Are the Philippines an El Dorado? Like Borneo, like Java and the Spice Islands, the Philippines are rich in natural resources, but their capacity to yield more than the ordinary remuneration to labor I much question. Leaving aside the question of gold and coal, in the working of which, so far, more money has been put into the ground than has ever been taken out, the great crops in these islands are sugar, hemp, and tobacco. The sugar crop, to be sure, has the possibilities that it has anywhere, where the soil is rich and conditions favorable. The tobacco industry has perhaps more possibilities, and might be made a close rival to that in Cuba. But the hemp crop is limited by the world's needs, and as those needs are just so much each year, there is no object in increasing a supply which up to date has been adequate. There are foreigners in the Philippines, who have been there for years, who have controlled the exports of sugar or hemp or tobacco, who have made their living, and who from having been longer on the ground should be the first to improve the opportunities that may come with the downfall of Spanish rule. There are some things which the United States can send to the Philippines cheaper than the Continental manufacturers, but not many. She can send flour and some kinds of machinery, she can put in electric plants, she can build railways, but at present she can't produce the cheap implements, and the necessaries required by the great bulk of poor natives at the low price which England and Germany can. The Philippines are not an El Dorado simply because for the first time they have been brought to our notice. They should not yield more than the ordinary return to labor, and the question is, does the average American want to live in a distant land, cut off from friends and a civilized climate, only to get the ordinary return for his efforts? To which, even though of course there is much to be said on the other side, I would answer, No. We have gone to war, remembering the Maine, to free Cuba, and at the first blow have taken another group of islands--a Cuba in the East--to deal with. I have not the space here to discuss the solution of the problem, but, for my part, I should like to see England interested in buying back an archipelago which she formerly held for ransom, leaving us perhaps a coaling port, and opening up the country to such as chose to go there. Then, with someone else to shoulder the burden of government and protection, we should still have all the opportunities for proving whether or not the islands were the El Dorado dreamed of in our clubs or counting-rooms.