage out of our own port of San Francisco. To the advocates of expansion and im perialism who indulge in the delusion that a mere change in the suzerainty of the colonial possessions of Spain will cause the movements of commerce to change their natural channels and seek other markets regardless of the laws of consumption , we commend astudy of the object-lesson presented by the tabular statement found below. .It is a simple statement , compiled from the Statesman's Year Book of the for eign commerce of the four greatest col onial nations , for the past decade , di vided into two quinquennial periodscom- pared with each other , and also compared" with similar periods of the commerce of the United States , destitute , as it is , of colonies and so poorly off in tonnage that 82 per cent of its own exported products have to bo carried in foreign bottoms. It will be observed that during the lat ter period of five years as compared with the preceding one , these four colonial nations have lost over 1500 million dollars lars of their export trade while the United States , without colonies and with a very limited tonnage , has in creased its export trade with foreign markets over 270 million dollars. But the most remarkable experience is shown , where wo should least expect it , in the colonial commerce of the United Kingdom. It is the boast of this little Kingdom , comprising less than 122,000 square miles and 40,000,000 people , that the sun never sets upon her domain , as by means of her "colonies , " "protectorates , " and "spheres of influence" she practically controls 22 per cent of the entire area .of
