1899, being the same dispatch to which he refers in his reply of May 1, 1900 as misleading. So far as I am informed, General Otis did not afterwards reply, except as set forth in his dispatch of May 1, 1900. He was not directed by the Secretary of War to reply, and no answer was made by him or the Secretary of War to an application to cease fighting. There appears to have been no such application.

I further transmit a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to Admiral George Dewey, dated May 14, 1900, and a copy of the Admiral's reply, dated May 17, 1900. WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 22, 1900.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State, with accompanying papers, relative to the status of Chinese persons in the Phil. ippine Islands. WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 22, 1900.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I transmit herewith, for the information of Congress, a communication from the Secretary of Agriculture, forwarding a report on the progress of the beet-sugar industry in the United States during the year 1899. It embraces the observations made by a special agent on the various phases of the beet-sugar industry of the Hawaiian Islands; also the results of analyses of sugar-beets received by the Department of Agriculture from the different States and Territories, together with much other information relating to the sugar industry.

Your attention is invited to the recommendation of the Secretary of Agriculture that 20,000 copies of the report be printed for the use of the Department, in addition to such number as may be desired for the use of the Senate and House of Representatives.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Washington, May 26, 1900.

To the Senate:

I transmit herewith, in answer to the resolution of the Senate of May 22, 1900, a report from the Secretary of State showing that the consul of the United States at Pretoria was directed on May 8, 1900, to forward copies of the constitutions of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State by return mail. Translations thereof will be communicated to the Senate at the earliest practicable date.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

To the Senate of the United States:

Washington, June 2, 1900.

I transmit herewith, in further reply to the resolution of the Senate of April 10, 1900, having reference to Senate Document No. 336, Fiftysixth Congress, first session, a further report from the Secretary of State, showing the places of residence of experts, clerks, officers, and employees of the Commission of the United States to the Paris Exposition of 1900, as well as the items of expenditures of the Commission for the months of January, February, and March, 1900, amounting to $211,583.25. WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Washington, June 6, 1900.

To the Senate of the United States:

In further response to the resolution of the Senate of January 17, 1900, requesting, among other things, information tending to throw lignt upon the conduct and events of the insurrection against the authority of the United States in the Philippine Islands, I transmit herewith a correspondence between the Secretary of War and the officers of the Second Division of the Eighth Army Corps.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 3, 1900.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

At the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new century you begin the last session of the Fifty-sixth Congress with evidences on every hand of individual and national prosperity and with proof of the growing strength and increasing power for good of Republican institutions. Your countrymen will join with you in felicita. tion that American liberty is more firmly established than ever before, and that love for it and the determination to preserve it are more universal than at any former period of our history.

The Republic was never so strong, because never so strongly intrenched in the hearts of the people as now. The Constitution, with few amendments, exists as it left the hands of its authors. The additions which have been made to it proclaim larger freedom and more extended citizenship. Popular government has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its stability and security, and its efficiency as the best instrument of national de velopment and the best safeguard to human rights.

When the Sixth Congress assembled in November, 1800, the population of the United States was 5,308,483. It is now 76,304,799.

Then we had sixteen States. Now we have forty-five. Then our territory consisted of 909,050 square miles. It is now 3,846,595 square miles. Education, religion, and morality have kept pace with our advancement in other directions, and while extending its power the Government has adhered to its foundation principles and abated none of them in dealing with our new peoples and possessions. A nation so preserved and blessed gives reverent thanks to God and invokes His guidance and the continuance of His care and favor.

In our foreign intercourse the dominant question has been the treatment of the Chinese problem. Apart from this our relations with the powers have been happy.

The recent troubles in China spring from the antiforeign agitation which for the past three years has gained strength in the northern provinces. Their origin lies deep in the character of the Chinese races and in the traditions of their Government. The Taiping rebellion and the opening of Chinese ports to foreign trade and settlement disturbed alike the homogeneity and the seclusion of China.

Meanwhile foreign activity made itself felt in all quarters, not alone on the coast, but along the great river arteries and in the remoter districts, carrying new ideas and introducing new associations among a primitive people which had pursued for centuries a national policy of isolation.

The telegraph and the railway spreading over their land, the steamers plying on their waterways, the merchant and the missionary penetrating year by year farther to the interior, became to the Chinese mind types of an alien invasion, changing the course of their national life and fraught with vague forebodings of disaster to their beliefs and their self-control.

For several years before the present troubles all the resources of foreign diplomacy, backed by moral demonstrations of the physical force of fleets and arms, have been needed to secure due respect for the treaty rights of foreigners and to obtain satisfaction from the responsible authorities for the sporadic outrages upon the persons and property of unoffending sojourners, which from time to time occurred at widely separated points in the northern provinces, as in the case of the outbreaks in Sze-chuen and Shan-tung.

