and off my train between Manila and Daguban: Filipino women carrying
baskets on their heads, smoking cigarettes, and looking after
babies--in some cases doing all three at once; Filipino men, likewise
smoking, and with various kinds of luggage, including occasional
gamecocks; Filipino children in most cases "undressed exceedingly," as
Mr. Kipling would say; and American soldiers in khaki uniforms and
helmets. At one place a pretty little twelve-year-old girl gets
aboard, delighted that she is soon to see America for the first time
in six years. For a while I travel with an American surveyor whose
work is away out where he must swim unbridged streams, guard against
poisonous snakes, and sleep where he can. An army surgeon tells me as
we pass the site of a battle between the Americans and the Filipino
insurgents eleven years ago: the Filipinos would not respect the Red
Cross, and the doctors and hospital corps had to work all night with
their guns beside them, alternately bandaging wounds and firing on
savages. In telling me good-bye a young Westerner sends regards to all
America. "Even a piece of Arizona desert would look good to me," he
declares; "anything that's U.S.A." A young veterinarian describes the
government's efforts to exterminate rinderpest, a disease which in
some sections has killed nine tenths of the _carabao_. A campaign as
thorough and far-reaching as that which the Agricultural Department at
home is waging against cattle ticks is in progress, but the ignorant
farmers cannot understand the regulations, and are greatly hindering a
work which means so much of good to them.
Such are a few snapshots of Philippine life.
{161}
Of the vast natural resources of the Philippines there can be no
question. With a fertile soil, varied products, immense forest wealth,
and possibly extensive mineral wealth; with developing railway and
steamship lines; with the markets of the Orient right at her doors and
special trade advantages with the United States--with all these
advantages, the islands might soon become rich, if there were only an
industrious population.
Unfortunately, the Filipino, however, doesn't like work. Whether or
not this dislike is incurable remains to be seen. Perhaps as he comes
into contact with civilization he may conceive a liking for other
things than rice, fish, a loin-cloth, and shade--plenty of shade--and
proceed to put forth the effort necessary to get these other things.
Already there seems to have been a definite rise in the standards of
living since the American occupation. "When I came here in '98," Mr.
William Crozier said to me, "not one native in a hundred wore shoes,
and hats were also the exception; you can see for yourself how great
is the change since then."
Moreover, in not a few cases Americans who have complained of
difficulty in getting labor have been themselves to blame: they tried
to hire and manage labor the American way instead of in the Filipino
way. The _custombre_, as the Spanish call it--that is to say, the
custom of the country--is a factor which no man can ignore without
paying the penalty.
I am having to prepare this article very hurriedly, and I must
postpone my comment on the work of the American Government until
later. In closing, however, I am reminded that just as the old proverb
says, "It takes all sorts of people to make a world," so I am seeing
all sorts. A week ago yesterday the Hong Kong papers announced that
Mr. Clarence Poe would be the guest at luncheon of his Excellency the
Governor-General, Sir Frederick Lugard, K. C. M. G., C. B., D. S. O.,
etc., and Lady Lugard, in the executive mansion; yesterday {162} I had
"chow" (food) in a Filipino's place, "The Oriental Hotel, Bar, and
Grocery," away up in the Province of Pangasinan, and climbed to my
room and cot on a sort of ladder or open work stairs such as one might
expect to find in an ordinary barn! It was the best place I could find
in town.
Nor do the incongruities end here. After getting my evening meal I
walked out in the warm December moonlight, past the shadows of the
strange buildings and tropical trees--and all at once there burst out
the full chorus of one of the world's great operas, the magnificent
voice of a Campanini or Caruso dominating all!
Great is the graphophone, advance agent of civilization!
Manila, P. I.
{163}
XVII
WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS DOING IN THE PHILIPPINES
There are so many islands in the Philippine group, which I have just
left behind me (I write in a steamer off Manila), that if a man were
to visit one a day, without stopping for Sundays, it would take him
eight years to get around. Most of these islands though, of course,
are little more than splotches on the water's surface and do not
appear on the map. The two big ones, Mindanao and Luzon, contain three
fourths of the total land surface of 127,000 square miles, leaving the
other one fourth to be divided among the other 3138 islets.
