You see the minority report is counting women and children,

when it talks about the wild tribes, but not when it talks about

voters. According to universally accepted general averages, among

7,500,000 people you should find 1,500,000 adult males. No one doubts

that of these, by 1921, 500,000 will have become qualified voters. No

one can deny that any such country having 500,000 qualified voters, the

bulk of whom are good farmers, and the cream of whom are high-minded

educated gentlemen, and all of whom are intensely patriotic, will be in

good shape for promotion to independence. What wearies me about this

whole matter is that the minority report above mentioned is permitted

to get off such "rot," and the New York Times, the Army and Navy

Journal, and others, to applaud it, while the Administration sits by,

silent, and reaps the benefit of such stale, though not intentional,

falsehoods, without attempting to correct them, so that our people

may get at the real merits of the question. You see this silence

inures to the benefit of the interests that have cornered the Manila

hemp industry.

In the campaign of 1912 for the Republican nomination for the

Presidency, there was much mutual recrimination between Colonel

Roosevelt and Mr. Taft about which of them had been kindest to

the International Harvester Company. It seems to me it is "up to"

Governor Forbes, who in the Philippines has served under the present

President and his predecessor also, to explain why he has abandoned

the fight, so long waged by previous governors-general, to get what

former Governor-General James F. Smith calls "the [hemp] joker" of

the Act of Congress of 1902 concerning the Philippines, wiped from

the statute books of this country.

CHAPTER XXIII

"NON-CHRISTIAN" WORCESTER

The cry of remote distress is ever faintly heard.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In the year 1911, the editor of one of the great metropolitan

papers told me that President Taft told him that the Honorable

Dean C. Worcester, the Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine

Government, was "the most valuable man we have on the Philippine

Commission." Certainly, reproduction of such an indorsement from

so exalted a source shows a wish to be fair, in one who considers

Professor Worcester the direst calamity that has befallen the

Filipinos since the American occupation, neither war, pestilence,

famine, reconcentration, nor tariff-wrought poverty excepted. During

all my stay in the Philippines I never did have any official relations

of any sort with the Professor, and only met him, casually, once,

in 1901. The personal impression left from the meeting was distinctly

that of an overbearing bully of the beggar-on-horseback type. Conscious

of liability to error, and preferring that the reader should judge for

himself, I give the main circumstances upon which this impression is

based. Soon after the central insular government was set up, in 1901,

Judge Taft and certain other members of the Philippine Commission,

the Professor among the number, came into my judicial district to

organize provincial governments. Their coming to each town where they

stopped was telegraphed in advance, and before they reached the town

where I then was holding court each one of the American colony of

the town was designated by common consent to look after a fraction

of the Taft party during their stay. The Professor fell to my lot. I

always was unlucky. However, their stay was only a few hours. While

they were there, I had occasion to observe that the Professor spoke

Spanish quite well and so remarked to him. The well-bred reply was:

"You'll find that I know a great many things you might not think I

knew." Whether this was merely "The insolence of office" cropping

out in a previously obscure young man suddenly elevated to high

station, or whether it was an evidence of the Commissioner's idea

of the relation of the Executive Department of a government to its

Judiciary, is a question. [495] At all events I think the incident

gives an insight into the man not irrelevant to what is hereinafter

submitted. I have met a number of other Americans since who had

received impressions similar to my own. And the Professor's whole

subsequent course in the Islands corroborates those impressions. I

have never talked to any American in the Philippines who had a good

word for him. Of course, Power, like Property, will always have

friends. So that even Professor Worcester may have some friends,

among his fellow-countrymen in those far-away Islands. But it has

already been made clear in a former chapter how entirely possible it

is for a man occupying high position in the government out there to

be very generally and cordially disliked by his own countrymen there

and actually not know it. Whether this is true of Professor Worcester,

or not, as a general proposition it is quite possible. One thing is

certain, namely, that he is very generally and very cordially detested

by the Filipinos. That this detestation is perfectly natural under

the circumstances, and entirely justifiable, and that it is a cruel

injustice to those people, as well as a monumental piece of folly,

to keep the Professor saddled upon them, it is now in order to show.

In Chapter VI (ante), we made the acquaintance of two young naval

officers. Paymaster W. B. Wilcox and Naval Cadet L. R. Sargent, who,

in the fall of 1898, while the fate of the Philippines hung in the

balance at Paris, and peace still reigned in the Islands between us

and the Filipinos, made a trip through the interior of Luzon, covering

some six hundred miles, and afterwards furnished Admiral Dewey with

a written report of their trip, which was later published as a Senate

document. Professor Worcester's greatest value to President Taft, and

also the thing out of which has grown, most unfortunately, what seems

to be a very cordial mutual hatred between him and the Filipinos,

is his activities in the matter of discovering, getting acquainted

with, classifying, tabulating, enumerating, and otherwise preparing

for salvation, the various non-Christian tribes. These tribes have

already been briefly dealt with in Chapter XXI. (ante), apropos of

that part of the Great Peace Certificate of 1907 which related to the

"Moros and other non-Christian tribes"--uncivilized tribes which,

being as distinct from the great mass of the Filipino people as

islets from the sea, had had no more to do with the insurrection

against us, than the Pawnees, Apaches, and Sioux Indians had to do

with our Civil War of 1861-5. They were also dealt with, somewhat,

in the chapter preceding this. Long before Professor Worcester was

permanently inflicted upon the Filipino people, one of the young

naval officers above mentioned, Mr. Sargent, published an article in

the Outlook for September 2, 1899, [496] based on this trip through

the interior of Luzon, made by authority of Admiral Dewey the year

before. In the course of his article Mr. Sargent says:

Some years ago, at an exposition held at Barcelona, Spain,

a man and woman were exhibited as representative types of the

inhabitants of Luzon. The man wore a loin cloth, and the woman

a scanty skirt. It was evident that they belonged to the lowest

plane of savagery.

He adds:

I think no deeper wound was ever inflicted upon the pride of the

real Filipino people than that caused by this exhibition, the

knowledge of which seems to have spread throughout the island. The

man and woman, while actually natives of Luzon, were captives of

a wild tribe of Igorrotes of the hills.

Professor Worcester was originally a professor of zoology, or something

of that sort, in a western university. In the early nineties he had

made a trip to the Philippines, confining himself then mostly to

creeping things and quadrupeds--lizards, alligators, pythons, unusual

wild beasts, and other forms of animal life of the kind much coveted as

specimens by museums and universities. In 1899, just after the Spanish

War, he got out a book on the Philippines, and as an American who had

been in the Philippines was then a rara avis, it came to pass that

the reptile-finder ultimately became a statesman. He was brought,

possibly by conscious worth, to the notice of President McKinley,

accompanied the Schurman Commission to the Islands, in 1899, and

the Taft Commission in 1900, and finally evolved into his present

eminence as Secretary of the Interior and official chief finder of

non-Christian tribes for the Philippine Government.

The best known of the wild tribes in the Philippines are the Igorrotes,

the dog-eating savages you saw at the St. Louis Exposition in 1903-4,

the same Mr. Sargent speaks of in his article in the Outlook. Of

course it was not a desire to misrepresent the situation, but only the

enthusiasm of a zoologist, anthropologically inclined, and accustomed

to carry a kodak, which started the Professor to photographing the

dog-eating Igorrotes and specimens of other non-Christian tribes

soon after the Taft Commission reached the Philippines. But you

cannot get far in the earlier reports of the Taft Commission, which

was supposed to have been sent out to report back on the capacity of

the Filipinos for self-government, without crossing the trail of the

Professor's kodak--pictures of naked Igorrotes and the like. This,

however innocent, must have been of distinct political value in

1900 and 1904 in causing the heart of the missionary vote in the

United States to bleed for those "sixty different tribes having sixty

different languages" of which Secretary Root's campaign speeches made

so much. It must also have greatly awakened the philanthropic interest

of exporters of cotton goods to learn of those poor "savage millions"

wearing only a loin cloth, when they could be wearing yards of cotton

cloth. By the time the St. Louis Exposition came off, in 1903-4,

it was decided to have the various tribes represented there. So

specimens were sent of the Igorrote tribe, the Tagalos, the Visayans,

the Negrito tribe, and various other tribes. The Tagalos, the Visayans,

etc., being ordinary Filipinos, did not prove money-makers. But it was

great sport to watch the Igorrotes preparing their morning dog. So it

was the "non-Christian tribes" that paid. It was they that were most

advertised. It was the recollection of them that lingered longest

with the visitor to the Exposition, and there was always in his mind

thereafter an association of ideas between the Igorrotes and Filipino

capacity for self-government generally. Many representative Filipinos

visited the St. Louis Exposition, saw all this, and came home and told

about it. One very excellent Filipino gentleman, a friend of mine,

who was Governor of Samar during my administration of the district

which included that island, sent me one day in October, 1904, a

satirical note, enclosing a pamphlet he had just received called

Catalogue of Philippine Views at the St. Louis Exposition. He knew I

would understand, so he said in the note, that the pamphlet was sent

"in order that you may learn something of certain tribes still extant

in this country." Concerning all this, I can say of my own knowledge

exactly what Naval Cadet Sargent said concerning the lesser like

indignity of the one Igorrote couple exhibited at Barcelona while

the Filipinos were asking representation in the Spanish Cortes, viz.:

I think no deeper wound was ever inflicted upon the pride of

the real Filipino people than that caused by this exhibition,

the knowledge of which seems to have spread throughout the islands.

