This question can no longer be settled inthe light of political New. forces—forees continuance of any political relaip with the Philippines, 1909 reciprocal free trade was established between the Philippines the United St Naturally the Filipinos exploited this free market by developing and exporting to the United States products on which other nations, "under the American tariff law, had to pay! duty. And in the ease of sugar for example it has been estimated that, this. free-trade arrangement yielded the Filipinos a. bonus of] $50,000,000 year. What was true of sugar is true also of other commodities, such as vegetable oil, beet sugar, cordage. At this time of terrible depression, and ina country which is protectionist, both theory and long continued practice, it was very natural that the sugar, dairy and-other interests should demand tariff protection against those competing Philippine products, But many members of Congress ete opposed to levying duties on flag. Obviously the alternative was independence, And 4 independence Americans generally have already become reconciled on political grounds of an. idealistic character," Protectioniam—and doatism thus combined to give the Filipinos the Independence" which they had so long and so insistently demanded.
Another powerful agency in' United States also ce-operated, towards the same end, American labour had become alarmed at the uncontrolled influx of Filipinos with their generally lower scale of living. And apart from the special position of labour there were other Ameri can citizens who had been alarmed by the emergence of racial troubles on the Pacific Coast similar te those which had arisen before the enactment of the Chinese and Sapanese exclusion laws.
These special groups in the United. States hed, certainly from their own point of view and to some extent from the American point of view, a real basis for their Gemand thet our political relationship with the Philippine "Islands should be terminated. "Thus ie wu possible at once to protect. Ameri-industries and the interests of labour and at the same time ratify the desire of the Filipinos for independence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.