nts an hour. Praising the Italians in
comparison with the negro, he could not think of paying 17-1/2 cents an
hour for pick-and-shovel work, which Italians were said to be getting in
another section of the state. The right to quit work is the right to get
higher wages. If the higher wages are paid and proper treatment
accorded, a process of natural selection ensues. The industrious and
steady workmen of all races retain the jobs. The gas company referred to
above, by a system of graded pay advancing with years of service, had
sorted out a more steady and reliable force of negroes than they could
have secured of whites at the rate of wages paid. The test is indeed a
severe one where a race has always been looked upon as servile. With
high wages regarded as "white man's wages," the process of individual
selection does not work out, and the dominant race excuses its resort
to whipping, beating, and peonage on the ground of the laziness which
its methods of remuneration have not learned to counterbalance. Even the
industrious Italians treated in this way would not be industrious--they
would leave for other states.

The Malay races, to which the Filipinos belong, are, like the negroes,
careless, thriftless, and disinclined to continuous exertion. In order
to induce the Javanese to work, the Dutch government of Java sets aside
a certain tract of government land for coffee planting, and compels each
head of a household to set out and keep in order a certain number of
coffee trees. On private estates in Java and in other Malay and Indian
colonies, such as Burma, Ceylon, British India, where the government
does not compel the native to take a contract to work, it nevertheless
enforces contracts voluntarily made. In certain provinces of the
Philippines "the tenants are usually in debt, and the old law which
permits the creditor to imprison the debtor for non-payment of debt is
still in force.... Landowners of a district frequently come together
shortly before the crops are sold and agree among themselves how much
interest to charge the tenants on their debts. This is for the purpose
of charging the highest possible rate and at the same time retain
tenants, who then could not leave, finding the same conditions
prevailing throughout the district."[82] In densely populated countries
like Java and Southern India, where the native cannot set up for
himself, he has no alternative except to work under these contracts, and
this is also t