Posting of antiforeign placards became a daily occurrence, which the repeated reprobation of the Imperial power failed to check or punish. These inflammatory appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the masses, mendacious and absurd in their accusations and deeply hostile in their spirit, could not but work cumulative harm. They aimed at no particular class of foreigners; they were impartial in attacking everything foreign.

An outbreak in Shan-tung, in which German missionaries were slain, was the too natural result of these malevolent teachings. The posting of seditious placards, exhorting to the utter destruction of foreigners and of every foreign thing, continued unrebuked. Hostile demonstrations toward the stranger gained strength by cr ganization.

The sect, commonly styled the Boxers, developed greatly in the provinces north of the Yang-Tse, and with the collusion of many notable officials, including some in the immediate councils of the Throne itself, became alarmingly aggressive. No foreigner's life, outside of the protected treaty ports, was safe. No foreign interest was secure from spoliation.

The diplomatic representatives of the powers in Peking strove in vain to check this movement. Protest was followed by demand and demand by renewed protest, to be met with perfunctory edicts from the Palace and evasive and futile assurances from the Tsung-li Yamen. The circle of the Boxer influence narrowed about Peking, and while nominally stigmatized as seditious, it was felt that its spirit pervaded the capital itself, that the Imperial forces were imbued with its doctrines, and that the immediate counselors of the Empress Dowager were in full sympathy with the antiforeign movement.

The increasing gravity of the conditions in China and the imminence of peril to our own diversified interests in the Empire, as well as to those of all the other treaty governments, were soon appreciated by this Government, causing it profound solicitude. The United States from the earliest days of foreign intercourse with China had followed a policy of peace, omitting no occasions to testify good will, to further the extension of lawful trade, to respect the sovereignty of its Government, and to insure by all legitimate and kindly but earnest means the fullest measure of protection for the lives and property of our law-abiding citizens and for the exercise of their beneficent callings among the Chinese people.

Mindful of this, it was felt to be appropriate that our purposes should be pronounced in favor of such course as would hasten united action of the powers at Peking to promote the administrative reforms so greatly needed for strengthening the Imperial Government and maintaining the integrity of China, in which we believed the whole western world to be alike concerned. To these ends I caused to be addressed to the several powers occupying territory and maintaining spheres of influence in China the circular proposals of 1899, inviting from them declarations of their intentions and views as to the desirability of the adoption of measures insuring the benefits of equality of treatment of all foreign trade throughout China.

With gratifying unanimity the responses coincided in this common policy, enabling me to see in the successful termination of these

negotiations proof of the friendly spirit which animates the various powers interested in the untrammeled development of commerce and industry in the Chinese Empire as a source of vast benefit to the whole commercial world.

In this conclusion, which I had the gratification to announce as a completed engagement to the interested powers on March 20, 1900, I hopefully discerned a potential factor for the abatement of the distrust of foreign purposes which for a year past had appeared to inspire the policy of the Imperial Government, and for the effective exertion by it of power and authority to quell the critical antiforeign movement in the northern provinces most immediately influenced by the Manchu sentiment.

Seeking to testify confidence in the willingness and ability of the Imperial administration to redress the wrongs and prevent the evils we suffered and feared, the marine guard, which had been sent to Peking in the autumn of 1899 for the protection of the legation, was withdrawn at the earliest practicable moment, and all pending questions were remitted, as far as we were concerned, to the ordinary resorts of diplomatic intercourse.

The Chinese Government proved, however, unable to check the rising strength of the Boxers and appeared to be a prey to internai dissensions. In the unequal contest the antiforeign influences soon gained the ascendancy under the leadership of Prince Tuan. Organized armies of Boxers, with which the Imperial forces affiliated, held the country between Peking and the coast, penetrated into Manchuria up to the Russian borders, and through their emissaries threatened a like rising throughout northern China.

Attacks upon foreigners, destruction of their property, and slaughter of native converts were reported from all sides. The Tsung-li Yamen, already permeated with hostile sympathies, could make no effective response to the appeals of the legations. At this critical juncture, in the early spring of this year, a proposal was made by the other powers that a combined fleet should be assembled in Chinese waters as a moral demonstration, under cover of which to exact of the Chinese Government respect for foreign treaty rights and the suppression of the Boxers.

The United States, while not participating in the joint demonstration, promptly sent from the Philippines all ships that could be spared for service on the Chinese coast. A small force of marines was landed at Taku and sent to Peking for the protection of the American legation. Other powers took similar action, until some four hundred men were assembled in the capital as legation guards. Still the peril increased. The legations reported the development of the seditious movement in Peking and the need of increased provision for defense against it. While preparations were in progress