this trade

empire of

Think for a moment

lions of people who have just begun their development of civilization and trade. To-day, without organized effort, we sell them twenty-five million dollars per year, and within a short time we will make it seventy-five million dollars. That means much to you. The mind can scarcely comprehend our interests in when we consider our opportunities in an four million square miles, inhabited by an energetic people just opening their eyes to civilization. There is scarcely an article which you manufacture in Newark which cannot be sold in China. of an empire of this vast extent with less than four hundred miles of railroad. You have more than that amount in the city of Newark. In the matter of railroad building, we can undersell any other country. As an illustration of the opportunities of trade, they are to-day arranging to construct twenty thousand miles of railroad which will cost four hundred millions of dollars, and a vast part of this work should be in the hands of this country. Great cities are being built in Northern China. Here are the termini of the longest line of railroad in the world. Within a short time in this new territory, the American locomotive has undersold those of every other country, and this year China has purchased from you and the South about eleven millions of dollars of cotton. Here are fast developing the great cotton markets of the world. These people need everything we manufacture. Already we have built up a great trade in cottons, machinery,

leather goods, electric goods, chemicals, railroad equipment, tools, hardware, and the general products of our workshops. At the present rate of progress, our trade with China will, in fifteen years, be the most important of any trade in the world. With the short time at my disposal, it would be impossible to discuss it specifically. Here, sir, within twenty-five years, will be the world's field of trade. We deal with China through treaty rights, and these treaty rights are in jeopardy. Today the mercantile nations of the world, Russia, Germany, England, and France, appreciating the marvellous possibilities of this great country, have established zones of control, which practically means that the United States, if she desires the markets of China, must come hat in hand and take the crumbs which fall from the table. I will add that from the table of the Lion, the Bear, and the Eagle fall but few crumbs. Under the vigorous policy of the State Department, arrangements, which are practically temporary, have been effected by which the door is not yet closed to us. We demand a vigorous policy which will be permanent in its effect, under which the rights of this country shall be preserved and under which the markets of China shall not be turned over to European nations as their own exclusive property, but shall be held alike on terms of absolute equality for the citizens of the United States. In this demand the South is urgent and insistent, and her greatest manufacturing organization has just demanded that the trade door of

China should be kept wide open to the markets of the world.

Now, sir, we are face to face with the great question, How shall we keep open to our country the door of the great Chinese and Eastern market? There is but one door for us and that is through the Philippine Islands. Here is the real strategical and commercial position of the East. Every Eastern market can be reached far more easily through these islands than from any other position. Shanghai and Hongkong, through which cities England has established her great trade, offer no such position for commercial success as do the Philippines. It gives control of the great northern and central coast of China, with its teeming, active population. It puts us in a position to grasp through them the markets of Japan with its forty millions of energetic people and its annual foreign trade of two hundred and fifty million dollars. The great coast line of the Philippine Islands of eight hundred miles practically dominates the northern coast of China, capable of a foreign trade of a billion dollars per year. We have less than ten per cent. of the Eastern trade, which amounts to two billion dollars per year, and our possibilities are apparent to every one. On this coast to-day are the greatest commercial activities extant. Manila can easily become, and will become, the distributing centre of the Eastern world. Here every commercial condition is at its best. Within a radius of twenty-five hundred miles we reach every great trade centre in

the East and Australia. From this broad harbor our country will be mistress of the Eastern civilization as she is of the Western. In the islands for a century to come there is a field for the restless energies of our people, which, in our own country, will soon be denied to them. The foreign trade of these islands, which is now about thirty-five millions, under the vigorous vitalization of our people, will, according to the best experts, amount in five years to one hundred and fifty millions. In these islands abound the products needed for mankind, and it is the richest undeveloped territory yet remaining on earth. Holding no position in the East but that of a country having a treaty with an empire whose dismemberment has begun, our victory at Manila and the subsequent treaty gave to us a political and commercial position in the East which has heretofore been denied us. It prevented the dismemberment of the Empire of China, and it has given us the right of an open door to her markets. Without our position in the Philippines our commercial treaties with China would be valueless, and upon our withdrawal from those islands the Chinese Empire would not last a month, and its rich market would be forever lost to the people of this country. Without obtruding a political discussion upon this occasion, I say, very frankly, for I am used to plain speech, that, whatever may be the views of party, the commercial and business people of this nation have no intention of turning over this last great commercial Gibraltar to

the Imperial Eagle of Germany which so impatiently awaits it.

The real sentiment of the people is illustrated by what occurred in my home last month. The son of a Southern soldier, a man of my name and blood, limped into my home with a Filipino bullet in his thigh. When I discussed with him the question of our giving up possession and control of the Philippines he significantly remarked, "The United States has never yet given up that for which she has fought, and certainly never that for which she has both fought and paid." I do not understand that our maintaining a commercial and political interest in these islands is incompatible with the fullest freedom for its inhabitants. Many who oppose our retaining any interest in these islands seem to imply that our retention of them is for the purpose alone of establishing a tyranny over the inhabitants. I find that thoughtful men are in favor of establishing the jurisdiction of our government, giving the Filipinos full control of their local affairs when they are able to manage them, and allowing them the highest measure of liberty, such liberty as they have never enjoyed, and such as they will not enjoy if our flag should be removed therefrom. To leave the islands is to turn them over to anarchy or to the German Imperial Government. Neither one of these conditions will be contemplated by the American people. Our people will work out the question according to good sense and in such manner as will give the Filipinos the fullest liberty