The land area statistics just given indicate that the Philippines are
about the size of three average American states and the population
(7,000,000) is about three times that of an average American
commonwealth. There are only about 30,000 white people in the islands,
and 50,000 Chinese. Chinese immigration is now prohibited.
The 7,000,000 native Filipinos who make up practically the entire
population represent all stages of human progress. The lowest of them
are head-hunters and hang the skulls of their human enemies outside
their huts, as an American hunter would mount the head of an elk or
bear. The great majority, however, have long been Christians and have
attained a fair degree of civilization. Even among the savage tribes a
high moral code is often enforced. The Igorrotes, for example, though
some of their number make it a condition of marriage {164} that the
young brave shall have taken a head, shall have killed his man, have
remarkable standards of honor and virtue in some respects, and
formally visit the death penalty as the punishment for adultery.
Because roads or means of communication have been poor the people have
mingled but little, and there are three dozen different dialects. In
the course of a half day's journey by rail I found three different
languages spoken by the people along the route. The original
inhabitants were Negritos, a race of pigmy blacks, of whom only a
remnant remains, but the Filipino proper is a Malayan.
Filipinos are unique in that they alone among all the native peoples
of Asia have accepted Christianity. Fortunate in being without the
gold of Mexico or Peru, the Philippines did not attract the more
brutal Spanish adventurers who, about the time of Magellan's
discovery, were harrying wealthier peoples with fire and sword.
Instead of the soldier or the adventurer, it was the priest, his soul
aflame with love for his church, who came to the Philippines, and the
impression made by his virtues was not negatived by the bloody crimes
of fellow Spaniards mad with lust of treasure. The result is that to
this day probably 90 per cent, of the Filipinos are Catholics. Before
the priests came, the people worshipped their ancestors, as do other
peoples in the Far East.
The only Asiatics who have accepted Christianity, the Filipinos are
also the only Asiatics among whom women are not regarded as degraded
and inferior beings. "If the Spaniards had done nothing else here," as
a high American official in Manila said to me, "though, as a matter of
fact, we are beginning to recognize that they did a great deal, they
would deserve well of history for what they have accomplished for the
elevation of woman through the introduction of Christianity. No other
religion regards woman as man's equal."
The testimony I heard in the Philippines indicated that the female
partner in the household is, if anything, superior in authority to the
man. She is active in all the little business {165} affairs of the
family, and white people sometimes arrange with Filipino wives for the
employment of husbands!
The resources of the islands, as I have already said, are magnificent
and alluring. In the provinces through which I travelled, less than 10
per cent. of the land seemed to be under cultivation, and statistics
show that this is the general condition. A small area has sufficed to
produce a living for the tao, or peasant, and he has not cultivated
more--a fact due in part to laziness and in part to poor means of
transportation. What need to produce what cannot be taken to market?
This fact, in my opinion, goes far to account for Filipino
unaggressiveness.
According to the latest figures, the average size of the farms in the
Philippines, including the large plantations, is less than eight
acres, and the principal products are hemp, sugarcane, tobacco,
cocoanuts, and rice. The Manila hemp plant looks for all the world
like the banana plant (both belong to the same family), and the
newcomer cannot tell them apart. The fibre is in the trunk or bark.
Sisal hemp, which I found much like our yucca or "bear grass," is but
little grown. Sugarcane is usually cultivated in large plantations, as
in Louisiana, these plantations themselves called _haciendas_, and
their owners _hacienderos_. The tobacco industry is an important one,
and would be even if the export averaging half a million cigars for
every day in the year were stopped, for the Filipinos themselves are
inveterate smokers. The men smoke, the women smoke, the children
smoke--usually cigarettes, but sometimes cigars of enormous
proportions. "When I first came here," Prof. C. M. Conner said to me,
"it amused me to ask a Filipino how far it was to a certain place, and
have him answer, 'Oh, two or three cigarettes,' meaning the distance a
man should walk in smoking two or three cigarettes!" Cocoanut-raising
is a very profitable industry--all along the Pasig River in Manila you
can see the native boats high-packed with the green, unhusked product,
and two towns in Batanzas shipped 1500 carloads last year. It is also
believed that {166} the rubber industry would pay handsomely. The
rubber-producing trees I saw about Manila were very promising.
