The governments of our dependencies in Porto Rico and the
Philippines are progressing as favorably as could be desired. The
prosperity of Porto Rico continues unabated. The business
conditions in the Philippines are not all that we could wish them
to be, but with the passage of the new tariff bill permitting free
trade between the United States and the archipelago, with such
limitations on sugar and tobacco as shall prevent injury to
domestic interests in those products, we can count on an
improvement in business conditions in the Philippines and the
development of a mutually profitable trade between this country
and the islands. Meantime our Government in each dependency is
upholding the traditions of civil liberty and increasing popular
control which might be expected under American auspices. The work
which we are doing there redounds to our credit as a nation.
I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling
between the South and the other sections of the country. My chief
purpose is not to effect a change in the electoral vote of the
Southern States. That is a secondary consideration. What I look
forward to is an increase in the tolerance of political views of
all kinds and their advocacy throughout the South, and the
existence of a respectable political opposition in every State;
even more than this, to an increased feeling on the part of all
the people in the South that this Government is their Government,
and that its officers in their states are their officers.
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