Italy's demonstration of the extent to which this madness can carry otherwise sane statesmen is fresh in everybody's memory. Outside of Russia, the poor—meaning the working classes—are in no country of Europe as poor as in Italy. If we take the production per acre in all the cereals as a gauge of interior development, then no European country west of Russia, not excepting Spain, is in a more backward state. Wise statesmanship would have found here a field for cultivation sufficiently large to tax all its energies. The peaceful acquisitions of industry did not satisfy the ambition of the Government. Conquests in equatorial Africa were deemed more essential to the kingdom's material welfare, but lately freed from the deadening grasp of clericalism and absolutism, than the improvement of opportunities lavishly present at home. What she has cultivated at an enormous expense of blood and treasure has borne the ordinary harvest of failure and disaster. The entire import trade of Massowah, to which the whole world contributed, and which is largely a transit trade, amounts to about $5,000,000. The expenditure on account of her Red Sea possessions for the year 1895-'96 is given in the Statesman's Year Book as 123,738,064 lires ($24,000,000). The contribution to the maintenance of this her "white man's burden," from 1882 to 1895, was 303,905,926 lires. At present (1897-'98), after the sobering lesson received in 1896, the net expense is about $3,500,000 (17,000,000 lires).
The three powers—France, Italy, and Germany—point a lesson of unmistakable significance. The figures speak for themselves. No amount of expense can make the African and the Asiatic consume an appreciable amount of European merchandise. No amount of cultivation can make the tropics endurable to the northern man. Labor and exertion on his part under the rays of a deadly sun and a miasma-breeding soil are entirely out of the question. Those who would make the endeavor in the manner of the temperate zone would only succeed the sooner in reaching the end of white man's settlement in the tropics, disease and death.
Many point to the Dutch East India settlements as a successful commercial enterprise. But, taking the best construction given to the story from the trader's point of view, the present satisfactory conditions have been reached after a great deal of disappointment, loss, and bloodshed. A large revenue is acquired from Government sales of colonial produce; still, with all this added to the other revenues from land tax, excise, and other duties, the Government has a deficiency of over 10,000,000 florins a year in her East India possessions. The budget for 1898 shows an expense état of 146,150,164 florins, which is met by a revenue from all sources of but 135,204,203 florins.
This is the richest part of the Malay world, and for centuries has been in the possession of Europe's most enlightened people. The results, if the per-capita unit of imports and exports is taken as a criterion, are not different from those shown in the account of the Philippines, governed for centuries by Spain. The loss of their colonies is ascribed to the oppressive rule which the Spaniards exercised. The Netherlands, devoting all their efforts to the development of the resources of the islands, at least during the greater part of this century, do not show much better results. The imports per capita of the Dutch possessions are $1.80, and the exports $2.63. The imports of the Philippines are $1.50 and the exports $2.63 per capita.
From this we may be permitted to deduce that the Malay Islands are not likely to prove a more thankful field for cultivation by our traders than to the extent indicated in the trade reports set forth above.
Under the conditions here delineated, it would be inviting all the risks and dangers connected with expansion and colonization, while nothing is to be gained in a commercial sense that can not be realized by the means now in our hands.
All the ends of trade can be attained without territorial expansion. The trade in the hands of peoples under English sovereignty is open to all commerce on equal terms. Not even the sovereign country, except in the recent concessions by Canada, receives a preference. The protection of the British flag is tendered gratis to the colonies and dependencies. The imports of these countries cover about one half of the trade of all the world, outside of Europe and the United States. Though they have but 4.67 per cent of the population, the Anglo-Saxon colonies do sixty-nine per cent of the trade of all the colonies and dependencies of the British Empire.
South and Central America absorb about one fourth—24.6 per cent of imports and 26.7 per cent of exports—of the world's trade here summarized. The colonies peopled by Anglo-Saxon population and the Latin-American states together, though but 7.3 per cent of the inhabitants, do an importing trade of 57.4 per cent of the trade of the world here reviewed. The countries trading under the protection of the British flag and the Latin-American states combined have about seventy-three per cent of that trade among them. All this trade, as well as by far the greatest part of the rest, is incontestably accessible to-day on an equal basis to all the world. The key to it lies in the best terms, the best value. The trader and not the admiral governs the field. Prince Heinrich will not succeed better than Admiral von Diederichs in convincing China of the advantages Germany can offer if Mr. Carnegie's rails are cheaper than Mr. Krupp's. A whole fleet of American battle ships will not convince the Asiatics that our cotton goods are as desirable as the English so long as the latter make goods suitable to their markets, and the Americans offer only products calculated to cover the home demands.
The golden rule is a more effective trade opener than the cannon's mouth. Fair and square dealing among nations does not entail expense, but brings in good returns. Our national policy, however, has been one studiously calculated to array the world against us. Like every policy in behalf of a selfish interest, it injures the foreign people against which it is directed far less than the nation which devises it.
The trade of Australasia, Argentina, and Uruguay, and the Cape is based chiefly on wool and hides. The imports of these countries, numbering but eleven million inhabitants, amount to $440,000,000, equaling in amount the trade of China, Japan, Persia, and India, with their seven hundred and fifty million inhabitants. Though but 1.2 per cent of the population of the world (outside of Europe and the United States), their imports are 27.8 per cent of the totals of the figures in the tables. In exports they do about $400,000,000, or 24.9 per cent of the total sum of exports here given. It would be worth cultivating friendly relations with them. They are inhabited by people of European stock, and come nearer to the standard of life of Americans than any of the other nations of the globe. Our latest effort to draw them closer to us was the Dingley tariff, with its duty of eleven cents a pound on greasy wool and of fifteen per cent on raw hides. The action can not be construed as a very friendly one. But neither is the effect as calculated by the wise heads who insisted on the provisions of the wool tariff, the woolen and worsted manufacturers of the East, and the wool raisers of the West. The wool and woolen trade of America has suffered many vicissitudes during the thirty-five years of high tariffs. It has gone through many periods of depression. But it is doubtful whether at any time more disastrous conditions existed than have marked the twelve months ending at this writing (March, 1899).