The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1898-09-13
OUR TROPICAL COLONIES.

! l PdlslOH IN the tropics, without HceulHS OF
- indeed hearing discussion of the policy which
would bring out the facts which illuminate and must
determine its wisdom or otherwise. In the absence
OF any opportunity for voters to express themselves
against tropical expansion because both parties favor
it, The Call adheres its former position against
holding anything in the tropical islands that have
fallen out of SPANS palsed hands into ours, beyond
some convenient coaling station. We have shown
that the population of those islands by American
people is impossible for physical reasons which no
act OF man overcome. We made this same show
ing in the case of Hawaiian labor, when the annexa-
toniss holding out the lure that white men
would be wanted to replace the coolies in the cane
fields and sugar mills We said that white labor could
not endure the vertical in Hawaii and that
annexation succeeded the planters would de-
mand the continuance of coolie labor. This has come
to pass They must have the only labor that can live
there they must submit to the decay of their in
dustries and the ruin of their commerce. Their for
mer pretense false, and exposed it.
The San Francisco Argonaut, which is holly in
favor of holding the American and Asiatc tropical
possessions of SPAIN advocates garrisoning them
tirey with negro troops because they withstand
climate that brushes all energy out of white SOL
ders after they have been exposed for any length
OF time, and they immune to the tropical diseases
that strike down the whites like cattle"
We need submit further proof on the point that
our tropical conquests can never be colonized by
white men to plant and protect there the Anglo
Saxon institutions under which live
The next subject for consideration is the people al
ready constituting the population of these islands
Draper and line of writers numerous and re-
spectacle that their not controverted
have shown by evidence irrefutable that absolute
domination of man by his physical environment, so
that to dispute is to war with every conclusion of
science.
The kind of people who live in the tropics are
the only kind who can live there. Their intel
lectual development is all that occur there
Does any recall great tropical scholar, diplomat
statesman SCIENTIST No. Copernicus, Newton La
voisier, Mitchell, Proctor Huxley Darwin Spencer
Hege, Kepper and their peers in science and phil
osophy were all natives of the temperate zone.
In literature Shakespeare, Bacon, Sue, Hugo,
Goethe Schiller, Tennyson Byron, Burns, Long
fellow, Hawthorne, Irving-al of the northern race
The tropics have been open to civilization and its
contacts for four hundred years In that time since
the invention of printing, of the literature
OF science and philosophy has been created What
is the contribution of the tropics? Nothing. The
facts of nature which fix the physical character
istics OF in the tropics determine also his mental
and moral elements. AS he has been always, between
Cancer and Caprcornus, he will always be. We can
not change him. "Of one blood God made all men
and set the bounds to their habitaon is the decara-
ton of the old and solemn book. In no respect can
these bounds be passed their conditions be made
interchangeable Therefore such conditions as we
find in these islands permanent There is
sentimental talk about raising the grade of these peo
pie by education. But education is only form OF
utility 1t is sought by civilized as an aid in the
struggle of life. In the tropics nature ministers with
prodigal hand to all of the physical wants of man;
therefore he needs no education and is not receptive
to it.
Look upon those people to-day and you look upon
what will be there thousand and thousand years
from now.
This brings the discussion down to the status of
these people, if take them in Are they to be our
fellow-ctizens, admitted members of body
polite, they to be subject colonists, de-
prved of representation and self-government? This
no one has yet answered. 1t is needless to remind
any student of the constitution that it grants the
Federal Government only way of charging our
borders by the admission of States into the Union
1t to acquire territory by treaty conquest to
be peoped pass novitiate in self government and
where race lives and increases wholesomely but
power is granted to expand with any other policy
in view.
Nature has fixed the kind of people for the tropics
and set bounds not only their habitation but to
their mental and moral constitution Let us further
consider at another time their fitness for American
citizenship