You see our Census of 1903 gave the population of the Philippines

at about 7,600,000 of which 7,000,000 are put down as civilized

Christians; and of the remaining 600,000, about half are the

savage, or semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros, in Mindanao,

and the adjacent islets down near Borneo. The other 300,000 or so

uncivilized people scattered throughout the rest of the archipelago,

the "non-Christian tribes," which dwell in the mountain fastnesses,

remote from "the madding crowd," cut little more figure, if any,

in the general political equation, than the American Indian does

with us to-day. Take for instance the province of Nueva Vizcaya,

in the heart of north central Luzon. That was one of the provinces

of the First Judicial District I presided over in the Islands. I

think Nueva Vizcaya is Professor Worcester's "brag" province, in the

matter of non-Christian anthropological specimens, both regarding

their number and their variety. Yet while I was there, though we knew

those people were up in the hills, and that there were a good many

of them, the civilized people all told us that the hill-tribes never

bothered them. And on their advice I have ridden in safety, unarmed,

at night, accompanied only by the court stenographer, over the main

high-road running through the central plateau that constitutes the

bulk of Nueva Vizcaya province, said plateau being surrounded by a

great amphitheatre of hills, the habitat of the Worcester pets.

The non-Christian tribes in the Philippines have been more

widely advertised in America than anything else connected with

the Islands. That advertisement has done more harm to the cause

of Philippine independence by depreciating American conceptions

concerning Filipino capacity for self-government, than anything that

could be devised even by the cruel ingenuity of studied mendacity. And

Professor Worcester is the P. T. Barnum of the "non-Christian tribe"

industry. The Filipinos, though unacquainted with the career of

the famous menagerie proprietor last named, and his famous remark:

"The American people love to be humbugged," understand the malign

and far-reaching influence upon their future destiny of the work

of Professor Worcester, and his services to the present Philippine

policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention, through

humbugging the American people into the belief that the Islands must be

retained until the three hundred thousand or so Negritos, Igorrotes,

and other primitive wild peoples sprinkled throughout the archipelago

are "reconstructed." Is it any wonder that the Filipinos do not love

the Professor? To keep him saddled upon them as one of their rulers

is as tactful as it would be to send Senator Tillman on a diplomatic

mission to Liberia or Haiti.

Not long ago the famous magazine publisher Mr. S. S. McClure, who, I

think, is trying to make his life one of large and genuine usefulness

for good, said to me that if we gave the Filipinos self-government

we would shortly have another Haiti or Santo Domingo on our hands. He

must have seen some of Professor Worcester's pictures of Igorrotes and

Negritos scattered through public documents related to the question

of Filipino capacity for self-government. Mr. McClure has never,

I believe, been in the Islands; and the cruelly unjust impression he

had innocently received was precisely the impression systematically

developed all these years through the Worcester kodak.

In February, 1911, there appeared an article in the Sunset magazine for

that month entitled "The Philippines as I Saw them." The contributor

of the article is no less a personage than the Honorable James

F. Smith, former Governor-General of the Islands. At the top of the

article one reads the legend "Illustrated by Photographs through

the Courtesy of the Bureau of Insular Affairs." If you read this

legend understandingly, you can, in so doing, hear the click of the

Worcester kodak. General Smith's article is smeared all over with

such pictures. One is merrily entitled "Eighteen Igorrot Fledglings

Hatched by the American Bird of Freedom." Another is entitled "Subano

Man and woman, Mindanao." Another is a picture of an Ifugao home

in the province of Nueva Vizcaya, hereinabove mentioned. Ifugao is

the name of one of the wild tribes, one of the results of Professor

Worcester's anthropological excavations of the last few years. In

front of the Ifugao home stands the master of the house, clothed in a

breech-clout. Next in the menagerie in the article under consideration

you find a group of Ifugao children, then a Bagobo of Mindanao, then

some other specimen with a curious name, in which there is a woman

naked from the waist up and a man in a loin-cloth. Then follows a

picture of a Tingyan girl from Abra province. And, to cap the climax,

among the last of these pictures you find a Filipino couple pounding

rice. The rice pounders are ordinary Filipinos. The woman is decently

dressed; the man is clothed only from the waist down, having divested

himself of his upper garment, as is customary in order to work at hard

labor more comfortably in hot weather. I do not so much blame General

Smith for this libellous panorama of pictures, scattered though they

are through an article by him on "The Philippines as I Saw them." He

probably illustrated his article with what the Bureau of Insular

Affairs sent him, without giving much thought to the matter. But the

Bureau of Insular Affairs appears to neglect no occasion to parade the

Philippine archipelago's sprinkling of non-Christian tribes before

the American public, fully knowing that the hopes of the Filipinos

for independence must depend upon impressions received by the American

people concerning the degree of civilization they have reached.

For all these wanton indignities offered their pride and self-respect,

the Filipinos well know they are primarily indebted to Professor

Worcester and his non-Christian tribe bureau. The feud between the

Professor and the Filipino people--the bad blood has been growing so

long that the incident hereinafter related justifies its being called

a feud--has been peculiarly embittered by the missionary aspect of

the non-Christian industry. The great body of the Filipino people,

the whole six or seven millions of them, are Catholics--most of them

devout Catholics. Presumably, their desire for salvation by the method

handed down by their forefathers would not be affected by a change

from American political supervision to independence. Yet the darkest

thing ahead of Philippine independence prospects is the Protestant

missionary vote in the United States. Bishop Brent, Episcopal Bishop

of the Philippines, one of the noblest and most saintly characters

that ever lived, has devoted his life apparently to missionary work

in the Philippines, having twice declined a nomination as Bishop of

Washington (D.C.). The only field of endeavor open to Bishop Brent and

his devoted little band of co-workers is the non-Christian tribes. It

seems that the Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastical authorities in

the Islands get along harmoniously, a kind of modus vivendi having

been arranged between them, by which the Protestants are not to do

any proselyting among the seven millions of Catholic Christians. So

this field of endeavor is the one Professor Worcester has been

industriously preparing during the last twelve years. Obviously,

every time Professor Worcester digs up a new non-Christian tribe

he increases the prospective harvest of the Protestants, thus

corralling more missionary vote at home for permanent retention of

the Philippines. Professor Worcester is quoted in a Manila paper as

saying, "I am under no delusion as to what may be accomplished for

the primitive wild people. It takes time to reconstruct them." This

remark is supposed to have been made in a speech before the Young Men's

Christian Association of Manila. Neither is Mr. Taft under any delusion

as to how valuable is religious support for the idea of retaining the

Philippines as a missionary field. The nature of the above allusion to

Bishop Brent should certainly be sufficient to show that the writer

yields to no one in affectionate reverence and respect for that rare

and noble character. But neither Bishop Brent nor any one else can

persuade him that it is wise to abandon the principle that Church

and State should be separate, in order that our government may go

into the missionary business. Since it has become apparent that the

Philippines will not pay, the Administration has relied solely on

missionary sentiment. In one of his public utterances Mr. Taft has

said in effect, "The programme of the Republican party with regard

to the Philippines is one which will make greatly for the spread of

Christian civilization throughout the Orient."

