Crawford avalanche., 1900-04-05

| Will Serve for Government Of New
city and Free Trade for Porto Rico.
Senator Beveridge of Indiana Thursday
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-
vened. The keynotes of his utterance
were free trade and reciprocity for Porto
Rico. He favored separating the civil
government and tariff features of the
Porto Rican bill so that the former might
become law at once, whether free trade
Is carried or not. Mr.. Beveridge said III
part:
ITO treat Porto Rico as we treat Ha-
waii and to deal with the latter as we
deal with the Philippines, and to apply
to 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 proposition as mad as 1t is novel.
More than any people of history
| events are placing us where we may COM
mand and compel the peace Of the world.
Porto Rico, Cuba, the canal, Hawaii, the
Philippines, make us literally the SOW
ereign power among the nations. l say
make US the master people Of the world,
| for l never will believe that we will sur
| render our possessions TO others because
we cannot invent sane and appropriate
| methods for their government and con-
troll. l will never believe that our con-
| stitution manacles 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 l rejoice that we have them. For
one l believe that we have them by the
DEGREES of Providence, which, in all
our history, has outrun the weak and
| halting 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: "A higher
power than mine was in this business; a
u
furled that flag over this ocean empire,
ours now and ours forever. If we sur
| render them to more discerning and pow
erful peoples, succeeding 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-
BILE future foes"
After dealing with the constitutional
,,xx, hi 1av,x u
MIR. Beveridge came to the question Of re-
ciprocity and free trade. He said in
part:
Reciprocity with Porto Rico will 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,
200 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. Ii 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 colors 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 bolder 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 a 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, will 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 will 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 will 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 situation which
even the necessity for instant financial
relief could not render endurabe 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 $2.0O0,0OO, 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 recommenda-
ton we have adopted"