The Idaho scimitar. [volume] (Boise, Idaho) 1907-1908, 1907-11-16

neeQ lear. Ii mas Deen proven a thousand tunes
that cheap labor, long it is free labor, is the
most expensive thing earth. Voltaire remarked
long ago that the prosperity of country was in
versely proportioned to its natural advantages This
was merely an epigram, but it has this of truth
about it, that the human factor is far important
than the natural factors in producing wealth, and
that the human factor reaches his best save
where the climate has compelled mankind to learn
the habits of steady industry The tropical workman
is usually lazy, usually uncertain, and when not in
curaby stupid is yet more incurably revolutionary
An industrial system, built upon the tropical work
free agent would inevitably fail
"But the very of the situation is that with
American officials in control of the Philippines and
American capital largely embarked in Philippine in
dustry, the workman of the islands would not and
could not remain free agent With the wishes of
a foreign landlord and foreign taskmaster backed
up by foreign courts and foreign bayonets, the Fill
pino might not be slave in name but there be
doubt that he would be slave in reality 1t is
but the other day that system of peonage, differing
from slavery chiefly in name, was discovered and
broken up in Alabama. If such thing could even
start in country, where a great political
party makes much of its capital out of the wrongs
of the negro race and with ten thousand newspapers
ready to carry the of the evil to the tribunal
of public opinion, what chance would the Filipino
stand, with vote that any party cared about with
power to resist by force, with all the machinery
of government in the hands of his masters, and with
the only effective public opinion ten thousand miles
away? The answer must be plain to the dullest.
With the islands under American rule, and with
American trusts controlling the industrial situation
should have sugar plantations copying the mines
of the Rand, with coolie Filipino worlnen herd
ed in barracoons under American guns, driven to
work by American overseers, their labor guided by
American science and its products dumped on the
American market to fill the pockets of American
trusts. That is what the administration policy would
surely lead to- and the proof may be seen today in
Queensland in Egypt, in the Barbados in India
in short, tropical workmen can be forced
to labor under white overseers for wage that
would keep none but tropical workman alive TO
call such plan free trade is total misuse of Ian
guage.
There is another element to be considered Pro-
erations. Any change, matter how necessary
and the News believes a change absolute-nust
cause some unsettlng of prices and consequent loss
on the part OF those who have put their trust in gov
and embarked in enterprises they would
nave kept clear OF but for governmental meddling
The plainest principles of justice demand that the
hange shall be gradual and all along the line shall
make for the freeing of all industries for the fur
her profting of few The administration plan did
ust the opposite of this 1t made the Western farm
r meet the competition of the Orient on hides and
ugar and tobacco and other things; while he still
ad to faten the Golfers of the trusts by the tariff
objected bounty lumber and barbed wire, and
ools, and machinery, and window glass-on every
hing, in short from the rubber nipple on his babys
ottle to the tombstone that tells the world the vr-
les of his sainted mother-in-law