The foregoing reflections are not intended to raise an issue as to the

wisdom of foreign missions. They are simply intended to illustrate

how it is possible and natural for President Taft to consider

Professor Worcester "the most valuable man we have on the Philippine

Commission." The Professor's menagerie is a vote-getter. Also,

President Taft's whole Philippine policy being founded upon the theory

that "the great majority" of the Filipino people are in favor of

alien thraldom in lieu of independence, he tolerantly permits their

editors to "let off steam" through clamor for independence. This

privilege they do not fail to exercise to the limit. The attitude

of the Insular Government permits the native press much latitude of

"sauciness," in deference to the American idea about liberty of the

press. In the exercise of this privilege during the last few years

the native press has gone the limit. However, there was no way to

stop them, on the principle to which we had committed ourselves. The

thing was very mischievous, and became utterly intolerable. There was

a native paper called Renacimiento (Renaissance). This paper was long

permitted to say things more or less seditious in character which

no self-respecting government should have tolerated. This was done

pursuant to the original theory, obstinately adhered to up to date,

that there was no real substantial unwillingness to American rule. Of

course, if this were true, newspaper noise could do no harm. Therefore

it was permitted to continue. Finally, however, like a boy "taking a

dare," the Renacimiento published an article on Professor Worcester

which intimately and sympathetically voiced the general yearning of

the Filipino people to be rid of the Professor. In so doing, however,

the hapless editor overstepped the limits of American license, and

got into the toils of the law, by saying things about the Professor

that rendered the editor liable to prosecution for criminal libel. The

Professor promptly took advantage of this misstep, to the great joy of

the authorities, who had been previously much goaded by independence

clamor. The result was that the paper was put out of business and the

editor was put in jail. No doubt the editor ought to have been put in

jail, but his incarceration incidentally served to tone down Filipino

clamor for independence. Subsequent to this coup d'etat, the Professor

did a little venting of feelings in his turn. He made a speech at

the Y. M. C. A. on October 10, 1910, which was a highly unchristian

speech to be gotten off in an edifice dedicated to the service

of Christ. The Manila papers give only extracts from the speech,

and I have never seen a copy of it. From the newspaper accounts,

it seems that the Professor was determined to, and did, relieve his

feelings about the Filipinos. The Manila Cable-News of October 11,

1910, quotes the Professor as referring to his pets, the non-Christian

tribes, as "ancestral enemies of the Christians." Thus for the first

time is developed an attitude of being champion of the uncivilized

pagan remnant, left from prehistoric times, against the Christians

of the Islands. The Cable-News also says that Professor Worcester

"laughed at the idea that the Islands belonged to the so-called

civilized people and held that if the archipelago belonged to any

one it certainly belonged to its original owners the Negritos." This

remark about the "so-called civilized people" was as tactful as

if President Taft should address a meeting of colored people in a

doubtful state and call them "niggers." Another of the Manila papers

gives an account of the speech from which it appears that the burly

Professor succeeded in amusing himself at least, if not his audience,

by suggestions as to the superior fighting qualities of the Moros over

the Filipinos, which suggestions were on the idea that the Moros would

lick the Filipinos if we should leave the country. (The Moros number

300,000, the Filipinos nearly 7,000,000.) The Professor's remarks

in this regard, according to the paper, were a distinct reflection

upon the courage of the Filipinos generally as a people. The effect

of Professor Worcester's speech before the Y. M. C. A. may be well

imagined. However the facts of history do not leave the imagination

unaided. The Philippine Assembly, representing the whole Filipino

people, and desiring to express the unanimous feeling of those people

with regard to the Worcester speech, unanimously passed, soon after

the speech was delivered, a set of resolutions whereof the following

is a translation:

Resolved that the regret of the Assembly be recorded for the

language attributed to the Honorable Dean C. Worcester, Secretary

of the Interior of the Philippine Government in a discourse

before the Young Men's Christian Association, October 10,

1910. It is improper and censurable in a man who holds a public

office and who has the confidence of the government. And as the

statements made as facts are false, slanderous, and offensive to

the Philippine people, their publication is a grave violation of

the instructions given by President McKinley which required that

public functionaries should respect the sensibilities, beliefs,

and sentiments of the Philippine people, and should show them

consideration. The words and the conduct of Mr. Worcester tend

to sow distrust between the Americans and the Filipinos, whose

aspirations and duties should not separate them but unite them

in the pathway which leads to the progress and emancipation of

the Philippine people. The influence of Mr. Worcester has caused

injury to the feelings of the Filipinos, encouraged race hatred,

and tended to frustrate the task undertaken by men of real good

will to win the esteem, confidence, and respect of the Philippine

people for the Americans.

Resolved further that this House desires that these facts should

be communicated to the President of the United States through

the Governor of the Philippines and the Secretary of War.

Presumably these resolutions were forwarded "to the President

of the United States through the Governor of the Philippines and

the Secretary of War." But apparently they were pigeonholed when

they reached Washington. I stumbled on them in the Insular Affairs

Committee of the House of Representatives whither they had landed

through Mr. Slayden of Texas. The distinguished veteran Congressman

from Texas, being known as an enemy of all wrong things, was appealed

to by certain persons in the United States to bring the matter to

the attention of Congress. He did so by presenting to the House of

Representatives an American petition which embodied a copy of the

resolutions of the Philippine Assembly.

It thus becomes apparent that one of Professor Worcester's principal

elements of value is in bullying the Filipinos, and thereby smothering

manifestations of a desire for independence, the existence of which

desire is denied by President Taft's Administration. The more the

Filipinos cry for independence the greater seems the sin of holding

them in subjection. So that Professor Worcester is very valuable in

silencing independence clamor and thereby creating an appearance of

consent of the governed, when there is no consent of the governed

whatsoever.

In describing the discontent in distant provinces under brutal

pro-consuls, which contributed largely to the final disintegration

of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says:

The cry of remote distress is ever faintly heard.

The total failure of the above temperate, dignified, and vibrant

protest of the Philippine Assembly to reach the ears of the American

people is but another reminder that history repeats itself.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PHILIPPINE CIVIL SERVICE

Is our Occupation of the Philippines to be temporary,

like our occupation of Cuba after the Spanish War, or

"temporary" like the British Occupation of Egypt since

1882? The Unsettled Question.

The policy to be pursued is for Congress to determine.

I have no authority to speak for Congress in respect

to the ultimate disposition of the Islands.

Secretary of War Wm. H. Taft to Philippine Assembly, 1907.

The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government

Act, is entitled "An Act temporarily to provide" a government for the

Philippine Islands. The young American who goes out to the Philippines

to take a position with the Insular Government there has usually

read his share of Kipling, and his imagination likes to analogize

his prospective employment to the British Indian Civil Service. The

latter, however, offers a career. But what does the former offer? Take

the prospects of the rank and file, as set forth by Mr. J. R. Arnold,

of the Executive Bureau of the Philippine Government, in an article

published in the North American Review for February, 1912. Suppose a

young man goes out to the Philippines at a salary of $1200. Mr. Arnold

discusses fully and frankly the cost of living in the Islands, and

how much higher board, lodging, etc., are out there than in the United

States. He states that board and lodging will cost $15 to $20 a month

more than here. So that, so far, a salary of $1200 in the Philippines

would seem equivalent to a salary of say approximately $950 in the

United States--say in Washington. Also he calls attention to the

fact that the government will pay your way out, but you must get

back the best way you can. He does not say so, but the walking is not

good all the way from Manila to Washington. Seriously, according to

the authority from whom we are quoting, it costs $225 to $300 to get

back. So if you come back at the end of a three years' stay--you must

contract to stay at least that long--you must have laid by, taking

his maximum return fare as the more prudent figure to reckon on, one

hundred dollars a year to buy your return ticket. Mr. Arnold does not

say so, but it is a fact, that various little expenses will creep in

that are sure to amount, even with the most rigidly frugal, to $50

per annum that you would never have spent in the United States. You

are hardly respectable in the Philippines if you do not have a

muchacho. Muchacho, in Spanish, means the same as garcon in French,

or valet in English. But muchachos are as thick as cigarettes in the

Philippines. And you can hire one for about $5 a month. To resolve not

to have a muchacho in the Philippines would be like resolving at home

never to have your shoes shined, or your clothes pressed. It would be

contrary to the universal custom of the country, and would therefore be

"impossible." You have not been long in the Philippines before you get

tired of telling applicants for the position of muchacho that you do

not want one, and, benumbed by the universal custom, you accept the

last applicant. You must figure on a muchacho as one of your "fixed

charges." Count then an extra $50 annual necessary expense that you

would not have at home. If you do not succumb to the muchacho custom,

you will get rid of the $50 in other ways fairly classifiable as

necessary current expenses. Thus, if you take from your $1200, worth

$950 in Manila, as above stated, the $100 per annum necessary to be

laid by against your home-coming, and the other $50 last suggested,

your salary of $1200 per annum in Manila becomes equivalent to one of

$800 at home, so far as regards what you are likely to save by strict

habits of economy. In other words, to figure how you are going to come

out in the long run, if you go out as a $1200 man, while your social

position will be precisely that of a man commanding the same salary

in a government position in Washington, you must knock off a third of

the $1200. This is not the way Mr. Arnold states the case exactly. I

am simply taking his facts, supplemented by what little I have added,

and stating them in a way which will perhaps illustrate the case

better to some people. Mr. Arnold says you are apt to get up as high

as $1500 and finally even to $1800 in three to five years. Suppose

you do have that luck. Still, if, as has been made plain above, you

must consider $1200 in Manila as equal to only $800 in Washington

(so far as regards what you are going to be able to save each year),

by the same token you must consider $1500 in Manila as being equal

to only $1000 in Washington, and $1800 as only $1200.

