ing to open the ports of the United States
directly to the tropical products of the two greatest archipelagos of
the world, and indirectly, through the Open Door we have pledged in the
Philippines, to all the products of all the world! You guarantee
directly to the cheap labor of these tropical regions, and indirectly,
but none the less bindingly, to the cheap labor of the world, free
admission of their products to this continent, in unrestricted
competition with our own higher-paid labor. And as your whole tariff
system is thus plucked up by the roots, you must resort to direct
taxation for the expenses of the General Government.

Secondly, as if this were not enough, you have made these tropical
laborers citizens,--Chinese, half-breeds, pagans, and all,--and have
given them the unquestionable and inalienable right to follow their
products across the ocean if they like, flood our labor market, and
compete in person on our own soil with our own workmen.

Is that the feast to be set before the laboring men of this country? Is
that the real inwardness of the Trojan horse pushed forward against our
tariff wall, in the name of humanity, to suffering Porto Rico? What a
programme for the wise humanitarians who have been bewitching the world
with noble statesmanship at Washington to propose laying before the
organized labor of this country as their chosen platform for the
approaching Presidential campaign! They need have no fear the
intelligent workingmen of America will fail to appreciate the sweet
boon they offer.

[Sidenote: The Patriotic Aspect of it.]

But if the question thus raised at the bar of politics may seem to some
only food for laughter, that at the bar of patriotism is matter for
tears. If the islanders are already citizens, then they are entitled to
the future of citizens. If the territory is already an integral part of
the United States, then by all our practice and traditions it has the
right to admission in States of suitable size and population. Is it
said we could keep them out as we have kept out sparsely settled New
Mexico? How long do you expect to keep New Mexico out, or Oklahoma, or
Arizona? What luck did you have in keeping out others--even Utah, with
its bar sinister of the twin relic of barbarism? How long would it take
your politicians of the baser sort to combine for the admission of the
islands whose electoral votes they had reason to think they could
control?

But it is said that Porto Ri