Conservative.
RISK WITH PUERTO RICO.
General Stone Fours an Estrangement of
the People.
"When the major-general commanding
the army of the United States landed in
Puerto Rico with 8,000 men , " said Gen.
Roy S. Stone yesterday , "the island was
defended by 9,000 Spanish regulars and
nearly as many well-armed volunteers.
Its 1,000,000 people had then no great
grievance against Spain , having just
been given a large measure of self-
government , with universal suffrage
and a voting representation of nineteen
members in the two houses of the Cortez
at Madrid. They had free trade with
Spain and a fair degree of prosperity.
"To our little army of invasion , the
question whether these people were to
be friendly or hostile was a question of
life or death. If hostile , in their moun
tain fastnesses they could make bloody
work for 100,000 men. General Miles
very wisely sought their friendship. He
assumed to speak for the government
and the people of the United States , and
his authority has'never been repudiated
nor questioned. He issued his proclamation -
mation , saying , among other things ,
' "We have come to bestow upon you the
blessings and immunities of the liberal
institutions of our government. ' "
"Did you not have some personal ob
servation of the conduct of these Puerto
Rican soldiers ? "
"How the people responded with help
and welcome every one knows ; but few
know'how ready they were to fight for
us , " he replied. "They had no arms ,
and we had none to spare , but every
man who could get a gun came to our
camps , and thousands offered them
selves to meet the Spanish rifles with
their bare machetes. And these were
fighting men. General Schwan found
reason to praise the 'skill and daring' of
his Lugovina Scouts , and my own ex
perience was the same.
Rushed Straight on the Enemy.
"In an excursion on which I was sent
into the interior of the island , I was
joined by four hundred Puerto Rican
gentlemen , riding their own horses and
carrying rifles which they had captured
individually from the Spanish volun
teers , and the only criticism the Ameri
can commander of this battalion could
make regarding them was when they
disobeyed orders and rushed straight
upon the enemy. '
"Representative Wadsworth , who
3 shared some of the perils and hardships
of that little campaign and was ready
for more , can testify to the eagerness
with which the citizens of Utuade took
arms to attack the Spanish regulars at
Areoibo.
"Can we afford to break our solemn
promise to these people at the outset of
our rule ? Shall we give them three-
quarters or some other fraction of what
is dno'thom , and that , not as a right ,
but as a concession , which the next con
gress may revoke ?
"If the conscience of the nation could
consent to such an iniquity , it might
still be wise to consider that we may
have , any day , to defend that splendid
possession against a foreign foe , that it
is now the grand outpost and guard over
our coast and commerce and canal that
is to be , and that when such an occasion
comes , if our dealings with these people
have shown kindness and liberality , or
even fairness and common honesty , we
might raise fifty thousand fighting
Puerto Ricans to defend the island
against our enemy. "
"Is there not fear of competition with
our products ? "
Makes a Failure Possible.
' 'What is the plea on which we are
ready to sacrifice the honor of the nation ,
embitter a million of warm-hearted
friends , and risk a failure in expansion ,
a general overturn in politics , and a loss
of present prosperity in the country ? "
replied General Stone. "It is not the
fear of Puerto Rican competition in
sugar or tobacco , for our producers
themselves say there are no such fears ;
it is the 'need of revenue in the island'
and the 'danger of establishing a pre
cedent. ' But the Puerto Ricans say
they would rather pay direct taxes for
revenue than be outsiders and inferiors
in the nation ; and if there is any danger
of a precedent , congress has only to base
action giving the fullest citizenship to
the Puerto Ricans , upon the contract
under which we took them , their ac
ceptance of our formal proposal , in order
to segregate them entirely from the
Filipinos , Cubans , or any other people
who may come to us in a different man
ner. " Washington Post , Feb. 12 , 1900.
MIGHT IS RIGHT MIGHT MAKKS
RIGHT.
John W. Keller , commissioner of
charities , today took issue with Andrew
Carnegie , touching his address before
the Lotus Club , in which he declared in
favor of the segregation of that portion
of humanity sometimes classified as the
"submerged tenth , " and forbidding the
marriage of the destitute.
Mr. Carnegie said that he believed
that the truly helpless , those who live by
begging and almsthe idioticthe confirm
ed drunkards , etc. , should be the care
of the state and not of the individual.
Being human , he said , they deserve to
be clothed , sheltered , fed and instructed
when capable of learning , but they
should be isolated and not permitted to
marry.
Commissioner Keller said : "Yon
cannot draw a hard and fast line on the
intellectual , moral or financial basis ,
separating the class to which Mr. Car
negie refers from the rest of mankind
and forbidding them to marry without
working harm. You cannot regulate
this matter by law. It is a question
that must be left to common sense to
settle. Centuries have brought about
the present conditions and they are not
to be arbitrarily altered. "
Carnegie is right on principle and
Keller wrong. Carnegie stands on the
law of might , or individual fitness to
survive in the struggle for existence.
Might is right ; might is never wrong ;
might makes right ; might never makes
wrong ; all sentimental ignorance to the
contrary. Keller represents the ever
lasting sentimental error of humanity.
That error is applying the nursing bottle
of charity to inability , thereby causing
that to multiply and replenish which
should perish. The great mistake of
man has been in blindly endeavoring to
effect one of the strangest of natural
forces , the non-survival of the unfit , in
stead of learning the lesson in the sur
vival of the fit as the one method to so
cial success. The people who intelli
gently apply natural selection to their
own multiplication will become the
greatest nation. It is far more credita
ble to be a great people intrinsically
than a great nation extrinsically. No
nation has yet appreciated this fact , the
United States least of all. We count
noses instead of brains and physique.
Nations , like Germany , pay some atten
tion to the physique as food for cannon ,
but too little to brains as food for national
development. Even at that they set us
a worthy example. The American
Eagle screams when the census gives
him a hundred million fledglings.
He looks on the nations , and like the
boy in the story , screams , "What
a great bird ami ! " Truly , a great
bird stuffed to a surfeit with the pudding
of self-conceit instead of plums of act
ive intelligence. We are a nation of
"Pnddin'-Head Wilsons. "
The Submerged Tenth.
It is the accepted method to speak of
the poverty-struck classes only as "the
submerged tenth. " Mr. Carnegie is
wiser and includes the "idiotic and con
firmed drunkards. " The man is indeed
an idiot who asserts these should not be
barred from marriage. Mr. Carnegie
did not go far enough. His lines of de
marcation are drawn too narrow. They
encroach too closely on the so-called
poorer classes. "The submerged tenth"
includes every person , who from any
cause , physical or mental , is unable to
maintain himself in the struggle for ex
istence. It includes all the unfits.
While , in this instance , like does not
invariably produce like , who will
have the effrontery to assert that the
inter-marriage of such unfits , is not
liable to increase the already and ever
augmenting army of unfits ? There is
no competent physician , or student of
social science , who does not know that
the inter-marriage of persons with con
sumptive tendencies , and in many cases