The utmost limit of achievement in the Philippine Government service,

the only one of the higher positions not subject to political caprice,

the only one regarded out there as a "life position"--and this excepts

neither the Governorship of the Islands nor the Commissionerships--is

the position of Justice of the Supreme Court. The salary is $10,000

per annum, American money. But there is not an American judge on that

bench who would not be glad at any moment to accept a $5000 position

as a United States District Judge at home. All of them whom I know

are most happily married. But I believe their wives would quit them

if they refused such an offer from the President of the United States,

or else get so unhappy about it that they would accept and come home.

While we have now considered the case from bottom to top, we did not

originally figure on the young American going out to the Philippines

otherwise than single. In this behalf Mr. Arnold himself says:

I do not think it can be fairly called other than risky for

an American to attempt to practise love in a cottage in the

Philippines.

Says the late Arthur W. Fergusson--who gave his life to the Philippine

Civil Service--in his annual report for 1905, as Executive Secretary:

The one great stumbling-block, and which no legislative body

can eradicate, is the fact that very few Americans intend to

make the Philippines their permanent home, or even stay here

for any extended period. This is doubtless due to the location

of the islands, their isolation from centres of civilization

and culture, the enervating climate, lack of entertainment and

desirable companionship, and distance from the homeland. Every

clerk, no matter what his ideals or aspirations, realizes after

coming here that he must at some time in the future return to

the United States and begin all over again. After spending a

year or more in the islands, the realization that the sooner the

change is made the better, becomes more acute. This condition

causes, doubtless, the class of men who are not adventurous or

fond of visiting strange climes to think twice before accepting

an appointment for service in these islands, and generally to

remain away, and a great majority of those who do come here to

leave the service again after a very short period of duty. [497]

Then Mr. Fergusson comes to the obvious but apparently unattainable

remedy, which he says is

to make a Philippine appointment a permanent means of livelihood

by providing an effective system of transfers to the Federal

service after a reasonable period of service here. * * * Under

the present regulations influence must be brought to bear at

Washington in order that requisition may be made by the Chief of

some bureau there for the services of a clerk desiring to transfer.

You see, if a Washington Bureau, say the Coast and Geodetic Survey,

or the Geological Survey, sends a man out to the Islands, he is never

for a moment separated from the Federal Civil Service or the Federal

Government's pay-roll. The same is true of civilian employees of the

army. But the man in the Insular Service, when he wants to get back

home, is little better off than if he were in the employ of the Cuban

Government, or the British Indian Government, or that of the Dutch

East Indies. Mr. Fergusson also says:

It is believed to be useless to try to influence men to come out

here unless there is something permanent offered to them at the

expiration of a reasonable term of service. * * * The average

European is content to live and die "east of Suez"; the average

American is not. * * * I am firmly convinced that a permanent

service under present conditions is entirely out of the question.

How can you have "a permanent service" unless you have a definite

declared policy? Why not declare the purpose of our Government with

the regard to the Islands?

In his annual report for 1906 [498] Mr. Fergusson says:

Our relations to the islands are such that the education and

specialization of a distinct body of high class men purposely

for this service as is done in England for the Indian service,

will probably be always a practical impossibility.

He then goes on to reiterate his annual plea for a law providing for

transfer as a matter of right, not of influence, from the Philippine

Civil Service to the Federal Civil Service in the United States,

and tells of a very capable official of his bureau who got a chance

during the year just closed to transfer from the Philippines to a

$1400 government position in the United States, and was glad to get

it, although $1400 was "considerably less than half what he received

here." Mr. Fergusson quickly gives the key to all this in what he calls

"the haunting fear of having to return to the States in debilitated

health and out of touch with existent conditions, only to face the

necessity of seeking a new position." He adds:

That this is not a mere theory is proven by the number of army

(civilian) employees who contentedly remain year after year.

In 1907, Mr. Fergusson reports on the same subject [499]: "Matters

do not seem to be improving," and that the Director of the Insular

Civil Service informs him that "during the fiscal year there were five

hundred voluntary separations from the service by Americans, of whom

one hundred were college graduates." He adds: "When the expense of

getting and bringing out new men, and of training them to their new

work is considered, the wastefulness of the present system is evident."

You do not find any quotations from any of the Fergusson disclosures

in Mr. Arnold's North American Review article. He would probably have

lost his job, if he had quoted them. Yet the evils pointed out by

Mr. Fergusson come from one permanent source, the uncertainty of the

future of every American out there, due to the failure of Congress

to declare the purpose of the Government.

On January 30, 1908, Arthur W. Fergusson died in the service of the

Philippine Government. No general law putting that service on the basis

he pleaded for to the day of his death has ever yet been passed. Since

his death, his tactful successor appears to have abandoned further

pleading, and concluded to worry along with the permanently lame

conditions inherent in the uncertainty as to whether we are to keep

the Islands permanently or not, rather than embarrass President Taft

by discouraging young Americans from going to the Islands.

The report of the Governor-General of the Philippines for 1907,

Governor Smith, says [500]:

American officials and employees have rarely made up their minds

to cast their fortunes definitely with the Philippines or to make

governmental service in the tropics a career. Many of those who

in the beginning were so minded, due to ill health or the longing

to return to friends or relatives, changed front and preferred to

return to the home land, there to enjoy life at half the salary

in the environment to which they were accustomed. * * * That

which operates probably more than anything else to induce good men

drawing good salaries to abandon the service * * * is the knowledge

that they have nothing to look forward to when broken health or

old age shall have rendered them valueless to the government.

If Congress should ever care to do anything to improve the Philippine

Civil Service and the status of Americans entering the same, certainly

the one supremely obvious thing to do is to make transfer back to

the civil service in the United States after a term of duty in the

Islands a matter of right.

CHAPTER XXV

COST OF THE PHILIPPINES

If 't were well to do right, 't were better still

if 't were more profitable.

Cynic Maxims.

General Otis's annual report for 1899, [501] dated August 31st, gives

the number of Americans killed in battle in the Philippines, from

the beginning of the American occupation to that date, as 380. This

includes those wounded who afterwards died of such wounds. His report

for 1900, [502] covering the period from his 1899 report to May 5,

1900, gives the number of Americans killed in battle from August 31,

1899, to May 1, 1900, as 258. General MacArthur succeeded General

Otis in command of the American forces in the Philippines on May 5,

1900. General MacArthur's annual report for 1901, [503] gives the

number of Americans killed in battle between May 5, 1900, and June 30,

1901, as 245. Thus the total number of Americans killed in battle up

to the time the Civil Government was set up in 1901, was 883. The

military reports do not always give the insurgents killed during

the periods they cover. But on June 4, 1900, as we saw in a previous

chapter, General MacArthur reported the number of Filipinos killed

up to that time, so far as our records showed, to be something over

10,000. General MacArthur's report, above quoted, giving our killed

for the period it covers (May 5, 1900, to June 30, 1901), at 245,

gives the insurgent killed for the same period as 3854. If we add this

3854 to the 10,000 killed up to about where May merged into June in

1900, we have 13,854 Filipinos killed up to the time Judge Taft was

inaugurated as Governor, in 1901. There was no record, of course,

obtainable or attempted, by the Eighth Army Corps, of Filipinos who

were wounded and not captured and who subsequently died. It is quite

safe to assume that such fatalities must have swelled the enemy's list

up to the time of the setting up of the Civil Government far above

16,000 killed. Thus, as has heretofore been stated, the ratio of the

enemy's loss to our loss was, literally, at least 16 to 1, up to the

time the civil government was set up. General MacArthur's report for

1900 [504] would seem to bear out the above ratio. He there gives the

number of our killed, from November 1, 1899, to September 1, 1900,

including the wounded who afterwards died of such wounds, at 268, and

the Filipinos killed, "as far as of record," 3227. While these last

figures make our killed for the period they relate to, considerably

over 200, and the enemy's killed but a very small figure over 3200,

still, making allowances for the enemy's wounded that died afterwards,

of which of course we have no record, the 16 to 1 ratio would seem to

give a fairly accurate probable estimate of the relative loss of life.

