Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1900-04-10
WANTS A FREE HAND.
BEVERAGE ON AMERICAS COL
ONlAL PROBLEM
Indiasa Senator Says No Precedent
Will Serve for Government of New
Possessions He Advocates Recipro-
city and Free Trade for Porto Rico.


delivered in the Senate his long-eXpected
speech on the United States new pos
sessions and the policy that should be
adopted in governing them. He began
his speech as soon as the Senate con-
Eened. The Seynotes of his utterance
were free trade and reciprocity for Porto
Rico. He favored separating the civil
government aud tariff features OF the
Porto Rican bill so that the former might
become law at oncc, whether free trade
is carried or not. Mr.. Beveridge said in
part:
To treat Porto Rico as weftreat Ha-
waii and 10 deal with the latter as we
deal with the Philippines, and TO apply
70 all without delay the same fixed for
mula Of laws Which custom and intention
Of statehood has prescribed for our ter
ritories from which our States are form
ed, is aproposition as mad as it is novel.
More than any people Of history
events are placing us here we may COM
mand and compeIthe peace Of the world,
Porto Rico, Cuba, the canal, Hawaii, the
Philippines. make us literally the SOW
ereign power among the nations. | say
make US the master people of the world,
for | never viii believe that we will sur
render our possessions to others because
we cannot invent sane and appropriate
methods for their goyernment and con-
troll. / viii never believe that our con-
stitution manaces our hands and narrows
our vision and numbs our brain. | will
never admit that our constitution is such
a charter Of death
Issue Involves Keeping Islands.
THE first issue under debate involves
the keeping Of our new possessions. For
one / rejoice that we have them. For
one | believe that we have them by the
decrees of a Providence, which, in all
our history, has outrun the weak and
hating wisdom of presidents and con-
crosses. For one | accept the privileges,
duties and the burdens Of our situation,
in the spirit expressed to me by our
great admiral, as we stood on the Olym-
pia's heroic decks and looked across the
beautiful city to the blue mountains of
Luzon, when he said to me: 4 higher
power than mine was in this business; a
higher will and a wisdom than ours I'M
furled that flag over this ocean empire,
ours now and ours forever. If we sur
render them to more discerning and pow
erful peoples, SUI. eedng generations will
curse the folly and the crime that not
only yielded our high advantage, but plac-
ed the republic at the mercy of its possi-
bic future foes
After dealing with the constitutional
question involved at considerable length
Mr.. Beveridge came to the question of re-
ciprocity and free trade. He said in
part:
Reciprocity with Porto Rico viii help
that island; it cannot hurt us. No, it will
help us more than it will help Porto Rico.
1t affords us a safe experiment with our
possessions at the very beginning of our
experience as an administering power.
For nation of 70,000,000 people with an
imperial continent for its home, and prac-
ticed in all the arts of industry, cannot
suffer in competition with a little island
smaller than a single county of Texas,
1,20O miles from our shores, and peopled
by less than one-seventieth of our number
of inhabitants, poverty stricken and pros
trate, ignorant of the meaning of self
government, and beholding modern civil
ization as through a glass darkly. If the
American republic, just embarked upon
the grandest world career of all time,
fears competition with the least of its
possessions, let us strike our coIors as a
sovereign power, tack from our course
marked out by the high inspiration of
great events, put back to the port of de-
cay, go out of commission, and let the
mighty voyage on which we started be
sailed by holder hearts, loftier faiths and
eyes of clearer vision.
Measure of Economic Wisdom.
Reciprocity with Porto Rico is not
only a matter of duty; it is a measure of
economic wisdom. 1t is the reciprocity
for which the great statesmen of the re-
public have planned and toiled. And it is
reciprocity not with foreign country,
but with our own possession. 1T is re-
ciprocity of nature; Porto Rican products
supply what we need and cannot so well
produce When our markets are open to
Porto Rican products industry will, and
must of necessity, be stimulated as by
the wine of life itself all through our ISL
and, the people will prosper, money will
pour into their withered hands and Porto
Rico, now desolate, viii be placed in the
position of prosperity justified by its re-
sources, its location and its possibilities.
And with her prosperity she will in turn
endow us. Her markets viii exclusively
be ours; for our tariff against Europe
and the world will be her tariff against
Europe and the world, and so our cloth
ing and -four and corn and implements
and all the products of our farms and
mills and looms win have exclusive mar
kets there.
"But to close our markets to our own
possession or to make those markets dear
and difficult is to take from our masses
the necessities produced on our own ter
ritory, and to make the markets of our
own dependency dear and difficult to our
producers is to deny TO ourselves the OPP
portunity to sell our own products to our
own possession. 1t is a situation which
even the necessity for instant financial
relief could not render endurable to the
Government of the United States, and so
the President of the republic, true to his
fatherly solicitude for Porto Rico, true
to his constructive craftsmanship, has,
through the legal and constitutional
method of an executive message TO the
Senate and the House, recommended the
relief to the island By the appropriation
of more than S2.0O0,OO0, which, in turn,
relieves the Congress Of the United
States from committing an offense
against craftsmanship to which it was
driven by the absolute necessity for funds
for the island. And that recommends
ton we have adopted"
But to continue a tariff between the re-
public and territory belonging to the
United States" is to leave unsolved all
the problems before US, and unanswered
all the speculation in which it is OR
duty to indulge in thinking out the best
way, as statesmen should.
For these reasons | favor immediate
reciprocity, and | shall 20 on record az
voting for amendments giving immediate
and unrestricted freedom Of trade TO our
island of Porto Rico. But if we in the
Senate who believe that Porto Rico shall
have reciprocity at once, are not able TO
so amend the bill here ] shall. after vot-
ing for reciprocity amendments, vote for
the civil government bill as modified by
the committee, because We must not deny
civil government to the people Of Porto
Rico a moment longer. aid because the
bill as modified insures free trade with
Porto Rico as soon as the civil govern
sefo r.rr.~f1axs es-Ctssu4