Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1899-08-24
WASHINGTON LETTER.
From our Regular Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21st, 1899.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21st, 1899.
Secretary Root is giving the coun-
try striking exhibition of what
can be accomplished by hustling,
even in the month of August,
which has got to be so generally
recognized in official circles as va
cation time. He has caused every
thing connected with the sending
of the volunteers to the Philippines
to be advanced considerably from
the first estimates, and it is now
practically certain that the last of
the first ten regiments will be land
ed at Manila no later than Octo-
Der, and arrangements have already
been made by which the other ten
regiments, the order for the enlist
ing of which was only issued sew
eral days ago, will reach Manila
within week, before or after, of
December 1. No troops ever took
the field anywhere better equipped
than these men will be or better
provided in every respect for cam
paigning in the tropics. They will
all be armed with the Krag- Jor-
gensen rifle, of which the War
Department now has full supply,
and amply supplied with smoke
less ammunition. When all the
troops get over, there will be more
than 60, 900 men in the Philippines.
1t is not believed that so many
men will be needed to do the fight
ing, but Secretary Root intends to
have them there 80 that every
town taken from the Philippines
can be held, instead of abandoned,
as in the last campaign. If there
is as much hustling at the other end
as there has been in Washington,
the campaign will be short and
decisive.
Secretary Wilson, who has just
returned from western trip all
the way to the Pacific coast, upon
which he went to study agricult-
ural conditions so as to make the
work of the Agricultural Depart
ment as helpful to farmers in that
section as possible, says the talk
about sentiment in the west
against the Philippine policy of
President Mckinley is all manu-
factured in the east, and that he
did not meet single "anti' west
of Chicago, although he met hum
dreds of men, in all stations of life.
He found farmers prosperous all
through the west, and especially so
in the corn belt. He says the
wheat crop of that section will be
a little short, but that the crop of
corn and oats and other farm pro-
ducts are enormous. Speaking of
the annexation sentiment in the
west, Secretary Wilson said: ''The
people of the west understand this
question better than do those of
the east. They know that Dewey
was sent to the Philippines to pro-
tect our large and growing trade in
the Orient. We have labored to
build up trade with China and
Japan, and when the war began
Spain had a fleet in Oriental waters
ready to attack and destroy our
commerce. She also was ready to
encourage privateering, and Dewey
went to Hong Kong to be ready to
protect our shipping. He destroy
ed the Spanish fleet as safe way
to prevent it from preying upon
American merchant ships. Had
the battle resulted in victory
for Spain rather than for Dewey,
the Spanish fleet would have cross
ed the Pacific to attact our western
ports. The people out west realize
this, and they also realize that
Dewey's victory and the subse-
quent events which transferred the
Philippines to the U. S., have
given an extraordinary impetus to
the commerce of this country with
the Orient. At all the Pacific
ports the docks are piled up with
goods awaiting shipment to the
Orient, and we have not ships
enough to carry them. The peo-
pie of the west regard the Pacific
as an American lake, which should |
be covered with ships carrying the
American flag, and I don't know
but what they are about right.
Why, 1 went on one big ship, load
ing at Tacoma, and T found in the
cargo lumber, wheat and -four from