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
