The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-05-03
BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION.

When the late President M'Kinley in an unusually inspired moment referred to the American control of the Philippines as a case of beneyo- lent assimilation, the papers jubil- antly delighted in the phrase and repeated it with ell the delight of a child with new toy. Writers and speakers ventured to repeat the words with excessive unction, and the phrase like charity covered J
 nuititpde of the iniquities of imperi-
 Time has passed since then, and il is interesting to notc the process of benevolent assimilation that has proceeded For assimilation has pro- ceeded, but it is not wholly one sided, and not wholly of type which the late M'K.nlcy had in his mind when he made uce of the phrase.
 The natives have themselves been subjected by American minds and American ideas to an assimilation to a certain extent, but they have also affected them to a no less degree.
 Thus we find high and shrewd and ahle military snd civil officials openly supporting the notion of po- lygamy among certain of the island CTS, openly advocating it's mainten- ance before Congressional Commit tees, and when as satraps of the inn perial government they ruled those sections; officially endorsing the practice.
 It might be urged that our civilt- zation is after all essentially polyga- nous. It may be said that more often than not men in high places have their illegal wives and sucn scandalous conditions are more ire quent than people imagine. Even Il this is so, and that it is true to d certain extent may be admitted, yet some sense of decency and conyen- tion has at least cloaked the ton dency, and they affect at least the outward decencies of homogeneous existence.
 And certainly nothing cou' eN- ceed the bitter denunciation of poly gamy as such when affecting Amer ican citizens in the American state of Utah, and it has been condemned as utterly un-American and utterly foreign to the spirit of the country,
 But an occupation of the Pbillipines has changed all that, and the officials return ac- vising that the system h certain sections of the archipelago be approved with official sanction There's some assimilation for you never entered the philosophy of the late President M'Kinley.
 Not only that but in the ideals of government the imperialistic con- troI of an alien peope, alien in man. ner. feelings, sentiment, ways or life. ideas, education, ambitions, has been marked with an extraordinary effect upon the American people.
 If we take up the preamble to the of Independence, we behold therein stated some political facts which are supposed at least to be the basis of American existence.
 There is not one single one or those fundamental facts, cardinal principles of the political condition of a free republic, which has not been utterly ruthessly and com pletely violated by the American oc- cupation of the Philippines anu which makes the Declaration of In~ dependence as construed by a Fill pino nationalist an incendiary docu-- ment as far as the United States Is 
 This surely is a benevolent assi- imitation was not clearly foreseen by some of those wh2 unctuousiy re- Deated the phrase first made use Of by M'Kinley. Yet it is one of over magnitude, To change rom the ideation of republic to he ideation of ruling imperialism S national fate that cannot he gnored.
 The American occupation of the Philippines has been without doubt | if considerable benefit to the na- ives. It has given them oppor-