Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1917-07-13
THE LAND or. MoNANA !

Where, Soft voweIs Make Soft
Answer and Turn Away Tasks I'M
to the Morrow. American fand
Spanish temperament which Can
not Mix. s
NO. 2.
While nominalHy in control of Por-
to Rico which we have to visit on
our way to the Danish West Indies,
Or Virgin Islands as they are now
called, the United states has de
ferred granting citizenship to the
Porto Ricans until this year There
fore with the purchase of the Dan
ish West Indies, and the grant of
citizenship to Porto Rico we have
gained in the neighborhood of a mil
lion and half citizens at the same
time.
Porto Rico is so densely populated
that we feel safe in saying that we
have gained more citizens to the
square mile than in any other part
of the country. And what are these
citizens?
A Mixed Race
Ask them and they will inform you
that they are Porto Ricanians, that
is, If you can talk Spanish. Look
at them and you will guess them all
the way from Brown Leghorns UP to
White Wyandottes. They run the
list of colors from light to dark
with all the intervening shades. But
when you get down to cases you
Will find as many degrees of caste
as there are shades. All dark per-
sons are not Africans, and by the
same token all light persons are not
CaucaSlans. -Four hundred years of
time in which the currents and cross
currents of humanity have ebbed and
flowed across the island has natur-
ally produced much mixed race, in
which the Spanish and Indian pre-
dominate. In the interior the bulk
of the people are of pure Spanish
descent. Near the coast and in the
larger cities there are a great num-
Der Of negroes. To the CASUAL OBJ
server there seems to be no color
line, but in social life there is but
little mingling.
There are many pure Spanish, and
the merchants and many of the
larger planters belong to this class
They are keen business men and to
their thrift and foresight much of
the success of the island may be at
tributed.- The Porto Rican of the
poorer class is not overburdened
with energy. Tomorrow will do as
we'll as today. He is satisfied with
existence, and takes the ups and
downs of life-mostly downs-with a
calm philosophy. He will work if
necessary, but he prefers not to. He
Is the thorn in the side of the
planter, who must depend on him to
harvest the crop. Labor problems
produce more gray hairs than any
other cause.
Question of Temperament
They will never understand the
American with his push and sweat
and worry, nor will the American
ever understand the Porto Rican
with his lassitude, ineptitude, and
procrastination. The Porto Rican
has watched the American invasion.
He has stood stin while sixty per
cent of the island has been absorbed
by Americans. He has watched val
ues go up and up and up, and still
dreams on. He has seen land go
from a few pennies to as MANY dol
lars an acre and he has failed to
get on and ride up with the pro-
cesSlon. He has seen the jungles
give place to rich orchards of grape
fruit; the barren lands spring to
lie with rich irrigated cane fields;
the acreage of tobacco and coffee
multiplied almost as by magic. but
1t has mattered not He has seen
filth and disease give way to clean
illness and sanitation; he has seen
the roads gradually fill with snorting
automobiles, crowding the slow OK
teams to the side, and introducing
rapid transit all over the island, and
still he has not awakened from his
four hundred year nap. He has seen
school houses spring up all oyer the
island, colleges planted here and
there, swift sailing steam vessels
plying to and from his ports. but it
mas changed him not To be sud-
denly awakened and showed four
hundred years ahead in a single day
is too much to expect of frail human
nature especially when Teayened by
the yellow rays of the tropics. And
so the Porto Rican finds himself a
bad third in the race for, fame, the