The Manchester journal. [volume] (Manchester, Vt.) 1861-current, 1917-05-24

| acre and he abs fat!ed 70 get on an
ride up with the procession. He ha
seen the iungles give place to riel
orchards Of grape fruit; the barrel
lands spring 10 life with rich irrigatc'
cane fields; the acreage Of tobacc,
and coffee multiplied almost as b!
magic, but II has mattered not HI
has seen filth and disease give wal
TO cleanliness and sanitation; he hal
seen the roads gradually fill will
snorting automobiles, crowding III,
slow OK teams to the side, and intro
ducing rapid transit all over the isIanc
and still he has not awakened from hi
four hundred year nap. He has seer
school houses sprang up all over the
island, colleges planted here and there
swift sailing steam vessels plying Il
and from his ports, but il has chang.
ed him not. To be suddenly awakened
and showed four hundred years ahead
in single day is too much 10 expect
of frail human nature especially when
leavened by the yellow rays Of the
tropisc And so the Porto Rican finds
himself a bad third in the race for
fame, the finish being Americans first,
Spanish second and the Porto Rican
way back down the stretch.
Will they awaken? That is the
question every humanitarian is ask
ing who is interested in the problem.
The department of education, the ar
my, the clergy, are all working on the
problem. They see improvement, but
it is dreadfully slow. The hope is in
the coming generation. The schools
are industriously teaching English,
the official. language" Results so
far are scarcely perceptible. The
children take readily to books but so
far as the language is concerned they
lapse into Spanish as soon as the
school door is closed behind them. Of
ficially, English is spoken, but one
cannot go far on that. Ask a police
man to direct you and he will greet
you with an apologize smile but you
will get no further. Occasionly al
chauifer will talk what he imagines is
English but your mind will not be
enriched by what he tells you. Some
of the clerks in the stores speak Eng
lish, but that is for commercial pur-
poses only. The stranger touring the
island will find himself handicapped at
every turn unless he speaks Spanish.
Where Soft Vowels Obtain
The American who has lived for
any length of time in the island has
taught himself Spanish. He sees the
need of it in his business. The Porto
Rican who could profit to the same
extent were he to learn English has
not yet discovered that he could turn
the same trick Occasionly there are
exceptions to the general rule and
when we find the exception we find
a fellow making good. After strug-
ling against the overwhelming odds
of current of soft voWeled Spanish, |
it is a blessed relief to find someone
who can speak United States and one
is willing to give up handsomely just
to hear the language, and in most
cases the giving is good.
If the foregoing has enlightened the
readers Of this paper as to the char
acter and kind of peoples who are
now become United States citizens
your correspondent is delighted. II
however, after reading the foregoing,
you have to admit you know no more
about them than before, you will be
in the same class with your CORES
pendent. More than this you will be
in the same general class with most
Of the Americans who have inhabited
Porto Rico since the occupation. No
one claims to understand the native.
Conquest Of territory would be fun
If it were not for the people. We
Americans have happy faculty of
Judging the amount of revenue to be
squeezed out of proposition. When
we occupied Porto Rico we were not
ong in sizing up the money making
We went in and made
good. Sugar, tobacco, cocoanuts, cof-
Zee, grape fruit and oranges. We
nave developed mineral possessions,
yuano fields and veins Of coal. We
nave foated irrigation projects, water
supplies, trolley roads, electric lights,
md all modern necessities. While this
las been going on the man on the
ground who knew all about the soil
md its resources long before the
American occupation has merely look
d on.
Tropic Philosophy
He has politely stepped aside and
watched US work our heads off, and
lie don't understand yet why we do it.
a - he, ice