Coffee plantations brought their owners handsome incomes until about
twenty years ago, when the blight, more devastating than the cotton
boll weevil, came with destruction as swift as that which befell
Sennacherib. I heard the story of an old plantation near Lipa, whose
high-bred Castilian owner once lived in splendor, his imported horses
gay in harness made of the finest silver, but the blight which ruined
his coffee plants was equally a blight to his fortunes and his home
and it is now given over to weeds and melancholy ruins. In some
sections, however, coffee is still grown successfully, and I was much
interested in seeing the shrubs in bearing.
The Philippines are about the only place I have found since leaving
home where the people are not trying to grow cotton. In California, in
the Hawaiian Islands, in Japan, in Korea, and even in Manchuria as far
north as Philadelphia, I have found the plants, and of course in China
proper. But I should add just here, that in Southern China, about
Canton, I did not find cotton. As for the industry in the Philippines,
a Southern man, now connected with the Agricultural Department in
Manila, said to me: "Cotton acts funny here. It runs to weed. I
planted some and it opened five or six bolls a stalk and then quit:
died down." He showed me some "tree cotton," about twenty feet high,
and also some of the Caravonica cotton from Australia, which is itself
much like a small tree.
When it comes to the lumber industry, not even Col. Mulberry Sellers
would be likely to overestimate the possibilities the Philippines
offer. There are literally millions in it. The government is leasing
immense areas on a stumpage royalty of about 1 per cent., and as
railways are built the industry will expand. Fortunately, there are
strict regulations to prevent the destruction of the forests. They
must be used, not wasted. The authorities realize that while timber is
a crop like other crops, it differs from the other crops in that the
harvesting must {167} never be complete. The cutting of trees below a
certain minimum size is forbidden.
And now a word as to the activities of the American Government in the
islands and the agencies through which these activities are conducted.
The supreme governing body is known as the Philippine Commission,
consisting of the Governor-General, who is ex-officio president, and
seven other members (four Americans, three Filipinos) appointed by the
President of the United States. Four of these commissioners (three of
these are Americans) are heads of departments, having duties somewhat
like those of Cabinet officers in America. This commission is not only
charged with the executive duties, but it acts as the Upper House or
Senate of the Philippine Congress. That is to say, the voters elect an
Assembly corresponding to our House of Representatives, but no
legislation can become effective unless approved by the Philippine
Commission acting as the Upper House. In the first two elections,
those of 1907 and 1909, the advocates of early independence, opponents
of continued American supremacy, have predominated. The result has
been that the American members of the commission have had to kill
numberless bills passed by the Assembly. On the other hand, some very
necessary and important measures advocated by the commission, measures
which would be very helpful to the Filipinos, are opposed by the
Assembly either through ignorance or stubbornness. Most of the
Assembly members are of the politician type, mestizos or half-breeds
(partly Spanish or Chinese), and very young. "In fact," a Manila man
said to me, "when adjournment is taken, it is hard for a passerby to
tell whether it is the Assembly that has let out or the High School!"
The people in the provinces elect their own governors and city
officials.
In some respects the legislation for the Philippines adopted by the
American officials at Washington and Manila has been quite
progressive. To begin with, our Republican National {168}
Administration frankly recognized the blunders made in the South
during Reconstruction days, and has practically endorsed the general
policy of suffrage restriction which the South has since adopted. When
the question came up as to who should be allowed to vote, even for the
limited number of elective offices, no American Congressman was heard
to propose that there should be unrestricted manhood suffrage.
