262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



as much towards providing for his family as does a man in northern 

 Europe who works throughout the year. 



In a debilitating and enervating climate, without the necessity of 

 work, the man who inhabits the tropics not unnaturally lacks the will 

 to develop himself, and also the will to develop the resources of the 

 tropics. Voluntary progress towards a higher civilization is not rea- 

 sonably to be expected. The tropics must be developed under other 

 auspices than their own. As Professor John E. Commons has well put 

 it : " Where nature lavishes food and winks at the neglect of clothing 

 and shelter, there ignorance, superstition, physical prowess and sexual 

 passion have an equal chance with intelligence, foresight, thought and 

 self-control." The energetic and enterprising nations of the world 

 have not developed under the easiest conditions of life in the tropics. 

 As Edward Whymper's Swiss guide said of the natives of Ecuador: 

 " It would be good for tropical peoples to have a winter." 



The Labor Problem in the Tropics. — " What possible means are 

 there of inducing the inhabitants of the tropics to undertake steady 

 and continuous work, if local conditions are such that from the mere 

 bounty of nature all the ambitions of the people can be gratified with- 

 out any considerable amount of labor?" In these words, Alleyne Ire- 

 land well sums up the labor problem in the tropics. If the natives are, 

 on the whole, disinclined to work of their own accord, then eitber 

 forced native labor, which is contrary to the spirit of the times, or im- 

 ported indentured labor, becomes inevitable if the tropics are to be de- 

 veloped. With few exceptions, and those where the pressure of a large 

 population necessitates labor, effective development has been accom- 

 plished only where imported Chinese, Japanese or coolie labor has been 

 employed, usually under some form of contract. Negro slavery began 

 in the West Indies, under early Spanish rule, and its perpetuation was 

 certainly in part aided by climatic controls. The best development of 

 many tropical lands depends to-day upon Chinese or Japanese labor. 

 It will be so in the Philippines. 



With a large native class which is indolent, working intermittently 

 for low wages, or which is bound under some form of contract, it fol- 

 lows that the native or imported laboring classes are separated by a 

 broad gulf from the upper, employing class, which is usually essen- 

 tially foreign and white. The latter class tends to become despotic, the 

 former, servile. Marked social inequalities thus result, accentuated by 

 the fact that the foreign-born white is usually debarred from all hard 

 labor in a hot, tropical climate. White laborers are not likely to be- 

 come dominant in the tropics for two reasons : first, because the climate 

 is against them; and second, because the native is already there, and 

 his labor is cheaper. White men are not doing the hard daily labor of 

 India, of Java, of the Philippines, or even of Hawaii. They are direct- 

 ing it. 



