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3748
former Republican Congress and this Republican Congress have 
been very considerate of the interests of the sugar syndicates of the 
islands. What have we secured by this acquisition of territory?   Let 
me enumerate some of the most tangible things: Forty-five thousand 
Japanese contract laborers; 25,000 Chinese; 15,000 Portuguese; 1,000 
South Sea Islanders; 1,200 lepers; the bubonic plague; a class of 
political speculators who were planning to have an oligarchy under the 
protection of Uncle Sam. Your committee has endeavored, so far as 
possible, to frame a bill that would rectify many evils existing in 
these islands.   But there are very many bad conditions which can 
not be changed by legislation.   Only time itself will make many 
desired changes possible.   It will be along time before the conditions 
of the islands will afford any remunerative employment to any 
considerable number of American laborers. I can not support this 
bill unless it is further amended relative to the labor system and the 
land system.   We should legislate now to prevent the enforcement of 
contracts under the contract-labor system, no matter whether the 
contracts were made heretofore or shall be made hereafter.   We 
want no semislavery or serfdom anywhere under the American 
flag.   Give the sugar planters, rice growers, and mill owners of 
Hawaii to understand that they are under the Constitution of the 
United States and that they must respect our laws.   I shall favor the 
following amendment to section 10: Provided, That no suit or proceedings 
shall be maintained for the specific performance of any contract heretofore or 
hereafter entered into for personal labor or service, nor shall any remedy exist or 
be enforced for breach of any such contract, except a civil suit or proceedings 
instituted solely to recover damages for such breach.
There should also be specific legislation to put in force the laws of 
the United States prohibiting the creation or continuance of long 
leases of valuable lands and directing the survey and subdivision of 
all the public lands as a part of the heritage of the people.   The 
commissioners in their report, in speaking of this subject, say: The large 
holdings [of land] have become larger, and the small ones have been driven out 
or absorbed.  Thus the prime object of American citizenship, the making of 
homes and the complete development of the family as the unit of our social 
system, seems in a degree to have been lost sight of in the Hawaiian Islands. 
HAWAII AND, PUERTO RICO.
It seems that Hawaii is to fare far better at the hands of the 
American Congress than poor, starving Puerto Rico.   It would 
perhaps take a ponderous statesman from New York, or a pro-
found expounder of the Constitution from Pennsylvania, or an 
Athenian lawyer from Ohio to tell why this should be.   The 
Committee on Territories has tried to do its "plain duty" in this 
matter, guided by the injunctions of the Constitution and the 
promptings of the sense of justice, honor, and right.   No tariff 
customs are to be imposed on products coming from Hawaii into 
this country or on products going from this country into Hawaii. 
There will be free trade.   It is unfortunate for the Puerto Ricans 
that the matter of legislating for them was not referred to the 
Committee on Territories.   It is personally gratifying to me to say 
to the members of this House that I can safely count a majority of 
our committee in favor of free trade with Puerto Rico, and the 
others, I believe, are open to conviction without any sugar-coated, 
tobacco-steeped, or ruin-soaked influence.    [Applause.] Had the 
legislation for Puerto Rico been intrusted to the Committee on 
Territories, no doubt the Republican party would have been saved 
from the sorry predicament that it is now in.   The President's 
recommendations as to "our plain duty" would have been carried 
out.   He. would have been saved from the humiliating position in 
which he is now placed.   How distressing it must be to him to be 
misrepresented by his friends!   How harassing it must be to him to 
note the contradictions of those who profess to speak for him! The 
Washington Star of March 27, a consistent and ardent Administration 
paper, speaks thus editorially:
The President has, in his annual message, made recommendation to Congress, 
and that calls for legislation.   The people expect and demand legislation.   If, 
therefore. Congress shows itself incapable of action, what is more likely, what 
would be more justified in the circumstances, than the election of a House 
next fall instructed to do what the country manifestly wants done about this 
business?   If a Republican House disappoints the people and embarrasses the 
situation in the Senate, the alternative naturally is a Democratic House.   Are 
the Republicans maneuvering to lose the next House? Suppose the question, by 
the cowardice of Congress, is left to the President.   The President is committed 
to free trade with Puerto Rico.   His message to Congress on the subject is so far 
his only quotable deliverance.   This man and that, after a visit to the White 
House, has said this thing and that, going to show that the President has 
changed his mind, but the message is official and still stands.   The President 
will be his party's standard bearer In the campaign.   He will want to succeed 
himself in the White House.  The people will be demanding free trade with 
Puerto Rico.   If he is left with a free band, will ho not act in conformity with 
his views and his own and his party's interests? But while that might save 
him, it would not be likely to cave the next House.   Let the free traders 
stand to their guns: and let the tariff men take notice.  The storm is not going 
to blow over.   The man who imagines that

imagines a vain thing.   If a tariff bill is passed, every line written against it in 
the Republican press will bo so much ammunition for the Democrats when the 
national campaign begins.
