The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-09-08

glow now with a healthier color be-
meath neat and well-ordered couture.
The women are visibly better groomed.
The band plays Sousa's marches, Mr.
Dooley,'' or airs from 1.-The Country
Girl instead OF the mournfuI music
of the Danzas. The people laugh and
talk as they walk: they are out to see
as well as TO be seen; young men walk
with the women. The artistic value
of the change is doubtful: there is a
certain sense of incongruity But I'M
mistaikably there is change: there is
stir about it, an added vitality,
brightness, spirit.
Less change is noticeable in the local
fashion of mems clothes. These have
always been simple and rational. khaki
and duck chiefly. material and style
dictated by the climate. But English
and American tailors have found many
customers, and their Porto Rican
brethren are being compelled to follow
their styles. Panama hats, a variety
of good grades, are now manufactured
on the island. chiefly for export The
stiff and heavy American-made straw
hat. by an odd reciprocity, actually has
a larger sale at present among the
native population than the more ap-
propriate panama.
Dress has changed; manners and Gus
toms keep pace. At a ball-or bale,
as they say here-given at the Ponce
Casino last February in honor of Ad-
miral Higginson and the officers of the
fleet then lying in Ponce harbor, time
honored Spanish social conventions
were abandoned, as they have been
since on similar occasions. Dances
were divided; young senoritas, after
the northern fashion, sat out dances or
intermissions in the foyer or boxes of
the adjoining theater with their part
ners-a performance bringing social
ostraciSm or engagements under the
old standards. This is merely an in
stance-there are many others indi-
eating what to US seems a more ration
al and wholesome association between
men and women
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
1t is, of course, quite natural that the
English language in three years should
have become more commonly used. and
this in spite of the fact that the num-
Der of Americans now resident on the
island is no greater than it was three
of Adventures and carpet-baggers who
flooded in after the war has been stead
lily drifting away again, for Porto Rico
is no place for your very small man,
and the legitimate increase by birth
and the coming of better and sounder
class of investors and property-holders
has barely made good the exodus of
the unfit. The shopkeepers and mer-
chants in the towns, the large number
of Porto Ricans employed in subor-
dinate positions by the Government. /!
know enough English to car
ry on their transactions in that Ian
guage without trouble. The steve |
dores and longshoremen, BARRIERS and !
cocheros, the little bootblacks who |
throng the curbs, even the beggars, and |
that conservative body in everything |
but politics, the Insu1ar Police, all have |
a few necessary English equivalents |
with which to solicit business. strike ,
4 trade. or direct a stranger. But !
more effective than any other cause in |
the establishment of English are the |
American schools. One thousand one
hundred and thirty American schools, |
each filed to overlooking, are deter
mining the speech of the coming gen.
Grafton; result which of course is
being anticipated by the increasing
daily use made of English by the sixty |
thousand pupils enrolled, and its in
PRODUCTION by them into their homes.
Spanish has been the language of Porto
Rico during four centuries; English |
in general way has been used four |
years. That the latter language has |
already gained such a place is signifi-
ant, first, of the eagerness and prompt
ness with which the people of the ISL
and have sought to acquire at least |
the speech of the new regime, and, sec
ondly, of the progress made towards
assimilation since the occupation.
The schools are doing more than es-
tablishing the English language in Por
to Rico. More than any other agency |
at work they are accomplishing ra-
tional and thorough Americanization, |
the effects of which will be perma-
nent. Mr. Brumbaugh, first Commits
sioner of Education, and his successor, |
DR.. Lindsay, have set up, in place of |
the hopeless confusion of the Spanish |
a compact organization and |
system in the department of educa- |
ton. American and Porto Rican |
teachers are working together, teaching !
by American methods; the results are
apparent in the children. I visited a !
dozen schools in various parts of the !
island, each representative of its type; |
rural, kindergarten, graded
and high schools. With one exception, !
/ found the teachers eager and inter- |
ested in their work: the children at
tentive and quiet, progress very evil
IDENTIFY being made. The schools form
the most encouraging document in the
records of this American colonial ex-
pertinent. Over eighty per cent of
illiteracy confronted the Commission
in 1900, according to the census cf that
year. An appropriation equal to the
entire insular budget for the current
year, by DR.. Lindsay's statement, could
be expended in meeting the demand for
further extension of the school system,
yet, in spite of the inadequacy of funds
at the disposal of the department, it is
constantly meeting demands in excess
of it's equipment. Within the last
month the long-hoped-for University
of Porto Rico" has been founded, with
a board of Porto Rican and American
trustees, one of whom is Governor
Hunt, and DR.. Lindsay as first Presi-
dent. This institution has just been
established upon firm financial basis
by the appropriation to the insular
aI1thOrized nv President