<P> The poem of "The White Man's Burden" was first published in The New York Sun on 10 February 1899 . </P> <P> Three days earlier, on 7 February 1899, to the senate floor, Senator Benjamin Tillman had read aloud three stanzas of "The White Man's Burden" in argument against ratification of the Treaty of Paris, and that the U.S should renounce claim of authority over the Philippine Islands . To that effect, Senator Tillman asked: </P> <P> Why are we bent on forcing upon them a civilization not suited to them, and which only means, in their view, degradation and a loss of self - respect, which is worse than the loss of life itself? </P> <P> Four days later, on 11 February 1899, the U.S. Congress ratified the "Treaty of Peace between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain" (Treaty of Paris, 1898), which established American jurisdiction upon the archipelago of the Philippine Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, near the Asian mainland . </P>

Go make them with your living and mark them with your dead meaning