These figures are explained by the facts, already noticed hereinbefore,

that most of our people knew how to shoot and the Filipinos did

not. The great part of their army were raw recruits who did not

understand the use of two sights on a rifle, and frequently relied

solely on the one at the muzzle, not even lifting up the sight near

the lock which when not in use lies flat along the gun-barrel, with

the result that they almost invariably got the range too high and

shot over our heads.

Because the military reports overlap each other in many instances,

it is not possible to state accurately how many men the Eighth Army

Corps lost by disease, but our loss chargeable to this account was

not far from our fatalities on the battlefield. [505]

It is not possible to even approximate the enemy's loss other than

on the battlefield. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey

Philippine Atlas gives the table estimating the population of the

various provinces of the Philippine archipelago prior to the American

occupation. This estimate gives the population of Batangas province

at 312,192. The American Census of the Philippines of 1903 gives

the population of Batangas province at 257,715. [506] This would

present a difference in the population of Batangas prior to 1898 and

its population after the war of 54,477. The provincial secretary of

Batangas province made a report to Governor Taft on December 18, 1901

[507] on the condition of the province generally. This report, as it

appears in the Senate Document, is a translation from the Spanish. The

portion which relates to the reduction of the population of Batangas

province reads as follows:

The mortality, caused no longer by the war, but by disease,

such as malaria and dysentery, has reduced to a little over

200,000 the more than 300,000 inhabitants which in former years

the province had.

Of course these appalling figures [508] must be taken with a grain

of salt. In the first place, the man who furnished them was merely

reproducing the general impression of his neighbors as to the

diminution of the population of the province. He does not pretend

to be dealing with official statistics. On the other hand, all of

the yearly reports of the various native provincial officers are,

as a general rule, pathetically optimistic. They all seem to think

it their duty to present a hopeful view of the situation. In fact if

you read these reports one after the other, the various signers seem

to vie with one another in optimism as if their tenure of office

depended upon it. So that, balancing probabilities, it would seem

unlikely that the provincial secretary of Batangas would have stated

more than what he at least believed to represent actual conditions,

and the results of the war. A comparison of the Atlas population

tables above mentioned with the census tables of 1903 shows no very

startling difference in the population of any of the other provinces

of the archipelago before and after the war except Batangas. It is

also notorious that Batangas suffered by the war more than any other

province in the Philippine Islands. However, a glance at the table

of population of the various provinces of the Census of 1903 [509]

shows you fifty provinces with a total of 7,635,426 people. While

we will never know whether Batangas did or did not lose one hundred

thousand as a result of the war and its consequences, still, if it did,

the other forty-nine provinces above mentioned must have lost as many

more, that is to say, must have lost another hundred thousand. So that

while it is all a matter of surmise, with nothing more certain to go on

than the foregoing, it would really seem by no means absurd to assume

the Filipino loss of life, other than on the battlefield, caused by the

war, and the famine, pestilence, and other disease consequent thereon,

at not far from 200,000 people. In more than one province, the people

died like flies, especially the women and children, as a result of

conditions incident to and consequent upon the war. This will not

seem an over-statement to men who have lived much among people that

do not know much about how to take care of themselves in the midst

of great calamities, people who will eat meat of animals carried off

by disease, in time of famine; who will drink water contaminated by

what may for euphony be called sewage; and who are unprovided with

any save traditional home remedies against cholera, small-pox, etc.

As to the cost of the Philippines in money, it used to be said

in the early days that we paid $20,000,000 for a $200,000,000

insurrection. Just what the Islands have cost us up to date in money

it is utterly impossible to figure out with any degree of certainty,

except that a safe minimum may be arrived at. Said the distinguished

Congressman from Texas, Honorable James L. Slayden, in a speech which

appears in the Congressional Record of February 25, 1908 (pp. 2532

et seq.):

On this point, and in reply to a resolution of the Senate in

1902, the Secretary of War reported that the cost of the army

in the Philippines from June 30, 1898, to July 1, 1902, had been

$169,853,512.00. To this let us add $114,515,643.00, the admitted

cost of the army in the Philippines from May 1, 1902, to June 30,

1907, and we will have a grand total of $284,369,155.00. That

does not take into account the additional cost of the navy.

Nor, be it noted, does it count the $20,000,000 we paid Spain for

the Islands, which item, is, however included in another part of

Mr. Slayden's speech.

The only other estimate of what the Islands have cost, made in the

last few years, which seems to be specially worthy of consideration,

is one which appeared in the New York Evening Post of March 6,

1907. This estimate was prepared by one of the best trained and

most conservative newspaper men in the United States, Mr. Edward

G. Lowry, then Washington correspondent of the Evening Post, and

since 1911, its managing editor. The total which Mr. Lowry arrives

at is $308,369,155, up to that time. There have been various absurd

estimates made recklessly without knowledge, but Mr. Lowry's estimate

is very carefully studied out, and presented in detail in the newspaper

referred to. From the testimony of Mr. Slayden and Mr. Lowry, given

as a result of their inquiries into the matter, it would thus seem

that the Islands must have cost us by the end of 1907 something like

$300,000,000. The Insular Government is now self-sustaining, except

as to military affairs.

The cost per annum of the Philippine (native) scouts, of which there

are 4000, is paid out of the United States Treasury, and amounts

to $2,000,000 per annum. [510] The number of American troops in the

islands for the last few years has been about 12,000. Those who are

wedded to the present Philippine policy of indefinite retention

with undeclared intention, insist that our military expenses in

the Philippines, in respect to the regular army out there, are not

fairly chargeable as a part of the current expenses of the Philippine

occupation. This argument must be admitted to have some force as far

as the navy is concerned, but as to the army it is clearly without

merit. Under the Act of Congress reorganizing the army of the United

States after the Spanish War, provision was made for a skeleton army

of about 60,000 men capable of expansion to something like 100,000

in time of war. The method of expansion thus contemplated was to have

companies of, say, for illustration, sixty men, in time of peace, which

companies could be recruited up to a war footing of one hundred men,

in time of war. The suggestion that the cost of the part of the regular

army which we have to keep in the Philippines is not chargeable to

the Philippines because those same troops would have to be somewhere

in the United States if they were not where they are, is not well

taken. If we did not need 12,000 men continually in the Philippines,

the army could be at once reduced by that much without affecting its

present organization. If we had no troops in the Philippines this would

not mean the absolute elimination from the army of enough regiments

to represent twelve thousand men. It would not eliminate any existing

organization. It would simply mean contraction of the number of men in

the several companies of the several regiments of the army toward a

peace basis to the extent of a total of twelve thousand men, more or

less. The War Department has long figured on the cost of an American

soldier in the Philippines per annum including his pay, allowances,

and transportation out and back, at $1000 per annum. The cost of

12,000 soldiers at $1000 per annum is $12,000,000, per annum. The

conclusion would, therefore, seem inevitable that the extra military

current expense chargeable to our occupation of the Philippines is

$12,000,000, per annum, outside the Philippine scouts, or, a total

of $14,000,000. Even if the Philippines have cost us $300,000,000,

that is no reason why we should continue to run a kindergarten for

adults out there, and let the Monroe Doctrine run to seed. "Something"

is not "bound to turn up." The Philippine Islands will not prove a

blessing in disguise. In every war with a nation having discontented

colonial subjects, the enemy will always strike the colony first,

and hope for aid from the inhabitants thereof.

Even if the Philippines have cost us $300,000,000, we are a nation

of nearly 100,000,000 people. So they have cost us, all told, in

the neighborhood of only about $3 a piece. And we subjugated them by

mistake, after freeing a less capable people, the Cubans.

The Panama Canal is to be finished in 1913. This means a splendid,

but free-for-all contest, for the trade of South America. In South

America we will meet a tremendous pro-German sentiment, and a by no

means inconsiderable anti-"Yankee" sentiment. The bigger Germany's

army and navy grows, the more she will loom up as the one great

menace to the peace of the world, and the one avowed enemy of the

Monroe Doctrine. We need to build up a Pan-American esprit de corps,

based on the instinct of self-defence. We must win the good will of

South America, and we cannot do it so long as we insist, in another

part of the world, upon the righteousness of the principle of one

Christian people policing a weaker Christian people, ostensibly to

keep them from having revolutions, and really in the hope of ultimate

profit. To free the Filipinos should be the first step we take after

the Panama Canal is completed toward getting ourselves foot-loose

entirely, with a view of getting everything from the Canadian border

to the Argentine wheat fields and beyond, solidly and sincerely

for the Monroe Doctrine. In that direction lies our only sensible

and reasonable hope that the canal will get for us the trade and

friendship of South America. With such tremendous issues at stake,

what does it matter to the richest nation on earth what the Philippines

cost? What does it matter, anyhow, how much it costs to do right?