Instead, the law as passed provides that in order to vote in the
Philippines one must be 23 years of age, a subject of no foreign
power, and must either (1) have held some responsible office before
August 13, 1898, or (2) own $250 worth of property or pay $15 annually
in established taxes, or (3) be able to speak, read, and write English
or Spanish. Of course, the Filipinos, with a few exceptions, do not
"speak, read, or write" English or Spanish; they have been taught only
their own dialect. I understand that only 2 per cent, of the people
can vote under these provisions.
It should be said just here, however, that the government is now
making a magnificent effort to educate all the Filipinos, and the
schools are taught in English. The fact that half a million boys and
girls had been put into public schools was the first boasted
achievement of the American administration of the islands. It was,
indeed, a great change from Spanish methods, but in the last three or
four years the officials have been rapidly waking up to the fact that
while they have been getting the Filipinos into the schools, they have
not been getting them into the right sort of schools.
With the realization of this fact, a change has been made in the kind
of instruction given. More and more the schools have been given an
industrial turn. When I visited the Department of Education in Manila
I found that old textbooks had been discarded and new text-books
prepared--books especially suited to Philippine conditions and
directed to practical ends. Instead of a general physiology describing
bones, arteries, and nerve centres, I found a little book on {169}
"Sanitation and Hygiene in the Tropics," written in simple language,
profusely illustrated, and with information which the pupil can use in
bettering the health of himself, his family, and his neighborhood.
Instead of a general book on agriculture, I found a book written so as
to fit the special needs, crops, and conditions in the Philippines.
Moreover, I found the officials exhibiting as their chief treasures
the specimens of work turned out by the pupils as a result of the
practical instruction given them.
"I really think," said one of the officers, "that we have carried the
idea of industrial education, of making the schools train for
practical life, much farther in the Philippines than it has been
carried in the United States. The trouble at home is that our teachers
don't introduce industrial education early enough. They wait until the
boy enters the upper grades--if he doesn't leave school before
entering them at all, as he probably does. In any case, they reach
only a few pupils. Our success, on the other hand, is due to the fact
that we begin with industrial education in the earlier grades and get
everybody."
And right here is a valuable lesson for those of us who are interested
in getting practical training for white boys and girls in America as
well as for brown boys and girls in the Philippines.
Another progressive step was the introduction of postal savings banks
for the Filipinos before any law was passed giving similar advantage
to the white people of the United States. The law has worked well. In
fact, the increase in number of depositors last year, from 8782 to
13,102--nearly 50 per cent, in a single twelve-month--would indicate
that the people are getting enthusiastic about it and that it is
achieving magnificent results in stimulating thrift and the saving
habit.
The government has also introduced the Torrens System of Registering
Land Titles, as it has done in Hawaii. Formerly {170} the farmer or
the peasant paid 20 per cent, or more for advances or loans. With his
land registered under the Torrens system the bank will lend him money
at a normal rate of interest, with nothing wasted in lawyers' fees for
expensive investigations of all previous changes in title since the
beginning of time. Judge Charles B. Elliott, now Secretary of Commerce
and Police for the islands, was on the Minnesota Supreme Bench when
the Torrens plan was put into force there, and he is enthusiastic
about its workings both in his home state in America and in the
Philippines.
For the public health an especially fruitful work has been done by the
Americans, albeit the Filipino has often had much to say in criticism
of the methods of saving life, and but little in praise of the work
itself. "The hate of those ye better, the curse of those ye bless" may
usually be confidently counted on by those who bear the White Man's
Burden, and this seems to have been especially true with regard to
health work in the East. In the Philippines the farmers object to the
quarantine restrictions that would save their carabao from rinderpest;
they object to the regulations that look to stamping out cholera, and
I suppose the isolation and colonization of lepers, who formerly ran
at large, has also been unpopular. In spite of opposition, vaccination
is now general; pock-marked Filipinos will not be so common in future.
