The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1899-01-31
EDUCATION IN FREEDOM.

Is quite the custom to declare that we must hold
| the tropical islands in the East and West Indies
until the people thereof fitted for freedom and
qualified for self-government We must protect them
against themselves, prevent the making OF mistakes
and administer public authority in the midst OF them
until We think they are prepared. OF course this
means the permanence OF our sovereignty over them.
We decide that they don't know how to swim and
undertake to keep them of water by force until
they learn
/ When our revolution closed we Immediately
entered upon the experiment OF self-government We
made serious mistakes and profted by finding them
out The old Confederation was mistake We cor
rected it by the Constitutional Union OF 1870. In
that constitution compromised ourselves into
further mistakes. New England shipping interests
al that time enjoyed the profits OF the slave trade We
permitted Its continuance until 1903, and a COM
promise with the South gave her three-hfths rep
resentation for her slaves in the apporonment which
was the basis OF representation Congress and the
Electoral College and we treated the institution OF
slavery domestic and let stand Alter the slave
trade and its profits ceased by limitation and New
England had no longer stake in the institution, the
introduction OF the cotton gin made slave labor in
the South immensely profitable, and the North had
nc share in it Then began the long wrangle which
ended in secession and the Civil War which remains
caly absorbs our whole customs revenue, and in its
financial emergency legislation continues to torment
the republic with monetary system OF misery and
with policies for its remedy which threaten worse evils
than those which endure Besides this, the orig
mai errors and compromises Of the Federal constitu
ton, leading up to the Civil War; left us legacy in
the shape OF thirteen million negroes who by the
constitution guaranteed franchise which in prac-
tice we deny TO them. Therefore we have under the
flag that enormous population OF blacks who are out
lawed from their solennly guaranteed rights
1t would seem that success in self-government
notwithstanding these mistakes, would admonish us
that the only way TO prepare people for selfgovern-
ment is by letting them govern themselves not put
ting them in leading strings and holding them there
They will make mistakes. We did They may op-
press each other. We drove the Tories into the
maritime provinces OF Canada They may kill each
other. We still ynching negroes. The strong
may deny to the weak the exercise of their rights We
are dong IT. In fine, the excuse made for taking
these people and Selling their administration has no
good reason in logic or morals
And beyond it all is the racial fact that they are
little fitted for form OF government as we are
Tor theirs. If apprentice them to Anglo Saxon
institutions their apprenticeship will have no end
Nor can eradicate them and plant our race on the
soil beneath which they are buried for nature has
lneraQlCdDle and has barriers against
our race in their country, which it has never passed
and never pass.
Therefore this pretense of tutelage and guidance
means that we to waste armies and build nayies
in an imperial domination in the tropics which will
end only in exhaustion and final humiliation
Many bad things appear in the Filipinos They are
reported to be torurng and abusing prisoners and to
make Malay and not Christian warfare They like to
sack plantations and loot towns But if all this be true
they are good people to let alone II four centuries
OF Spanish rule have driven their natural instincts
out OF them, how many centuries of American rule
will modify it?
We have not pounded nor educated the same ten
denotes out OF Our Indians. We educated Little
Crow chief of the Minnesota Sioux and ne lived in
a house at Crow Wing agency, with his college
diploma hanging on the wall of his library and his
daughters were seminary girls and played the piano
But when his people effected the massacre at New
Um Little Crow laid off his broadcloth. and in his
breech clou and blanket was the worst Indian in the
Northwest.
There is no sorcery known to us and unknown 70
Spain that can change the Malay mind and method
That chap who says he knows the secret of the late
Kelley should have made the announcement before
curious investigators had been mean enough to dig
L. 4