The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1898-04-21

lowing forcible language:
Il submit to you that no one in this
country has a more direct interest iii
annexation than the manufacturers.
Up to five years ago the United States
developed and progressed while paying
very little attention to it's foreign re-
lat1ons and it's foreign commerce. If
prosperity and development are to con-
tinue, you must find markets beyond
the present boundaries of the union
Tor both your agricultural and your
manufactured products. Where are
you to find these markets? In England
and Europe? Perhaps, to a limited ex-
tent; but they produce the same NAH
ufactures that you do. They are your
natural competitors, not your natural
customers. The one great undevel-
oped natural market of the world for
the products Of the United States are
the islands in, and the countries bor-
der1ng upon the Pacific Ocean. Near
ly fifty years ago William H. Seward
said, on the floor of the United States
Senate, that 'the Pacific Ocean, it's is
lands, it's shores and the vast regions
beyond, will be the chief theater of
events in the worlds great hereafter"
This prophecy is being rapidly full
hlled; but ten years ago the Pacific
coast of Siberia was an ice bound will
derness, and Vladivostock an unknown
village. Today Vladivostock is a city
OF 10000 people, with wharves, dry
docks and warehouses. and with forti-
fications equal to any port in the
world. The Pacific terminus of the
Trans-Siberian railroad to St. Peters
burg, 1t is the growing center of a
commerce, the variety and volume of
which can not be foretold. This rail-
road is being pushed by all the mighty
power of the Russian government, and
is opening vast forests, mineral, coal
and agricultural lands, while the
country is being Systematically settled
up by the transplanting of whole viii
lagos of Russians to favorable locali-
ties along the line. For a hundred
years Russia has vainly sought an
open road to the sea by way of the
Da%rdanelles. She is now achieving
that object by way Of the Pacific.
Within the past year she has obtained
the right of way from China for q
second terminus to her railroad at Port
Arthur, a port that is never frozen up.
Therein is f~oreshadowed the absorb
tion of Northern China, for the Rus
sian bear never lets go its grip. Three
! years ago Japan was a comparatively
unimportant group of islands, with but
little foreign power or trade. Today
it is an international nation, with an
already strong navy, which is being
added to at a rate second only to that
of England, while her lines of subsi-
died steamers are running to the four
quarters of the globe, her commerce is
increasing by geometrical progression,
and her $1,000, 600 of people have
awakened to the possibilities of the
future. With the shaking up which
300, OO0, 900 of people must soon open
to western methods and
The Australian colonies and the hun
dreds of Southern Pacific islands, now
all under European control, are rapidly
developing into international power
and greatness. These and the South
American republics are the great I'M
J developed and unoccupied markets of
the world to which Americans must
send their products if this country is
to progress and prosper. Nearly all
of this m must cross the Pa
cifc. What has all this to do with
Hawaiian annexation? 1t has Just
this to do with it. From Hong Kong
to the isthmus of Darien it is $500
miles; as far as from San Francisco
across the continent, the Atlantic, the
Mediterranean and Turkey to the
boundary of Persia; from the Aleutian
islands on the north to the French
colony of Tahiti, a thousand miles
south of the equator, the distance is
$500 miles; as far as from Greenland
to 500 miles south of the Amazon riy-
er. In all this vast area there is but
one spot where food, fuel and water
can be obtained. and that is Hawaii.
1t has this to do with it, that the Pa
cific is 81 wide that no nation has q
naval station neal enough to the Pa
cific coast to be available as a naral
base of operations against it or it's
commerce. 1t means that no battle
ship now built or building, in either
the American or Japanese navy, can
cross the Pacific between Yokohama
and San Francisco without %recoaling,
because they cannot carry fuel enough
to get across. 1t means that with Ha-
wall in the possession of any hostile
power there would he established a
naval base of supply and repair with
in five days steaming distance of the
Pacific coast. 1t means that with
other nations shut out of Hawaii they
are pushed back the entire length of
the Pacific, a distance so great as to
be prohibitive Of hostile naval opera
tions and thereby securing immunity to
the Pacific coast and it's ommerce
Already six of the seven trans-Pacific
steamship lines make Honolulu a way
station. AS soon as the Isthmian can
al is completed, thereby opening up
the countries of the Pacific to the trade
of the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf
States, all of that vast and growing
tide of commerce will flow past Ha-
wall. Can the United States afford to
take any chances as to any other coun-
try obtaining control of Hawaii. The
strategical key of the Pacific, the COM
mercial crossroads" of the Pacific, can