But the distinguished Speaker of this House, who assisted to bring 
Republican members into line for tariff on Puerto Rican products, 
in a letter recently given to the public press, has this to say:
What the Senate is going to do is problematical.   It has its share of cowards.   
The Senate is always the body upon which the great interests concentrate their 
efforts to defeat proper legislation.   But this fact remains, that I have the 
knowledge that 1 have done my simple duty, and have done it in consultation 
and in cooperation with the President of the United States, whoso heart, is quick 
to feel the afflictions of this little island; I have done it in conference with such 
men as ALLISON, FORAKER, and the earnest patriots of the Senate.
Now, who is the real mouthpiece of the President?   It is "confusion 
confounded " to have such state of affairs existing.   Has the 
President changed his mind? Did not members on this floor say that 
they had changed their minds because the President had changed his 
mind?   Had they all been to see "Dr. HANNA," the wonderful mind 
changer?      Hawaii is to have free trade with this country; 
representation in Congress; all the privileges and rights that any 
other of our organized Territories enjoys.   Yet, her population is 
the most heterogeneous mass of humanity to be found on any equal 
area on the globe.   More than half of the inhabitants are Asiatics. 
They are not citizens, and they do not intend to become citizens. 
Only about a third of the people will be given the right of franchise. 
No one will deny that the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, in the 
aggregate, are superior to those of Hawaii.   They are better material 
out of which to make a good American Territory.   The population is 
more homogeneous than that of Hawaii. The Puerto Rican labor 
system is not cursed by any species of slavery or serfdom.   The land 
is quite generally in small tracts. The following pertinent editorial on 
this subject appeared in the Philadelphia North American 
(Republican) March 9:
THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII.
Whatever may happen to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, at least, is fairly on the way to 
American government.   The Senate has passed the bill creating it a Territory, 
with a governor, legislature, courts, and a full outfit of civil officials.    The 
internal revenue, customs, and navigation laws of the United States are 
extended to the islands, and the new Territory is to be represented by a 
Delegate in Congress. Every argument in favor of extending these favors to 
Hawaii applies with double force to Puerto Rico.   Hawaii is over 2.000 miles 
from our western coast.   Puerto Rico is within half that distance of the shore line 
of our original thirteen States.   Hawaii has a little over a hundred thousand 
people, of whom the great majority are Kanakas. Japanese, and Chinese.   Puerto 
Rico has nearly a million people, among whom those of European race predomi-
nate.   In Hawaii any government that takes account of fitness as we understand it 
must necessarily be a pure oligarchy.   In Puerto Rico the materials of 
democracy are present; all that is necessary are schooling and experience. The 
Puerto Ricans are the same sort of people-that have been governing themselves 
for over half a century under our flag in Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of 
Colorado and California, except that they are of purer white stock.   Of the 
same race in the United States we have made governors, Congressmen, and 
ministers to foreign capitals.   If we establish public schools in which every 
Puerto Rican child can gain an education, there is no reason why a home-rule 
government may not be maintained there with credit both to us and to the 
islanders. Bat Hawaii makes a good beginning. "The extension of the American 
system to that group assures us that expansion is not to bo entirely divorced 
from republicanism.   The American who reclines under the flag at Honolulu may 
feel that he is truly at home. In honor, in justice, and in right we are 
bound to treat Puerto Rico as favorably as we do Hawaii.   I 
congratulate Hawaii that she has fallen into the hands of friends.   I 
pity Puerto Rico that she has seemingly fallen into the clutches of 
despoilers.    [Applause.]                               Mr. MCALEER.   I 
yield thirty minutes to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. DE ARMOND]. 
Mr. DE ARMOND.  Mr. Chairman, there are a few features of this 
bill to which I desire to call the attention of the House.   One is the 
concluding section with relation to the Chinese now in Hawaii.   It 
provides: That Chinese in the Hawaiian Islands when this act takes effect may 
within one year thereafter obtain certificates of residence as required by "An 
act to prohibit the coming of Chinese persons into the United States," approved 
May 5 1893, as amended by an act approved November 3, 1893, entitled "An act to 
amend an act entitled  'An act to prohibit the coming of Chinese persons into 
the United States,' approved May 6, 1893." and until the expiration of said year 
shall not bo deemed to be unlawfully in the United States if found therein 
without such certificates. Everyone is aware, I suppose, that the 
Hawaiian Islands are filled with Chinese; that a large number of 
people of that race were there when those islands came under the 
dominion of the United States, and that great hordes of Asiatics 
have been imported since. All here are also aware, I suppose, that 
but a few short years since a tremendous agitation shook this 
country, and especially the Pacific slope, over the menace of 
Chinese cheap labor, and that it was thought necessary that 
legislation, extremely drastic and denounced by some as uncivilized 
and cruel, should be resorted to in order to deal with the Chinese 
problem and exclude he competition that threatened our white 
domestic labor.

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