Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-22
ROOSEVELT FACES
MANY PROBLEMS
Governor of Porto Rico Is One
of Toughest Jobs Ever AS
siqned a Public Servant.
BY FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE.

Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who is due
In Washington this week to begin an
intensive study of the problems con-
fronting him as Governor of Porto Rico,
faces one of the toughest jobs ever as
signed to a public servant OF Uncle
Sam He plans to take up his duties
at San Juan some time during the
Autumn. Meantime he will spend most
of the intervening weeks at the Bureau
of Insular Affairs in the War Depart
ment, which administers Porto Rico.
Among other sources of information to
which Col. Roosevelt will have access
in Washington Is a careful survey OF
conditions on the island, which was re-
Gently made by an important research
organization.
Porto Rico's overshadowing problem
is food and how to get enough OF 1t
to supply its rapidly multiplying pop
ulation. 1t will surprise most Amer
leans to know that the island sends
nearly everything it produces to New
York and buys its food on Manhattan
Island at New York prices. Its popula-
ton of something over 100000 in
habits an area of about the size of Long
Island. The density of population (more
than 400 to the square mile) ranks
with the most thickly inhabited sec
tons Of the United States, with nothing
to approximate the means of sustenance
to be found in this country.
Hungry Mouths Increase.
Not only is the Porto Rican birth
rate about double that of the continental
United States, but the number Of
faster than the available food. Popula-
ton conditions have brought yet an
other woe in their wake. Competition
for work is such as to force down wages
to SO, 60 or 70 cents day, and there
are not enough work days to provide
sufficient earnings for the support of a
family.
which have been more or less chronic
since the United States conquered the
island in 1898, there is the havoc
wrought by the hurricane of Septem-
Der IS, 1928. This destroyed over
100000 600 worth of property and rem
dered hundreds of thousands of Porto
RicanS homeless. The island Is still
Keeling from that blow. The American
Red Cross rushed in, fed the people and
provided lumber for thousands of little
one-room shacks. Congress authorized
an appropriation Of $4,000, 900, of which
$4,000 900 is to be spent on roads-a
sort of famine relief through public
works. The remaining $6,000,000 was
to be loaned to small farmers.
Few Helped by Loans.
Although full year has passed, the
conditions drawn up in Washington for
these rehabilitation loans were found
so strict that relatively small number
of persons are said actually to have
been helped Only an insignificant por-
ton of the 100000 ALLEGATION has
therefore been put in the hands of the
people who were to be its beneflciaries.
Ac carop1o IF tho o1IIotiOnS for h0r-
roWers, this writer is informed, 1t was
provided that hurricane sufferers could
not get money to repay costs already in
Cured in the restoring of farms. The
only man who could obtain loan was
one who had practically done nothing in
the direction of helping himself. In
other words, relief funds were made
available exclusively to farmers who
had not encountered their land by pre-
vious borrowings condition under
the circumstances that is described as
practical impossibility.
How far young eft. R." is going to be
able to 60 to remedy all these condi-
tions, nobody at this writing can VEN
ture to predict. Under the system by
which Porto Rico is administered, the
governors job is one of great response
bility. but little real authority. Though
a civilian oficer, he reports to the Sec
rotary of War at Washington through
the Bureau of Insular Affairs. On one
side of him are Army officers; on the
other, the Porto Rican politicians. Be-
tween them the governor must walk
narrow path and constantly watch his
step. Porto Rico, like all other Latin
American regions. is seething cal
dron Of party politics. The island is
full of orators. Politics is the national
amusement. A recent student of con-
ditions there declares that its legisla-
tive and municipal assemblies can dis
cuss any question under the sun longer
than any similar bodies anywhere under
the Stars and Stripes.
Seek independence.
One Porto Rican political party clam
ors for independence from the United
States. Another wants statehood, but