Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1902 — Senator Beveridge [ARTICLE]

Senator Beveridge

On. .American -Achievements In f h e P h I I I p p l n • s

The opposition denies that a republic can govern dependencies. But we are governing them. Parallel, If you can, the progress we have made. England’s brilliant administration in India and Egypt pales before our work already accomplished in the Philippines. American civil administration was inaugurated less than ten months ago, and yet American schools have followed the American flag in every pacified province. Nearly 200,000 Filipino children are learning the American language. More than this! As American factories are working night and day in the republic, American schools are working night and day in the Philippines; and nearly 40,000 natives are now being taught in American night schools. Almost a thousand American school teachers already have followed the flag across the seas. Still more! Almost 4,000 Filipino teachers are being trained by American instructors, and are even now at work. More still! Even before our civil government began that tremendous task of education, American officers organized schools for Filipino children, and they were taught by American soldiers detailed from the ranks. The American flag! The American soldier! The American teacher! Together they march forward! Cheer their progress! Hold aloft their hands! Rally around them American voters!—they are the emblems and agencies of civilization’s noblest creation, the American republic. The Fruits of Government. The United States cannot govern? In every province where we have suppressed insurrection and shot brigandage to death, civil administration is operating, and for the first time in Philippine history, an unterrorized people are at peaceful work. Is not that government? Already roads are building, and all over the islands highways are being planned and surveyed. Within five years railways will connect Philippine valleys, mines and forests with sea-ports, and these in turn with every trade center of the globe. Are these not fruits of government? In Manila a model municipal administration has been built, and the American police of this ocean capital is unsurpassed in Europe or America. Municipal ownership has begun, and a modern ice-plant built and owned by the government furnishes ice to Manila at half the former price. Are these not results of government? A perfect public land system is being devised; and soon no native need be homeless. The best forestry laws of the world are those of Germany; the forests of Saxony pay much of her expenses. In the Philippines, forestry laws are being established perfect as those of Saxony’s. Mining laws made up of the best features of every nation and admitted by the opposition to be far superior to our own system; the grant of public franchises safeguarded as the franchises of only a few of the advanced cities of this country are safeguarded; courts in every pacified province, with appeals to supreme courts at Manila; for the first time in all the dark and bloody history of the archipelago justice to the meanest, poorest native “freely and without price, speedily and without delay” —is not all this government? I challenge an instance of a small fraction of these results during a like brief period in any land or at any time. And yet the opposition say that we cannot govern. Democratic Prophecies Discounted. Bui has the opposition’s word any weight as to what the American people era or cannot do? Even in the Demoyrratlc party’s sanest days they said that Americans could not successfully manufacture steel rails; today we sell steel rails to England. The youngest man now old enough to vote remembers the opposition’s scorn when McKinley said that America must manufacture tin; today America is the world’s principal producer of that universal convenience. “You cannot”; “you will fail” —has ever been the opposition’s wail to the American people. “The American people can, the American people will” has ever been the Republican party’s word of faith.