Evening star., 1901-08-13
Great Excess of That Of the Lowest
a.
Grade.
)EPLORABLE State OF fHE PE0NS
Effect Of Centuries of Spanish
Oppression.
A M B ITION E x tt n G. r

SVely treats all phases or the LABOR QueS-
tion in the new possessions of the United
States.
I'm Porto Rico" the bulletin says 1.-The
classes which do not come within the
designation of wage workers, while rela-
lively fewer in number than In the United
States, have their lines Of demarcation
much more sharply drawn and their status
more clearly defined, the spirit of class
being far more dominant with Latin peo-
pies than with the Anglo-Saxon. Outside
| these classes it Is safe to include the great
mass, young and old. male and female,
black, white and mixed, in the list of those
who, except as they craftily or indolensly
evade their responsibilities, eat tneii
bread in the sweat Of their brows.'
The Wealthy Glass.
"Those possessed of means disdain both
labor and the laborer. The wealthy class,
notably the women, are emphatically the
idle class, though the vicious, the willfully
indolent, the beggar and the large num-
ber of the physically afflicted each con-
tribute large quota thereto. Poverty in
various degrees and the lower grades OF
toll, the latter usually procuring bare sub
sistence only, are the lot of the great mass
of the people.
These sharp lines of demarcation, this
clear separation and strong contrast be-
tween the capitalist, the merchant, the
planter the factor and their families, and
the wage worker are due to the fact that
the intelligent, well-informed and thrifty
producer, the master craftsman and the
skilled mechanic, such as are found in the
United States have here so small and SO
poor representation.
More potent, however, than any other
factor in fixing and holding the great body
of the wage workers of the island In the
class Of lowest-conditioned servants Of toll
is the want of incentive, of stimulus and of
nrnrln ~ty, n ,,.al
and expressed by missionaries to the tropi
cal islands that until the natives could
be made to want something there were no
anailabe means mean for reaching them and
banana diet and palm shack in the
country and the cheapest Of food and
single room in the towns cover alike the
needs and ambitions of life; so long as the
bare necessares of existence can be OBJ
tanned by the minimum of labor, while the
climate encourages Incidence, and no in
centive exists to greater efforts or the over
turning of lOng-rOoted tendencies, so long
will the condition of the great body of the
laboring classes continue very much as it
is and the great percentage of the toilers
remain as today In the lower grades Of
wage workers.
Compared With American Labor.
The difference between the agricultural
classes of wage workers in Porto Rico and
the workers in great communities in the
impossibility Of having similar opportuni-
ties and incentives for work In the two
countries
"A fact which impresses the observer of
labor conditions in Porto Rico is the great
excess of labor Of the lowest grade" DR..
Ames says. ''Unfavorable in most cases
as is this excess, it is not without some
small measure of advantage, for Its at
tendant low wages and hard conditions,
coupled with the drastic character of Span
haC arriI he
land from the necessity for and importa-
tion of the 'coolie' labor upon which Cuba,
Jamaica and the Hawaiian Islands have of
late years been compelled in large measure
to depend.
mo more significant proof of this super
abundance of labor could exist than the
fact that not few planters, even those
somewhat remote from the shipping ports
and commercial centers and sometimes sit
uated at no great DISTANCE from the belt
railroad or from even the SeacoaSt, find 1T
cheaper to transport their coffee, toba Geo
and other products on the heads of poems
to these ports and markets than by rail-
road, bull carts or even by sea. I'm
happily, this excess of labor over the in
dustrial demands of the island does not
materially stimulate personal activity in
small agricultural or other industries on.
the part of the unemployed. Their natural
Incidence and small necessities seem to lead
them to accept Indulgence and vagrancy as
no great evils.
DeplorabIe Condition of the Poems.
"It is beyond question that the condition
Of the laboring classes of Porto Rico in
general, and Of the peon class in particu-
lar, is at the present time, and has long
been, very deplorable-largely due, doubt
less, to insufficient employment.
"One is painfully impressed, whether in
the streets of city or towh, or in the hill
country, by the number of human wrecks
the many beggars and the sunken-eyed,
pallid anaemic- men, women and children
Extreme poverty, inanition and decrepitude
are found, and though the island is one of
great resources and has a good record for
thrift, there is reason to believe that from
the earliest days of the Spanish occupation
this condition of things as to the laboring
classes has been only too prevalent-and at
times worse, in some respects, than at
present. Tradition, sustained by Well-cor-
roborated facts, indicates that the natives
were well-nigh exterminated in the first
century of the Spanish rule by the barbar-
ity of their conquerors and the severe la
borS forced upon them. Whatever the later
years of settlement and better civilization,
of established church and government and
of foreign and alien observation may have
done to ameliorate the conditions of the
enslaved indigenes, the evidence is conclu-
sive as to the cruelty and oppression of the
early Spanish invaders.
Effect of Years of Oppression.
Never for a century at least, did the
native bondman receive any more thought
or from his .taSkuoaSterS