The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-15
BACK TO BARBARISM
NEGROES OF THE WEST INDIES
 ARE DRIFTING THITHER.
Conditions in the IsIands--where the Blacks Have Control Race Problem is
 Being Settled Against the White Man.

IohulIaDns Tn the ISlnuds-Nhere the ] Blacks Have Control Race Problem is I Being Settled Against the White Man. l l have recently returned from a trip to the West Indies and the Spanish main, in, the course of which I visited most of the Windward as well as the Leeward Islands of the group, writes Lambert Tree, in the Chicago Tribune. We went withinw 10 degreezes of the equator and found 1t hot down there with 90 to 95 in the shade.
 ! l had summer seas and blue skies in the tropics all the time, and the trip was in many respects interesting. Of course l saw our new colonial acquisi- ton, Porto Rico, and have no tears to shed on account of its being ours, al- belt l wish the population was of higher grade; we cannot have every thing in this world, though, just as We would like it, and besides, if there [ were not room for improvement in the people of the island, neither would there be any room for progress.
 ! They are in high feather down there just now with the brilliant prospect of large crop of sugar, on which they expect to realize a net profit of 50 per cent. On the whole, things are decid- edly looking up in the affairs of the is land under American auspices.
 1 One of the saddest sights I have ever seen in my life is the ruins of the | city of St. Pierre, Martinique, whose population of 10000 was wiped out, it is said, in 30 seconds by poisonous gas es which suddenly burst from the sides of Mount Pelee at the time of the er- uption three years ago. Only the walls of the great warehouses along the quay and of the cathedral halls, theatres, churches, business houses and homes remain as silent witnesses to testify that there was once an active, gay and bustling French city standing there.
 The streets are heaped 10 feet deep with ashes, belched forth form the cra- ter. The trees which once shaded it's streets and adorned it's famous botani- cal gardens are leahess and ugly monuments of it's destruction. When I landed from the ship in 9 small boat not soul survied to meet me and tell the story of that fearless moment.
 i All was the silence of death, and there was not even the rustic of the fer de lance among the pitiful ruins that dreaded snake whose bite is cer- tain and speedy death and which used to infest the sides of Pelee, and steal down sometimes. it is said, into the gardens of St. Perre. It, too, has been eliminated from the scene by the i'm partial volcano. which spared neither sex, age, collar nor any living thing.
 In our cruise we followed, in part, the same watery paths pursuied by Columbus more than four centuries ago, and saw personified in some of the islands, if not paradises inhabited by devils, at least gardens of Eden controlled by populations which were apparently, drifting back into that barbarism whence they were taken when they were brought over by En- glish, French and Spanish slaves and distributed among them.
 The racial problem is being worked out in the tropical West Indies, and worked out, if not in favor of the ne- gro, at least against the white man. No refiecting person can visit those islands without feeling, after what he sees there, that the Almighty has fix ed certain zones for the habitation of the white and black races respective ily &s - .-t ;s.
 Everywhere in those islands the evidence exists that the white man has lost in the struggle which he has been maintaining for centuries there to pre- serve his radical superiority even as an inhabitant of countries within the tropical zone. .4
 Gradually but surely he has deterio- rated physically, morally and mental Ily Of all the emigrants, forced or vol untary, who have peopled those is- lands since the ruthless slaughter of the native Caribbees by the soldiers and governors from the highly civiliz- ed nations of enlightened Europe, on- fly the negro from the Congo or the gold coast of Africa, whose forebears were brought there as slaves, has fiourished. ss @ ~....
 Instead of deterlorating he has, con- sidering him as an animal physical lily improved in stature and muscular power The climate being equivalent to This own, all the rest is doubtless the re- suit of more favorable physical sur rounding as to nurture and Judgement than he had been accustomed to in Af- rica in spite of his condition of slavery. He has also multiplied rapidly until he has become in all of the islands Ivastiy dominant in numbers.
 Naturally, therefore, the white man, who has grown all the time feebler, : mentally and physically, and who each year dwindles in numbers, has already lost his hold on some of the islands, and is in fair way to lose ii on the rest of them. Cuba excepted and perhaps Porto Rico, where climate tconditions are much more favorable for him. As the white man loses his grip the black man tightens his, and \