Nor is it likely that there will be many reports of cholera outbreaks
such as an ex-army nurse described to me a few days ago: "When I was
in Iloilo in 1902," she said, "it was impossible to dig graves for the
poor natives as fast as they died. The men were kept digging, at the
point of the bayonet, all night long--pits 100 feet long, 7 feet wide
and 7 feet deep, in which the bodies of the dead were thrown and
quick-limed--and yet I remember that on one occasion 235 corpses lay
for forty-eight hours before we could find graves for them."
In Manila statistics show that 44 per cent. of the deaths are {171} of
babies under one year old, and the ignorance of the mothers as to
proper methods of feeding and nursing has resulted in a shockingly
high death rate of little ones all over the Philippines. I noticed
that the new school text-book on sanitation and hygiene gives especial
attention to the care of infants, and it is said that already the
school boys and girls are often able to give their mothers helpful
counsel. In this fact we have another good suggestion for the school
authorities at home, where it is said that proper knowledge and care
would save the lives of a million infants a year.
Hardly less important than the school work has been the road-building
undertaken by the American officials. And in Philippine road work a
most excellent example has been set for the states at home, in that
the authorities have given attention not only to building roads but to
maintaining them after they are built. Too many American communities
vote a heavy bond issue for roads and think that ends the matter. In
the Philippines no such mistake has been made. "With the heavy rains
here," the Governor-General said to me, "our entire investment in a
piece of good road would be lost in four years' time if repair work
were not carefully looked after."
The system adopted for keeping up the roads is very interesting.
Everywhere along the fine highways I travelled over there were at
intervals piles or pens of crushed stone and other material for
filling up any hole or break. For each mile or so a Filipino is
employed--he is called a _caminero_--and his whole duty is to take a
wheelbarrow and a few tools and keep that piece of road in shape.
Prizes of $5000 each are also offered to the province that maintains
the best system of first-class roads, to the province that spends the
largest proportion of its funds on roads and bridges, and to the
province that shows the best and most complete system of second-class
roads.
That the Filipinos are unfit to face the world alone there can be
little doubt. As to whether it is our business in that {172} case to
manage for them is another question. The Filipinos are, like our
negroes, a child-race in habits of thought, whatever they may be from
the standpoint of the evolutionist. "I never get angry with them,
however much they may obstruct my plans," an American of rank said to
me, "for I look on them as children. We are running a George Junior
Republic; that's what it amounts to." Another American, who has had
some experience with the Assembly, said to me: "When you have
explained and reiterated some apparently simple proposition, they will
come to you a day or so later with some elementary question amazing
for its childishness." A large number of excellent measures for which
the Assembly has received the credit were really instigated by the
commission--"personally conducted legislation," it is called.
The Filipinos come of a race which has achieved more than the negro
race, but on the whole they are probably hardly better fitted for
self-government than the negroes of the South would be to-day if all
the whites should move away. As a Republican of some prominence at
home said to me in Manila: "A crowd of ten-year-old schoolboys in
Chicago would know better how to run a government."
The mere fact that the Filipinos are not capable of managing wisely
for themselves, of course, is not enough to justify a colonial or
imperialistic policy on the part of the United States. It is not our
business to go up and down the earth taking charge of everybody who is
not managing his affairs as well as we think we could manage for him.
But, in any case, there is no use to delude ourselves as to what are
the real qualifications of Mr. Filipino.
I believe that the United States should eventually withdraw from the
islands, but when it does so there should be an understanding with the
Powers that will prevent the natives from being exploited by some
other nation.
China Sea, off Manila Harbor.
{173}
XVIII
ASIA'S GREATEST LESSON FOR AMERICA
The prosperity of every man depends upon the prosperity (and therefore
upon the efficiency) of the Average Man.
So I have argued for years, in season and out of season, in newspaper
articles and in public addresses; and the most impressive fact I have
discovered in all my travel through the Orient is the fundamental,
world-wide importance of this too little accepted economic doctrine.
It is the biggest lesson the Old World has for the New--the biggest
and the most important.