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xxii. They forgot that rails must rest on more than rock ballast to be safe for profits.

Cuba, under the Platt Amendment, is secure and produces, year after year, a sugar crop nearly treble the best of the Spanish past, with rising wages because we insisted on order, courts that enforced contracts, and a sanitation which excluded pestilence. Economic prosperity, railroads that pay dividends, factories whose products meet competition, and a growing population can only come where courts are justly trusted and enforce contracts; when public health and a low death-rate maintain the vigor of the laborer, and his life, his property, and the schooling of his children are protected by a sound and efficient administration. Let these be absent and rule will become a gamble for power and money, men will buy concessions first and protection for them later, perennial disease will sap industry, and you can neither secure capital from abroad nor provide labor at home.

Japan, islanded and long able to shut out foreign competition, first by a policy of general exclusion and later by adroit internal administration, was able to reorganize its industries before they were sapped and destroyed. Its ruling class created a new judicial system which commanded