482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pansion of this country. Discussion of the subject has been almost 

 entirely along the line of the possible effects of the new policy on the 

 political institutions and popular ideals of the United States, and 

 little has been written which may be said to throw any light on the 

 problem of tropical colonization per se. 



A residence of ten years in the tropical colonies of France, Spain, 

 Holland, and Great Britain — a period during which I devoted much 

 time to the study of colonial affairs — leaves me of opinion that there 

 are two points in regard to which discussion is peculiarly opportune: 

 1. The value of the Philippines and Puerto Rico as a field for the 

 cultivation of those tropical products which are consumed in the 

 temperate zones. 2. The value of the islands as a market for products 

 and manufactures of the temperate zones. 



It will at once be seen that only in so far as the islands are 

 valuable in the former respect can they be important in the latter, 

 for in the absence of production there can not be any considerable 

 consumption of commodities. 



The first point to be considered, and it is the one to which I shall 

 confine myself in the present article, is by what means the productive 

 possibilities of Puerto Rico and the Philippines can be developed. 



Basing my calculation on official reports covering a number of 

 years, I find that the average value per capita of the annual exports 

 of native products from a number of tropical colonies selected by me 

 for the purpose of this inquiry is as follows: 



Trinidad $26.48 



British Guiana 34.26 



Martinique 23.48 



Mauritius 20. 28 



Dominica $7 . 28 



St. Vincent 7 . 68 



Ceylon 7.24 



Montserrat 7 . 89 



An examination of these figures will serve to show that the value 

 of the colonies in the first column, measured by the standard of their 

 productiveness, is three times that of the colonies in the second col- 

 umn. Reference to the population returns of the colonies named 

 discloses the fact that in the colonies in the first column the popula- 

 tion contains a very large proportion of imported contract laborers 

 and their descendants, while in the other colonies practically the 

 whole population is home-born for at least two generations. 



A moment's reflection will show the importance of the comparison 

 instituted above, and if the space at my command permitted a more 

 extensive analysis of the trade of tropical colonies, it could be demon- 

 strated that the theory holds good, almost without exception, that of 

 tropical countries those only are commercially valuable in which a 

 system of imported contract labor is in force. 



There are one or two colonies (Barbados is the most striking ex- 

 ample) in which the pressure of population is so great that the labor 



