PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AND AMERICAN CAPITAL. 191 



exportation possible. Meanwhile the American sugar industry is 

 left to unprogressive and slovenly methods, but it needs only a reason- 

 able addition of capital and labor to enable it to supply the markets 

 of the world. An Englishman of much experience in the sugar- 

 growing colonies of Great Britain says that by the introduction of 

 improved methods all the sugar that we use in this country could 

 be grown on one half of the little island of Porto Rico.* This would 

 cause heavy complaint from the sugar-cane region of Louisiana, and 

 from those sections of our country that are beginning to hope for a 

 future in the beet-sugar industry. Certainly America can supply 

 herself in this particular. 



India rubber is another of our tropic imports that promises to in- 

 crease in importance with improvements in our ability to use it. 

 Nearly the whole supply comes from the American tropics. There 

 it thrives everywhere. We are importing it from almost all of 

 our sister republics, and although it responds readily to cultivation 

 and yields a profitable crop,f the main supply is yet taken from the 

 wild trees of the forests. Like the other products it waits for the 

 capital which it will well repay. 



By a comparison of the average yields per acre of the leading 

 tropic imports with the amounts of those imports, we shall find the 

 area of the territories that are in cultivation to meet our present 

 needs4 In 1897 we imported into this country from all sources the 

 crops that would be yielded by 1,400 square miles of coffee, 30 of 

 bananas, 40 of cocoa beans, 60 of India rubber, 10 of oranges; a 

 total of 1,540 square miles. Add to that the area that will be needed 

 for our sugar, and the result does not equal the whole of Porto 

 Rico. The area of Porto Rico is less than 4,000 square miles. Mul- 

 tiply these crop areas by ten, to make allowance for crop rotation 

 and for the time taken for new plantations to come into bearing. 

 The result will be less than 40,000 square miles, a territory not 

 half as great as the area of the West India islands. They in 

 their turn do not comprise the fiftieth part of the area of tropic 

 America. 



When the time comes that American industry needs to develop 

 more lands, there they lie. They are our opportunity. They have 

 an almost virgin soil, because we have been too busy with our own 

 internal development to give them needed attention. They need 



* W. Allyne Ireland, in an address before the University of Pennsylvania. 



f See Coffee and India-Rubber Culture in Mexico. By Matias Romero, late Mexican 

 minister to the United States. 



$ The average yields of tropic produce were made out with the assistance of the Cyclo- 

 paedia Britannica, Coffee and India Rubber Culture in Mexico (Romero), and statistics 

 obtained at the Philadelphia Commercial Museums. The amounts of the imports were 

 taken from the United States Report on Commerce and Navigation for 1897. 



