170 



The Review of Reviews. 



August 1. I90S, 



EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN IN CHINA. 



The London 'Magazine of June boasts that it is 

 able to pubHsh the first inten'ievv with the Empress 

 of China. 



The lady correspondent writes that she had to 

 allow three hours for the journey from the foreign 

 quarter in Pekin to the Suinmer Palace, and the only 

 conveyance available was an American buggy. At 

 the entrance-gate of the Palace she found a waiting- 

 room fitted up where visitors may rearrange their 

 disordered toilets. The next proceeding was a ride 

 in a sedan chair — a contrast indeed to the jolting 

 of the highway ! As this lasted over twenty minutes, 

 some idea may be formed of the extent of the 

 Summer Garden. 



The Dowager Empress appears to have put the 

 questions, asking the London's correspondent who 

 were her favourite authors, and how many children 

 she had. She could not understand why the young 

 ladies of the West could leave their parental roofs 

 and travel so far, and she wished to know what the 

 correspondent's father said when his daughter left 

 him, and whether he would forgive her. 



But the Dowager Empress also took the oppor- 

 tunity to declare emphatically that the yellow races 

 could make no progress till the women were emanci- 

 pated, and she had begun to encourage the move- 

 ment by prohibiting Chinese mothers from deform- 

 ing the feet of their daughters. 



" CHINESE SLAVERY " IN THE PHILIPPINES. 



An American Phase of the Transvaal Problem. 



In the Arena for April Mrs. Helen M. Cougar is 

 inten'iewed upon her impressions of the American 

 occupation of the Philippines. She says that the 

 Americans have lowered the moral status of the 

 natives and made them drunken with intoxicating 

 liquors. The natives are rapidly acquiring the drink 

 habit, and two-thirds of the small children seen 

 in the streets of Manila and Cavite are half-breed 

 Americans. The attemjrt made by some American 

 capitalists to introduce Chinese contract labour into 

 the island is exciting the fiercest opposition among 

 the Filipinos. Mrs. Cougar declares that: — 



If the Chinese contract-labour is permitted by the United 

 States. It means nothing less than the poverty, degradation 

 and destructisn of the Filipinos and their enslavement. 

 One leading man said to me: "It the AmericanB impose 

 thia upon us it will lead to revolution in which our people 

 will be destroyed, for you are strong enough to whip us, 

 but we may as well die before your guns as to become 

 industrial slaves. W'e want a chance to show the world 

 what we can do." If the imperialistic government of the 

 Philippines shall lead to human slavery through the so- 

 called contract-labour, God knows that there should be 

 insurrection at the American ballot-box against any party 

 that would be guilty of making such a law. There is great 

 danger of this law being enacted at a time like the pre- 

 sent, when dollars count more than men. Ex-Governor Taft 

 is giving it his support, be it said to his everlasting shame. 

 Its enactment would be a crime not second to that of 

 African slavery, if such a measure should l>e adopted for 

 any of theee islands. The^- claim that the Filipino will not 

 work, and to this claim a leading Filipino said to me; 

 "I will pledge any contractor who needs workmen, and 

 who will pay a living wage, that I can secure from one 



thousand to one hundred thousand men, all Filipinos, to 

 work for hira within a month's notice." But the exploiters 

 do not wish to pay a living wage. 



If the Chinese are to come into the Philippines and 

 Hawaii, let them come as free men, work as free men, go as 

 free men. Let there be no slave-labour nnde_r the whip ot 

 capital in any coiner of the earth over which the stars and 

 stripes wave. This proposition for contract-labour is the 

 legitimate evolution of the trust system of finance and 

 Imperialism in government. Let it apply to the islands 

 ot the Pacific belonging to the United States, and how long 

 before it will apply to the coal-fields, the factories and 

 industries of the United States. Better that not a pound 

 of sugar be raised in the islands, that not a foot of rail- 

 road be laid or an electric light be strung, than that these 

 things should be done under the whip of industrial slavery 

 as proposed by the exploiters of these new possessions. It 

 ia far easier to prevent the adoption of slave laws than 

 to get rid of them when once adopted. Shall virtual human 

 slaverr follow Imperialism under the flag? Let the Ameri- 

 can people answer No, with no uncertain sonnd, for con- 

 tract-labour is the most degrading form of human tlavery. 



MEN=OF=\VAR AS BUM=BAIUFFS. 



In the American Review of Reviews Mr. Charles M. 

 Pepper writes on the Pan-American Conference, 

 which is to take place at Rio Janeiro next month. 

 This is the third Conference of the kind. The first 

 was in Washington, the Anglo-Saxon capital, in 

 1889; the second in Mexico, the Spanish- American 

 capital, in 1901 ; the third now meets in the Por- 

 tuguese-American capital. Mr. Pepper discusses the 

 programme, and says: — 



Emphasis will be laid on the proposition to discuss the 

 doctrine formulated by the celebrated authority on inter- 

 national law whom Latin America has given to the world- 

 Carlos Calvo, of Argentina. This in its naked form is the 

 denial of the right of creditor nations to enforce, by war 

 on the debtor nations, contractual obligations. It has 

 appeared in the undertone of debates in previous Con- 

 ferences, but this is the first time that it has been ac- 

 cepted as a specific subject of discussion. Tliere is addi- 

 tional significance in the terms in which the subject is to 

 be discussed— that is, as a preliminary to submitting it to 

 the Hague Conference, with a view t-o having that body 

 also consider to v hat extent, if any, such collection is per- 

 missible. Disguised under conventional forms, the bald 

 question will be approached whether European nations 

 propose to hold distinctly to the doctrine of gunboat-s as 

 collection agents. Without anticipating the action at the 

 Hague, it may be presumed that an international Con- 

 ference, composed principally of creditor nations, will not 

 be disposed to accept unqualifiedly the dictum of an Inter- 

 national body, the majority of whose members are debtor 

 nations, and no direct answer may be given t-o this query; 

 yet the mere fact of a Pan-American Conference bringing 

 it to the notice of the Hague Conference may have a sub- 

 stantial outcome in preventing overt acta and in lessening 

 the excuses for war. 



When the Argentine Republic, in 1902. paid the last in.stal- 

 ment of a debt due English bondholders, which had been 

 contracted in 1824. it gave a very practical proof of the 

 caution which should be exercised by creditors who assume 

 that temporary default means definite repudiation. The 

 area of Latin America which may be considered aa within 

 the sphere of debt-default is becoming so small that it is 

 worth while to have the subject before the Rio and the 

 Hague Conferences, if for no other purpose than to exhibit 

 this fact. 



A kindred contrast to that between creditor and 

 debtor is that between weak and strong nations, and 

 Mr. Pepper says:— 



The heart of the whole question as it appears to the 

 weaker republics is to secure, not acquiescence in the 

 abstract principle, but the translation into a positive 

 policy of the doctrine that a weaker nation should have 

 an equal right of arbitration with a stronger one. 



Great hopes are cherished of the effect of the tour 

 which Mr. Elihu Root, U.S. Secretar\^- of State, pro- 

 poses to make, after his attendance at the Confer- 

 ence, through the Latin-American Republics. 



