US Presidency
1909

The business conditions in the Philippines arenot all that we could wish them to be, but with the passage of the newtariff bill permitting free trade between the United States and the archipelago, with such limitations on sugar and tobacco as shall prevent injury to domesticinterests in those products, we can count on an improvement in businessconditions in the Philippines and the development of a mutually profitabletrade between this country and the islands. Meantime our Government ineach dependency is upholding the traditions of civil liberty and increasingpopular control which might be expected under American auspices. The workwhich we are doing there redounds to our credit as a nation. I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling betweenthe South and the other sections of the country. My chief purpose is notto effect a change in the electoral vote of the Southern States. That isa secondary consideration.