CHAPTER XXVI

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION

Taxation without representation is good cause for revolt.

American Speech of 1776.

As a colony of Spain the Philippines enjoyed certain special

privileges in the way of trade with the "mother country." When at the

beginning of our military occupation in 1898 General Otis detailed

an army officer to take charge of the Customs House, he continued

for the time being the Spanish tariff laws concerning imports and

exports. On September 17, 1901, the Philippine Commission passed

a tariff act [511] fixing the duties on imports into the Islands

and also continuing to a considerable extent the system of duties

on Philippine exports inherited from the Spanish regime. Among the

products of the Philippine Islands on which the Act of September 17,

1901, imposed an export tax were the following:

Hemp, 75c. per 100 kilos [512]; sugar, 5c. per 100 kilos;

manufactured tobacco, $1.50 per 100 kilos; raw tobacco, $1.50

down to 75c. per 100 kilos. [513]

On March 8, 1902, the United States Congress passed an Act,

"temporarily to provide revenue for the Philippine Islands and for

other purposes." The Act of 1902 re-enacted the Commission's tariff

law for the Philippines of September 17, 1901, with one change,

hereinafter to be discussed, as to its export tax features. As

to the tariffs to be collected at our custom-houses on Philippine

products shipped to the United States, the Act of 1902 reduced the

rates fixed by the Dingley tariff to seventy-five per cent. of said

rates. That was all Congress did in the way of lowering our tariff

wall to Philippine products until 1909, when the Payne-Aldrich tariff

bill became a law. This twenty-five per cent. reduction was no better

than no reduction whatever would have been.

Governor Taft pleaded very earnestly with Congress, at the time

of the passage of the Philippine Tariff Act of March 8, 1902, for a

substantial reduction of the Dingley tariff rate on sugar and tobacco,

so as to give his "constituents"--his Filipinos--something in lieu

of the markets they had had under Spain. But our sugar and tobacco

interests defeated his efforts, because they feared what they termed

"competition with cheap Asiatic labor."

The Act of Congress of March 8, 1902, repealed the export duties

imposed by the Act of the Philippine Commission of September 17,

1901, as to exports to the United States, leaving unrepealed,

however, the export duty on Philippine products shipped to foreign

countries. Section 2 of said Act of 1902 provided, as to exports

from the Philippines to the United States, that the rates of duty

upon products of the Philippine Archipelago coming into the United

States, should be less any duty or tax levied, collected, and paid

thereon (under the Act of the Philippine Commission of September

17, 1901, aforesaid) upon the shipment thereof from the Philippine

Archipelago. This sounds liberal enough. It is, as far as it goes. But

what those familiar with the hemp infamy of the Act of 1902 call

"the joker" in it, is as follows:

All articles, the growth and product of the Philippine Islands,

admitted into the ports of the United States free of duty

under the provisions of this act, and coming directly from said

islands to the United States, for use and consumption therein,

shall be hereafter exempt from any export duties imposed in the

Philippine Islands.

This also sounds liberal, on first reading, but its object was, and

its effect has been, to enable the American Hemp Trust to corner

and control the Manila hemp industry. There is but one article of

Philippine export which any one in the United States is interested

in, that was admitted into the United States free of duty under the

Dingley Act. [514] That article is hemp. The object of the law was

to favor Americans interested in exporting hemp from Manila to the

United States as against Europeans exporting it to England and other

foreign countries. This does not look, on its face, either unpatriotic

or un-Christian. It is not unpatriotic or un-Christian, ordinarily,

to favor your own people, as against their foreign competitors. The

moral quality of such favoritism, however, must depend on who is to

pay for it. Under the Act of 1902, the Manila authorities have always

collected an export tax on hemp coming to the United States, just as

they do on hemp going from Manila to foreign countries, exactly as

if the law abolishing the export tax on hemp coming to the United

States had never been passed. Later, on proof that the hemp was in

fact carried to the United States and used and consumed therein, they

refund the export tax. This is on the idea that they cannot tell where

the hemp is going to until they know where it went to, nor where it

is going to be "used and consumed" until they know where it was in

fact finally "used and consumed." Of course the small farmer is in

no position to follow his bale of hemp into the markets of the world

and show, if it happens to go to the United States, that it did in

fact go there and that it was there "used and consumed," and, finally

obtaining the proof of this, submit it to the Manila Government and

get his little export tax on his bale of hemp refunded. Only the big

buyer's agents at Manila are in a position to do this. So the hemp

crop is bought and moved under conditions which are the same as if

all hemp were subject to an export tax. And only the big fish get

the benefit. For instance, the International Harvester Company has

its hemp buyers at Manila. And as to the part of the Philippine hemp

crop it handles, it can, of course, follow the hemp to its ultimate

consumption in the United States, make the proof, and get the refund.

The wealth of the Philippines is practically entirely

agricultural. Neither mining nor manufactures cut any appreciable

figure. Hemp, sugar, tobacco, and copra [515] are the chief staples

and main exports, and of the first of these Secretary of War Taft

says in one of his reports: [516]

The chief export in value and quantity from the Philippines is

Manila hemp, it amounting to between 60 and 65 per cent. of the

total exports.

Let us see just how far, according to the annual reports of our

own agents in the Philippines--those charged by us with governing

them,--this piece of legislation gotten through by "special privilege"

has depressed the Manila hemp industry, the chief source of wealth of

the Islands. And before we even get to the main trouble, let us permit

the Insular Government to "place on the screen," as a preliminary

"view," a glance at what the instinct of self-preservation of American

sugar and tobacco interests, fearing competition from "cheap Asiatic

labor," have deemed it necessary to do to the Philippine sugar and

tobacco industries, through the Dingley tariff. The annual report of

the Philippine Commission for 1904, before it gets to the subject of

hemp, draws a most gloomy picture of how we killed the markets for

sugar and tobacco the Islands had under Spain, and gave them none

instead. They speak of "the languishing state of these industries"

(p. 26), and describe a state of affairs that sounds more like Egypt

under Pharaoh than anything else, including a cattle disease that

carried off ninety per cent. of the beasts of burden of the country,

and wholesale destruction of crops by locusts. [517] What they have to

say of the annual tribute levied by the American Hemp Trust, through

Congress, on the Manila hemp industry, should not be re-stated,

but quoted. They say: [518]

We desire to call attention to the injustice effected upon the

revenues of the islands by section 2 of the Act of Congress

approved March 8, 1902, which provides that the Philippine

Government shall refund all export duties imposed upon articles

exported from the islands into and consumed in the United

States. Under the provisions of this section there has been

collected in the Philippine Islands, since its enactment down to

the close of the fiscal year 1904, the sum of $1,060,460.20 United

States currency, which is refundable. These refundable duties

are principally upon hemp exportations to the United States,

and are in effect a gift of that amount to the manufacturers of

the United States who use hemp in their operations.

They add:

It is manifestly a discrimination in favor of our manufacturers

as against those of foreign countries. No good reason is perceived

why this bounty to American manufacturers should be extracted from

the treasury of the Philippine Islands, and it is respectfully

submitted that the law authorizing it should be repealed.

The annual report of the Philippine Commission for 1905, after the

usual complaint about being made a political football by Benevolent

Assimilation on the one side, and Louisiana and our sugar-beet

States on the other, and the usual annual and true description of

the consequent poverty, says concerning hemp:

We have several times in our reports called attention to the

practical workings of that portion of the Act of Congress approved

March 8, 1902, which provides for the refund of duties paid

on articles exported from the Philippine Islands to the United

States and consumed therein, and have as repeatedly recommended

its repeal. It is a direct burden upon the people of the Philippine

Islands, because it takes from the insular treasury export duties

collected from the people and gives them to manufacturers of hemp

products in the United States. These manufacturers were already

prosperous before this bounty was given them and it seems hardly

consistent with our expressions of purpose to build up and develop

the Philippine Islands when we are thus enriching a few of our

own people at their expense. [519]

By the end of the fiscal year 1905 (June 30), the American importers of

Manila hemp--of whom the International Harvester Company and its allied

interests are the most influential--had, under the operation of the

rebate system based on the Act of 1902, milked the Philippine people to

the tune of about $1,000,000. Says the Philippine Commission's annual

report for 1905, immediately after the passage last above quoted:

The amount of duties refunded under this act to manufacturers in

the United States during the three years ending June 30, 1905,

is $1,057,251.12. Many of the departments of the government are

much hampered in their operations because of the lack of funds,

notably the bureau of education, and were the sum thus taken

available for educational purposes, to say nothing of any other,

the government would be enabled to give instruction to thousands

of Filipino children whom they are now unable to reach and who

must remain steeped in ignorance because of the lack of funds to

provide such instruction.

