The production of sugar is being rapidly developed, the principal sugar provinces being those of the north, or most progressive part of the island. But at present the means of reducing the cane to sugar are crude. It is quite certain the business will become immensely profitable as soon as modern methods can be introduced. Tobacco would be an important resource of the Philippines with proper management. But the timber wealth of the islands is incalculable. There are many varieties of trees, the forests yielding resins, gums, dye products, fine-grained ornamental wood, and also heavy timber suitable for building purposes. Teak, ebony, and sandalwood are found; also ilang-ilang, camphor, pepper, cinnamon, tea and all tropical fruits. But the securing of the Philippines has differed in many essential respects from the methods obtaining in the other cases. The expansion in that direction has cost the $20,000,000 paid to Spain for a relinquishment of her rights there, besides the cost of the war with Spain, and the succeeding war with the natives. Just what these two items may in the end appear cannot at present be definitely stated, any more than the value of the islands so acquired can be declared at once. But if there were nothing beside Admiral Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay, May 1, 1898, to place on the credit side of the ledger, and all the expense for military, naval and civil operations since accrued to charge against it on the debit side, the balance would be still vastly in favor of the United States. All the losses of every description that have fallen in any way upon the republic since May 1, 1898, are more than compensated by the value of that one day. Before the Manila Bay fight the United States was an unconsidered nation. It was not regarded as a power at all. The world treated the American Republic with a good natured contempt, or refrained altogether from considering it. The nations across the seas made all their arrangements of peace or war, of commerce and of crowns, without even remotely considering “the States.” So far as the large questions affecting world interests were concerned, the United States provoked no more calculation than did Uruguay. Of course it was understood that the Republic was big, and abounding full of material resources—a sort of undeveloped and untrained giant. It was conceded that the Republic kept a sort of curmudgeon watch over the whole hemisphere—barring Canada; and that no “Power” could make war on Mexico or Latin America without the certainty of getting into a fight which might be extremely distressing. And so no one made war there. But the Republic was a hermit nation before Dewey received McKinley’s order to fire, and, obeying, won his marvelous victory.