Hello there!
The White Man's Burden is a poem which narrates the Philippine-American War which exorts the U.S. from assuming the colonial control over the Philippines.
The cartoon illustrates the poem's philosophy and the theme is a rhetorical mandate for the white man to colonizing other races for their same benefit, being their "burden" both the task and the people themselves to colonize. The illustration shows two white men carrying other people over a rocky mountain, who belong to other races, meaning that their race is delivering the coloured peoples to the world of civilization, which represented the path to civilization. They carry the rest of the races from walking to that path to avoid social relations or movements like oppression, barbarism, slavery, ignorance and brutality. Avoiding these will help them to grow as a country.
The theory of Social Darwinism is subtly reflected into this poem and further illustration. This is based on the idea of survival of the fittest conceived as a mechanism of social evolution. So, The White Man's Burden is showing the "natural evolution" not just for an individual but for a country, a social community.