Said the Manila Chamber of Commerce to the Taft Congressional party in

August, 1905: "The country is in a state of financial collapse." [520]

Says the Philippine Commission's report for 1906 (pt. 1, p. 68):

The Commission has repeatedly called attention in its reports

to the action of Congress providing for a refund of duties paid

on articles exported from the Islands to the United States and

consumed therein. The reasons that led the Commission heretofore to

recommend the repeal of that provision are still operative. Since

the passage of that act on March 8, 1902, the amount of duties

collected and paid into the Philippine treasury and handed over

to manufacturers in the United States down to June 30, 1906,

is $1,471,208.47. This money has been taken out of the poverty

of the insular treasury to be delivered directly into the hands

of manufacturers of cordage and other users of Philippine hemp in

the United States for their enrichment. The cordage interests are

prosperous and do not need this help; the Philippine Islands are

poor. Legislation which takes money directly from the Philippine

treasury and passes it over to a particular industry in the United

States is not founded on sound principles of political economy

or of justice to the Filipinos. We renew our recommendation for

the repeal of this provision.

You also find in the Commission's report for 1906 the usual

annual protests against the Dingley tariff on Philippine sugar and

tobacco. Said the Honorable Henry C. Ide in an article in the New York

Independent for November 22, 1906, written shortly after he retired

from the office of Governor-General of the Philippines and returned

to the United States: "By annexation we killed the Spanish market for

Philippine sugar and tobacco, and our tariff shuts these products

from the United States market, and to-day both these [industries]

are practically prostrated." In their annual report for 1907,

the Philippine Commission say with regard to the American corner on

Philippine hemp: [521] "The price of hemp has fallen from an average of

twenty pesos ($10 American money) per picul [522] to thirteen pesos

per picul." It thus appears that by judicious manipulation of the

hemp market at Manila, through the leverage of the refund system,

based on collection and subsequent refunding of the export tax on

hemp coming to the United States, the Manila agents of the American

hemp manufacturers had, as early as 1907, beat the price of hemp down

to not far above half of what it had been formerly. To-day (1912)

the Filipino hemp farmer gets for his hemp just one half what he got

just ten years ago. During all this period of economic depression,

the public utterances and State papers both of President Roosevelt

and Mr. Taft are full of such preposterous stuff as the following:

No great civilized power has ever managed with such wisdom and

disinterestedness the affairs of a people committed by the accident

of war to its hands. [523]

This is what Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft were publicly pretending to

believe. But at practically the same time, during as dark a year,

economically, as the American occupation has seen, 1907, let us see

what they were privately admitting to their intimate friends.

In the North American Review for January 18, 1907, in an article

contributed to that Review by the author of this volume, our

treatment of the Philippine people, through our Congress, was briefly

discussed. The article chanced to attract the attention of Mr. Andrew

Carnegie, who gave a considerable sum of money to have it reprinted and

distributed. Some correspondence followed between us, in the course

of which Mr. Carnegie stated that he had been at the White House

shortly before writing me, and described what happened as follows:

When at supper with the President [Mr. Roosevelt] recently,

pointing to Judge Taft [then Secretary of War], who sat opposite,

he [President Roosevelt] said: "Here are the two men in all the

world most anxious to get out of the Philippines."

In another letter Mr. Carnegie described this same incident, this other

letter's version of President Roosevelt's supper-table remark being:

Here are the two men in America most anxious to get rid of them

[the Philippines]. [524]

Now why all this public boasting about our "disinterestedness,"

when, if he had been a Filipino, Colonel Roosevelt would probably

have hunted up all the American speeches of 1776 about taxation

without representation, and played hide-and-seek with the public

prosecutor at Manila, to see how far he could violate the sedition

statute without getting in jail? And why this private admission

to his friend Mr. Carnegie, which neither he nor Mr. Taft has ever

publicly made? Why did he not send a message to Congress showing up

the hemp rebate system? Simply because to do so would lose support

for the Administration, would alienate powerful interests from the

fatuous policy of Benevolent Assimilation bequeathed to Mr. Roosevelt

by Mr. McKinley. His party was irrevocably committed to indefinite

retention of the Islands. It was like Lot's wife. It could not turn

back. So the protected and subsidized interests were permitted to

continue to prey upon the Philippine people. Tariff evils were never

President Roosevelt's specialty. Nor has war against intrenched

privilege of any sort ever been Mr. Taft's specialty. Mr. Taft went

out to the Philippines in 1907 to open the Philippine Assembly. In

1908 he came back and made a report to President Roosevelt which is

as bland as his Winona declaration that the Payne-Aldrich bill is

"the best tariff bill the Republican party ever passed." It makes

the American reader's heart swell with pious pride at what he is

doing for his "little brown brother," in the matter of vaccination,

sewers, school-books, and the like. President Roosevelt sent this

report to Congress, accompanied by a message, from which we have

already quoted. In that same message he said:

I question whether there is a brighter page in the annals of

international dealing between the strong and the weak than the

page which tells of our doings in the Philippines.

Apparently, Messrs. Roosevelt and Taft thought, in 1907, that granting

the Filipinos a little debating society solemnly called a legislative

body, but wholly without any real power, was ample compensation for

deserted tobacco and cane plantations and for the price of hemp being

beat down below the cost of production by manipulation through an Act

of Congress passed for the benefit of American hemp manufacturers. If

we had had a Cleveland in the White House about that time, he would

have written an essay on taxation without representation, with the

hemp infamy of this Philippine Tariff Act of 1902 as a text, and sent

it to Congress as a message demanding the repeal of the Act. But the

good-will of the Hemp Trust is an asset for the policy of Benevolent

Assimilation. The Filipino cannot vote, and the cordage manufacturer in

the United States can. No conceivable state of economic desolation to

which we might reduce the people of the Philippine Islands being other

than a blessing in disguise compared with permitting them to attend

to their own affairs after their own quaint and mutually considerate

fashion, the Hemp Trust's rope, tied into a slip-knot by the Act of

1902, must not be removed from their throats. By judicious manipulation

of sufficient hemp rope, you can corral much support for Benevolent

Assimilation. Therefore, to this good hour, the substance of the hemp

part of the Philippine Tariff Act of March 8, 1902, remains upon the

statute books of the United States, to the shame of the nation.

At last, under the Payne tariff law of 1909, Mr. Taft's long and

patient quiet work with Congressional committees prevailed upon

Congress and the interests to admit Philippine sugar and tobacco to

this country free of duty, up to amounts limited in the Act. [525]

Since then you find the reports of our American officials in the

Philippines palpitating with gratitude to Congress. As a matter

of fact all Congress had said to the Filipinos by its action may be

summed up about thus: "The sugar and tobacco interests of this country

have at last realized that such little of the sugar and tobacco you

raise as may stray over to this side of the world will not be in the

least likely to hurt them. Therefore they have graciously decided,

in their benignity, to permit you to live, provided you do not get

too prosperous." But this very same Payne bill continued the export

tax features of the Act of 1902. Section 13 of the Payne bill is

as follows:

Section 13. That upon the exportation to any foreign country from

the Philippine Islands, or the shipment thereof to the United

States or any of its possessions, of the following articles

there shall be levied, collected, and paid thereon the following

export duties: Provided, however, that all articles the growth

and product of the Philippine Islands coming directly from said

islands, to the United States or any of its possessions for use

and consumption therein shall be exempt from any export duties

imposed in the Philippine Islands:

352. Abaca (hemp), gross weight, 100 kilos, 75 cents.

353. Sugar, gross weight, 100 kilos, 5 cents.

354. Copra, gross weight, 100 kilos, 10 cents.

355. Tobacco, gross weight:

(a) Manufactured or unmanufactured, except as otherwise provided,

100 kilos, $1.30.

(b) Stems, clippings, and other wastes of tobacco, 100 kilos,

50 cents.

Let us briefly glance at the net results of this law, and its

predecessor, the Act of 1902, the export features of which it

re-enacted. It is important that every fair-minded American who can

possibly spare the time should take such a glance at what Congress has

done to the Philippine hemp industry, because of the obvious bearing

that such taxation without representation will probably have on the

attitude of the Philippine people whenever we get into a war with a

foreign power. Certainly the legislation Congress has perpetrated upon

them, at the behest of special interests in the United States, has not

soothed the original desire of those people to be free and independent.

