The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-01-06


A further fact is made plain by his
tory and by current events. The
tropical races will not work unless
forced to do so. Nature presents no re-
sistance that must be overcome in order
that man may live under a vertical sun.
She supplies all his necessities and min
listers tt his physical van with a Law
ish hand. Every country that has own
ed land and exercised sovereignty in
the tropics has secured a surplus for
commercial export by some form of
forced labor.
Spain fell into inattention TO the best
use and development of her peninsula
territory because ii was easier by forced
labor to wiring revenues and compel
commerce out of her East and West
Indian tropical islands. After centuries
of this policy her tropical people rose
in revolt against being forced to toll
under natural conditions that made
labor unnecessary for their own exist
ence.
AS a result of this revolt she has lost
her possessions in the torrid zone, and
will be driven o to exploit her home
resources, and, no doubt, will be regen-
Grated commercially and morally by
the compulsory change.
But we are stepping into her shoes,
and as we do it our commercial classes
are inf1aming the popular fancy by al
Turing pictures of tropical commerce to
come.
Nearly -four centuries ago, when the
pope divided the commerce of the new
ly discovered regions between Spain
and Portugal on the meridian OF no
variation of the magnetic needle, which
was discovered by Vasco da Cana in
his circumnavigation of Africa, those
two countries entertained precisely the
same exalted anticipations which are
today rife throughout the United States.
Immediately upon entering upon their
torrid possessions they encountered
physical conditions, which have not
changed, that required involuntary la
Dor to produce the commerce they had
anticipated.
$ During the scores of years gone by
since then the only surplus producing
labor in the tropics has been compelled
by the lash, or by penal contract, or
some form of force. The Dutch are
at it today in Java. England was
driven by Wilberforce to abandon it in
her West Indian islands when she abol-
ished slavery, and Immediately their
surplus production declined. The same
story applies to Hayti, and San DOM
lingo, when France and Spain, respec-
lively, were compelled to let go, and in
voluntary labor ceased within their Dor
ders.
Recently Professor Kidd and Mr..
Ireland have made a personal survey of
the tropics, and unite in the conclusion
that their m depends ON some
form of involuntary servitude.
|, Kidd falls back on the ancient doc
trine that might makes right. AS the
temperate zone races cannot labor in
the tropics, and as the tropical races
will not labor voluntarily, he concludes
that, tropical commerce being desirable
to the nations of the temperate zone,
they have the right to exercise over
labor in the tropics "a benevolent des-
potism," as the Dutch do in Java.
This means the reduction Of tropical
labor to a condition of involuntary SER
| vitude.
Every physical and commercial fact
involved in the situation demonstrates
that, as we drive Spain out and enter
upon her possessions for the same pur-
pose hat she had in acquiring them in
the fifteenth century, we must go, as
| she did then, with the lash for the back
of labor in one hand and the demands
of commercial avarice in the other if
we expect a commerce that will return
to us the cost of conquest and of. gov
| ernent.
The thirteenth amendment to the con-
stitutiOn of the United States says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servi-
tude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United
States or any place subject to their
Jurisdiction"
The benevolent despot;sm, by which
it is conceded we must force tropical
labor to produce a surplus for COM
merce, will directly violate the consti-
tuition.
There is no reasonable legal doubt
that the penal contracts under which
labor is forced in Hawaii to produce q
surplus are obnoxious to the thirteenth
amendment, nor is there much room
for doubt that if that labor contract
system cease under the jurisdiction OF
the United States, the commerce of Ha.
waii will decline as the involuntary ser
vitude of labor ceases.
The most profitable tropical posses
sion Of Great Britain in this hemis
phere is British Guiana, with an are;
of over 100, 900 square miles and les
than 800. 900 inhabitants, and a tota
trade of over $40. 600, 900, nearly a
much as the commerce of the Philip
pines. But forced labor produces nthi
commerce in Guiana. II is performed b,
East Indian coolies, who comprfs
nearly one-half of the population. Thei
labor is distinctly s~ervile, but without
it the colony. which has about the sam
population as Jamaica, would be equal
ly worthless commercially to Grea
Britain.
It is we'll for our commercial bodie
and the agencies to consider these in
lsurmountable physical conditions, an
4 FOR a mcricanc RI En.r rnu- rha% Iac