This cartoon depicts a representation of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "The White Man's Burden". Originally published in February, 1899 the poem's philosophy quickly developed as the United States response to annexation of the Philippines. The United States used the "white man's burden" as an argument for imperial control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico on the basis of moral necessity. It was now the United States' moral duty to develop and modernize the conquest lands in order to help carry the foreign barbarians to civilization.