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Governor Roosevelt has publicly complained that the U. S. treats Porto Rico more like a stepchild than a member of the Federal family. His relief program consists largely of trying to put the jibraros back on the land, to make them selfsupporting. Likewise he would increase the island's industrialization with the aid of ample waterpower. Porto Rico, for instance, produces 600,000 tons of raw sugar per year but lacks a big refinery. Politically Porto Rico wants full statehood (minor voices call for independence) or at least a civil territorial status like Hawaii and Alaska. Porto Ricans were outraged when the U. S. Congress at the last session classified it as a colony by appropriating $5,000 for it to exhibit at the International Colonial Exposition in France.
Bay Rum. The Virgin Islands, whither President Hoover was to go this week, got a new civil governor last week. The little minesweeper Grebe carried Dr. Paul M. Pearson, like the President a Quaker, into the harbor of St. Thomas while a Marine detachment shot off a 17-gun salute. The black population with its 5% sprinkling of whites massed in Emancipation Park to watch Governor Pearson take the oath of office, hear his inaugural address. They were all in good humor because the ceremony marked the transfer of their government from the Navy under Capt. Waldo Evans to the Department of the Interior. The blackamoors (who speak Danish) stared in wonderment as Governor Pearson, who used to teach public speaking at Swarthmore College, rolled out a sonorous address in which he recognized the islands' "critical economic problems" and promised to aid in their relief.
The U. S. bought the Virgin Islands, once famed as a buccaneer's resort, from Denmark for $25,000,000 in 1917 when it was feared Germany would establish a submarine base there. Until last week they were a neglected appendage of the Navy Department which used them as a coaling base. Their transfer to civil government by President Hoover was generally regarded as the first step in a program to demilitarize U. S. insular possessions.
Around the Virgin Islands prevail the old Danish tariff law (average rate: 7%,) instead of the U. S. Hawley-Smoot Act (average rate: 39%). Danish currency is likewise legal tender because the islands' bank continues to operate under its original Danish charter. The U. S. Congress appropriated $600,000 to put the black islanders back on the land, 90% of which is owned by a score of rich foreigners. Emigration to the U. S. has cut the islands' population in a decade by 15%, down to 22,012.
What the Virgin Islanders want most from President Hoover is permission to revive their once-profitable trade in rum, bay and otherwise.
*The island's infant mortality rate is 18 per 100. One of the most common sights in the back country is the native funeral, small coffins carried on men's shoulders with the male relations shuffling along in slow procession.