World's Production of Iron Ore, Coal, Pig Iron and Steel, According to Latest Statistics: China and Filipinos

The same is in a measure true regarding the Philippine Islands. Rice, their great staple, is all consumed in supplying food for that vast population of some 11,000,000 people, and although the soil and climate are adapted to cotton, the inhabitants prefer to produce other articles, and nearly all the cotton used in the one cotton-mill in Manila is imported, and much of it comes from New Orleans.

Sugar is produced in large quantities, but the largest export any year was some eight years ago when it reached 261,000 tons.

It is true that cotton to the amount of one and a half to two million bales is raised in the Chinese empire, but it is substantially all manufactured in the localities where it is grown.

At present the principal imports into China from America are cotton goods, flour and coal-oil. In 1897 the United States exported to China cotton goods to the amount of $7,500,000, coal-oil to the amount of $5,000,000, and last year China took $4,000,000 worth of flour from the United States. This is but a small fraction of the foreign trade of this empire. The exports to and imports from Great Britain alone were $200,000,000 during one year, four years ago, and they have increased steadily ever since that time.

We should send wise and conservative agents among the people with whom we seek to establish trade relations. The importance of using every possible effort to avoid antagonizing prejudices cannot be overrated.

It is true that within certain limitations human nature has been found to be the same in all places and during all ages, but the important question in dealing with these people is to realize in the beginning that their training and the training of their ancestors running back for centuries has been different from ours. Ignoring this truth accounts in a great measure for the difficulties in our dealings with the people of China. This is well explained by A. R. Colquhoun in his work entitled "China in Transformation."

On page 265, he says:

"Almost every conceivable action of a Chinaman's life is prescribed by a minute etiquette which no one dreams of disregarding. Being unintelligible to foreigners, this necessarily creates friction in their mutual relations. But in addition to this the Chinese, even the most reasonable and most practicable, are under the dominion of sorcerers and fortune-tellers and the reign of luck to such an extent, that they are in constant apprehension of doing or saying things at the wrong time, the wrong place, in the wrong way, or in company with the wrong people. A promising combination may be spoiled by some occult warning, and a Chinaman may often have bad faith imputed to him when he is really under the constraint of some influence which he dare not avow, and which causes him to make a shuffling and mendacious excuse."

So it is, in a measure, with the Filipinos. We must consider that for years these people have been constant sufferers from Spanish duplicity, and for two years they have been repeatedly told that Americans have come to the Islands to inflict hardships and impose burdens far more unendurable than anything they had suffered under the Spaniards. Constant efforts have been made to convince them that the only purpose Americans have in view is to rule the islands for their own benefit and to the detriment of the Filipinos.

No greater mistake can be made than to attempt the enforcement of American ideas and customs upon our new people. France has been very unfortunate in her late efforts at colonization. Her possessions in Asia are rich and prosperous countries. She has Cochin-China with an area of 22,000 square miles and nearly 2,000,000 people, Cambodia with 62,000 square miles and 1,000,000 people, Annam, including Tongking, with 250,000 square miles, and 20,000,000 population; and yet the total trade is only about 250,000,000 francs, and much of this is monopolized by England. Colquhoun gives one reason.

He says, pages 330-331:

"But they have not the power of adapting themselves to new peoples and to new countries.

"The majority of the colonial officials, according to Chailley-Bert, set about the work of governing by bringing with them that passion for uniformity, that mania for routine, that love of making regulations, that dread of initiative and of responsibility which crush the mother-country as well as the most vigorous of her colonies. The French codes are applied without change in every quarter of the world, and in the modern Eastern possessions exactly as they were in the old colonies of France."

The Spanish war though brief in its duration has been momentous in its results. During a third of a century of peace we had become the leading of all nations in material progress, and in a war of less than one hundred days our victories on both land and sea demonstrated to the world that we were superior to all nations in martial prowess, and in maintaining the highest order of military and naval skill.

It has made us all prouder that we are Americans. The newest yet the richest country on earth - a country which has always sought to remain at peace with all the world, yet when forced into war, startled mankind by the courage, endurance and heroism of her soldiers and the victories they won; a country which has always sought to avoid entangling alliances or interference with other nations. Yet our fair, honorable, just and wise diplomacy has won for us the respect and admiration of all civilized people.