The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-05-02
Freedom Move
by Puerto Rico
Held IN-Timed
Rev. MCGOWAN Contends
Economic Adjustment Is
More important.
BY THE REV. R. A. MCGOWAN

BY The KEW. X. A. MCGOWAN
The bill calling for a Puerto Rican
vote on independence came not
wholly as surprise; something Of
the sort has been under discussion
publicly in Puerto Rico and priv
ately in Washington. But this bill
Is fashioned so as to ask Puerto
Ricans to vote yes or no to the
proposition: Shall Puerto Rico COM
NIT suicide?
Puerto Rico is small marvelously
beautiful island at the turn of the
West Indies. Its people live from
the sugar, tobacco, coffee and fruit
industries, and lately, from Federal
relief money. They sell most of
what they grow Except coffee to
the United States and buy from. the
United States most of their food,
clothing and housing. 1t is an out
rageously unbalanced way of work.
ing and living-exporting nearly all
theJproducts of their land and their
work and importing nearly all the
goods they use. Puerto Rico is q
kind of factcry-town.
And the reason is this: Puerto
Rican leaders themselves genera
ton ago and we, when we got con-
troll, decided that that was the way
to live. Concentrate on few money
crops. Establish large corporations.
Set up big landlords Dispossess
the masses of the people. Turn
them into farm laborers. Pay them
little. Work them hard in the farm
ing seasons. Let 'em rot at other
times. But give them schools.
1t is the fashion in Puerto Rico
to blame the United States wholly.
But some Puerto Ricans themselves
wanted it and helped it. For that
was the road to progreSSl In the
progress three things happened
poverty grew to terrible proportions.
Lands and resources not needed for
these cash crops fell out of use:
for there was no great domestic
market, since the masses of the peo-
pie in their poverty lived on the
cheapest and most filling imported
foods, like rice and salt fish and
beans. The chief ownership of
sugar, fruit, tobacco, banking and
trade fell into the hands of con-
tinental Americans.
Here is a situation that can not
be met by grandiose gesture. The
Federal government has been pour
ing relief money into the island,
even if in smaller amounts per per-
son and per person unemployed
than here in the States. 1t has also
inaugurated a program looking to
land distribution, increasing produc-
tion for home use, setting up a
'yardStick" to regulate the prices
and wages that the sugar mills pay,
encouraging co-operatives, etc. It
looks like very good program.
In December the American chief
of police was shot and there have
been disturbances both before and
since. A small Nationalist Party
has been blamed. The sugar inter-
estS, chiefly Continental American,
are fighting the new economic pro-
gram. So, too, are some of the cof-
fee owners who are Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Ricans are capable, fine
people. You like them. The terri
flying cross currents of forces and
ideas threaten to engulf them, how
ever. Any program coming from
Washington, and, indeed, any pro-
gram of fundamental economic
change is bound to meet strong OPP
position. The opposition is discour-
aging. But now is no time for
vote on independence. Puerto Rico
has to get out from under the in
cubus of the cash-crop system and
the foreign ownership without starv-
ing its people. 1t can not 90 that
in the period this bill provides; and
until it goes far towards doing so.
independence is suicide. 1t is so far
from doing so yet that the situa-
ton should not be seized on at this
time to establish something per-
manent.