The San Francisco call., 1898-12-10
BENEVOLENT DESPOTISM.

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 lA warned the country of the overshadowing impor tance of the labor question
 White labor cannot exist in the torrid zone. Wha, labor is done there must be by the tropical races further fact is made plain by history and by cur rent events The tropical races will not work, unless forced to do so. Nature presents resistance that must be overcome in order that may live under vertical sum- She supplies all his necessities and min isters to his physical wants with lavish hand Every country that has owned land and exercised sover- eighty in the tropics has secured surplus for com- mercial export by some form of forced labor.
 Spain fell into nattenton to the best and devel- opment of her peninsular territory, because It was easier by forced labor to wiring and compel commerce out of her East and West Indian tropical islands After centuries of this policy her tropical people in revolt against being forced to toll under natural conditions that made labor unnecessary for their own existence
 As result of this revolt she has lost her possessions iii the torrid zone and will be driven to exploit her home resources and no doubt will be regenerated commercially and morally, by the compulsory change
 But we stepping into her shoes, and as we do It our commercial classes are inhamlng the popular fancy by aluring pictures of tropical commerce to come.
 Nearly four centuries ago. when the Pope divided the commerce of the newly discovered regions be- tween Spain and Portugal, the meridian of no variation of the magnetic needle which discov cred by Vasco da Cana n his circumnavigation of Africa, those countries entertained precisely the same exalted anticipations which to-day rife throughout the United States. Immediately upon entering upon their torrd possessions they encoun- tered physical conditions, which have not changed, that required involuntary labor to produce the com merce they had anticipated
 of hvyci fta only surplus producing labor in the tropics has been compelled by the lash, or by penal contract, some form of force. The Dutch are at 1t to-day in Java. England was driven by Wilberforce to abandon it in her West Indian islands, when she abolished slavery and immediately their surplus production declined. The story applies to Hayti and San Domingo, when France and Spain, respectively, were compelled to let go and involuntary labor ceased within their borders
 Recently, Professor Kidd and MT. Ireland have made personal survey of the tropics and unite in the conclusion that their commerce depends on some form of involuntary servitude.
 Kidd falls back on the ancient doctrine that might makes right. As the temperate zone races cannot labor n the tropics, and the tropical races will not labor voluntarily, he concludes that, tropical com being desirable to the nations of the temperate zone they have the right to exercise labor in the
  Java This means the reducing of tropical labor to condition of involuntary servtude
 Every physical and commercial fact involved in the situation demonstrates that as we drive Spain out and enter upon her possessions for the purpose that she had in acquiring them in the fifteenth century go she did then with the lash for the back of labor in one hand and the demands of commercial avarice in the other, ii we expect commerce that will return to the of conquest and of govern ment.
 The thirteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States says: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States any place subject to their jurisdiction"
 The benevolent despotisrn, by which 1t is conceded must force tropical labor to produce surplus for commerce. will directly violate the constitution
 There is no reasonable legal doubt that the penal contracts under which labor is forced in Hawaii to produce surplus obnoxious to the thirteenth amendment. Nor is there much room for doubt that ii that labor contract system cease under the uris diction of the United States the commerce of Hawaii will decline as the involuntary servtude of labor ceases.
 The most profitable tropical possession of Great Britain in this hemisphere is British Guiana, with an of 100000 square miles and less than 3ooooo inhabitants, and total trade of $2ooooooo or nearly as much as the commerce of the Philippines But forced labor produces this commerce in Guiana It is performed by East Indian coolies who com prise nearly one-half of the population Their labor is distinctly servile but without 1t the colony which has about the same population as Jamaica would be equally worthless, commercially to Great Britain.
 It is well for commercial bodies and the agen- cies which urge expansion in the tropics to consider these insurmountable physical conditions and for Americans to know that despotsm exercised labor is benevolent, but produces that 1- voluntary servitude which ceased under our ursdic- ton with the abolition of slavery, and is forbidden by the constitution itself