The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1904-02-24

Filipino labor.
Now, l hope l am a reasonable man,
and am not disposed to quarrel with
those with whom l differ. When ones
feelings of enmity are very much
aroused it is difficult to get the limit
to the expression of them. So it is
that we have the young lions Of the
American press, of the three newspa-
pers who are supposed to speak the
American public opinion in these is
lands, holding the Filipino up to con-
tempt, exposing all his supposed vices
and giving him no credit whatever for
any virtues, and 1t may be that this
represents the feeling of the majority
of the resident Americans in Manila.
But can we not in the end be just and
give to the whole Filipino people their
due? Should we wish the Filipino peo-
pie to judge of Americans by the
drunken, truculent American lOaferS
who infest the small towns of these is
lands, living on the fruits of the labor
of Filipino women and give us more
trouble than any other element in the
islands? Should we wish the Filipino
people to judge of American standards
of honesty by reading the humiliating
list of American official and unofficial
defaulters in the islands? l think not.
Contrast the Filipinos with other
Malays and the oriental peoples, and l
ask you to name a people offering
more opportunities for development
along the lines which American ideals
require than the people of these is
lands The Mohammedan, the Bud
dhist, the Chinaman, looks with a
sense of superiority on the efforts of
the Christian European nation to bet
ter his condition. He has no desire for
popular government, no longing for
individual liberty. He opposes to de-
velopment of this kind the impene-
trable wall of disdain and contempt.
The Filipino people, as a people, have
breathed in through their educated
leaders the inspiration of liberty and
free government. Many of them have
fought, bled and given up their lives
in struggle for independence. 1t was
a mistaken struggle, but their sacri-
fees and their bravery are worthy our
admiration and bespeak a people ca
pable of greater things. Their intense
desire for education, their apprecia-
ton of European and American im-
provements in dress and bodily com
forts, their artistic ambitions, their
quick desire and power to initiate the
good they see aud understand, their
openneSs to the reception of new and
better things, their political aspirations
for liberty and popular government,
however lacking in a political knowl-
edge of its difficulties and real essence
all these traits, added to a peculiar
social sense and charm, make them a
people peculiarly subject to the good
and developing influence of a friendly
and sympathetic government in which
they are given a gradually increasing
part and justify an entirely different
policy in dealing with them and pro-
noting their welfare from that which
England has found it necessary to
pursue with Mohammedan and Bud
dhist peoples having neither sympathy
with nor understanding Of modern Eu-
ropean ideas.
Were l assured that the present atti-
tude of the majority of American mer-
chants and the American press would
be permanent. and if l did not conf
IDENTIFY hope that there must be a great
change in the future, should be very
much discouraged in respect to the re-
suit of the experiment which the Unit
ed States is making in these islands.
A purely racial hatred is one of the
most difficult things possible to over
come, and if it is founded on perma-
nent conditions it is almost hopeless
to look for its ceasing. But 1 am not
discouraged. because l am sure that the
next decade will change the conditions
in the respects which I have described