At page 27 of the report of the Philippine Collector of Customs for

1910, a table is given showing the export duties subject to refund

collected under the Act of Congress of March 8, 1902, and deposited

in the Philippine treasury to the credit of the Insular Government

at the end of each fiscal year (June 30), as follows:

1902 $ 71,064.69

1903 527,228.10

1904 462,433.83

1905 486,475.56

1906 433,991.79

1907 433,458.58

1908 370,513.36

1909 598,917.69

-------------

$3,384,083.60

The following table, taken from this same annual report of the

Collector of Customs of the Philippines for 1910 (p. 22) shows the

size (weight in kilograms), and value, of the annual Philippine hemp

crop from 1899 to 1910, both inclusive. It gives in one set of columns

the total exported to all countries, and in the other the part which

comes to the United States:

To All Countries. To United States.

Kilos Value Kilos Value

1899 59,840,368 $ 6,185,293 23,066,248 $ 2,436,169

1900 76,708,936 11,393,883 25,763,728 3,446,141

1901 112,215,168 14,453,110 18,157,952 2,402,867

1902 109,968,792 15,841,316 45,526,960 7,261,459

1903 132,241,594 21,701,575 71,654,416 12,314,312

1904 131,817,872 21,794,960 61,886,592 10,631,591

1905 130,621,024 22,146,241 73,351,136 12,954,515

1906 112,165,384 19,446,769 62,045,088 11,168,226

1907 114,701,320 21,085,081 58,388,504 11,326,864

1908 115,829,080 17,311,808 48,813,720 7,684,000

1909 149,991,866 15,883,577 79,210,362 8,534,288

1910 170,788,629 17,404,922 99,305,102 10,399,397

If you have the time and inclination, you can easily figure out the

annual "rake-off" of the American hemp importers from the above

table. For instance, take the last year, 1910: 99,305,102 kilos

at 75 cents per 100 kilos is $744,788.26, which is more than 4%

of $17,404,922, the total value of the hemp crop of the archipelago

for that year. Add this $744,788.26 to the $3,384,183.60 shown by the

above table of refundable duties collected from 1902 to 1909 inclusive,

and you have over $4,000,000 rebates accruing to American importers

of Manila hemp from 1902 to 1910 inclusive.

In his remarks on Section 13 of the Payne Law of 1909 (above set

forth), in the House of Representatives, May 13, 1909, [526] Hon. Oscar

W. Underwood said, in part:

When you put a tax on your people for engaging in export trade,

to that extent you lessen their ability to successfully meet

their foreign competitor and reduce the territory in which they

can successfully dispose of their surplus products abroad. Our

forefathers in writing the Constitution of the United States,

recognizing the false principle on which an export tax was based,

put it in the fundamental law of our land that the United States

Government should not lay export taxes. If we enact this law,

we write into the statute book for the Philippine Islands,

legislation which is little short of barbarous, legislation that

no government in the civilized world except Turkey, and Persia,

and other second-class nations countenance to-day.

But the hemp interests won out and the section was adopted. In an

argument for the repeal of the export tax, delivered in the House of

Representatives August 19, 1911, the Philippine delegate, Hon. Manuel

L. Quezon, said:

There is one section in the Philippine tariff law, approved

August 5, 1909, which is seriously injuring the proper commercial

development of the islands.

Of course the earnestness with which Mr. Quezon pleaded his cause may

be imagined from the circumstance that, as he says, he is continually

advised by letters from his people, and verily believes that if the

export tax is not taken off soon the Philippine hemp industry will be

entirely destroyed, and the hemp farmers will have to take to raising

something else in lieu of hemp, because the present prices hardly

permit them to live. In the course of his speech Mr. Quezon offered

the following truly eloquent and absolutely unanswerable argument:

Although it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United

States that the provisions of the Constitution are not in force in

the Philippines, I have serious doubts as to whether said decision

also meant that this Government has the power to enact laws for

the islands which are expressly prohibited by the Constitution

in the United States.

It is through the courtesy of Mr. Quezon that such light as I may

have been able to throw on the subject has been obtained. He has

shown me letters from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce at Manila

and other commercial organizations prophesying ruin to the Manila

hemp industry in the event the export tax should continue. One of

these letters is addressed to the two Philippine Commissioners in

Congress, Mr. Legarda and Mr. Quezon. It informs them of the hopes of

the Filipinos at Manila that they, Messrs. Legarda and Quezon, may be

successful in their campaign to get the law repealed and that many

of them (the Filipinos at Manila) feel hopeful of results in that

regard. Speaking for their fellow countrymen at Manila, they say,

"The optimists are of the opinion that the matter being in such good

hands as yours will be carried to a successful conclusion." Then they

give the darker side of the picture thus:

But the representatives at this capital of the famous syndicate,

the International Harvester Company, are of the opinion that we

will be able to accomplish nothing, and theirs is an opinion to

which great weight should be attached, because the vast interests

which that concern represents can set in motion powerful influences

to keep the present law as it is, since it concerns their interest

to do so.

Mr. Quezon has also shown me a letter written to him, March 30, 1911,

by his and my warm personal friend, Hon. James F. Smith, formerly

Governor-General of the Philippines, now (1912) Judge of the Court of

Customs Appeals at Washington, D. C., in which letter General Smith

says, concerning the operation of that part of the export tax act of

March 8, 1902 (continued by the Payne Tariff Law of 1909) by which

American manufacturers are relieved from the payment of the export

tax on Manila hemp:

In effect this really and truly amounts to the payment by the

Philippine Government and the Filipino people of a large subsidy

to American manufacturers of hemp. More than that, this concession

to the American manufacturer, by enabling him to undersell his

British competitor, gives him an undue control of the situation

and has put him in a position, to some extent, to control prices

for the raw product.

It seems to me that the American people had better look to their

own liberties, when they remember that in the campaign for the

Republican nomination in 1912, the Roosevelt Headquarters gave out

that pending the Roosevelt dictation of Mr. Taft's nomination in

1908, the International Harvester Company furnished a floor of its

Chicago building to the Taft people, this interesting fact being

part of the leakage from the Roosevelt-Taft quarrel caused by the

Roosevelt charge that Mr. Taft was unfit for re-election because he

"meant well feebly"; and when it is recalled, on the other hand, that

in the Roosevelt campaign of 1912 for the presidential nomination for

a third term, Mr. George W. Perkins, [527] the very personification

of undue corporation influence with the Government, assumed the role

of Warwick for an ex-President who, when President, had repudiated

the advice of his counsel, Governor Harmon, that a railroad company

[528] be prosecuted for taking rebates because the vice-president of

the company was his personal friend. [529] But let us return to the

Philippine rebates, and their corner-stone, the export tax, Section

13 of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff.

In the case of Fairbanks vs. United States, 181 U. S. Supreme Court

Reports, page 290, a case in which the court was asked to declare a

certain Act of Congress unconstitutional and void, because it imposed

what was virtually an export tax, the opinion of the court cites

the absolute inhibition against such a tax imposed by our Federal

Constitution, and says concerning the wise theory on which this

fundamental tenet of our government rests:

The requirement of the Constitution is that exports should be

free from any governmental burden.

The decision then goes on to elaborate on what it terms "that freedom

from governmental burden in the matter of exports which it was the

intention of our Constitution to protect and preserve." Finally,

the court uses an expression which is certainly a stinging rebuke to

any law-making power that permits the selfish greed of a little set

of importers to get a law passed imposing for their special benefit

a paralyzing export tax on the chief staple of a helpless colony:

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

But Mr. Quezon has no vote in Congress and his voice was not heard,

at least not heeded.

The summation of the whole matter is this: Both the Philippine

people and the American people are, and long have been, suffering

from unjust taxation through laws for which special selfish financial

interests in the United States, exercising grossly undue influence on

governmental action, are responsible. Neither will ever get relief

until the government of this nation is wrested from the control

of the money-hogs and restored to the people. Until that is done,

selfish greed will continue to sow sedition in the Philippines,

and socialism in the United States.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE RIGHTS OF MAN

The rights of man cannot be changed. It is

the government which attempts to change them

that must change.--Webster.

It was the homely common sense of Mr. Lincoln that first reminded

us most vividly how like to the sins of an individual are those of a

nation. To the Southern man who admires Mr. Lincoln as one of the great

figures of all time, he seems like a great physician, who, with malice

toward none and with charity for all, kept vigil for four years at the

bedside of a sick nation through all the long agony of its efforts to

throw off from its system the inherited curse of slavery. Of course,

human slavery was a relic of barbarism. But in fixing the Rights of

Man, the founders of the Republic actually overlooked the fact that a

negro was a human being. So that, vast property rights having accrued

pursuant to that mistake, the march of progress had to wipe them out,

no matter whom it hurt financially. The enormity of the iniquity of

human slavery did not dawn suddenly and exclusively upon William Lloyd

Garrison. He is not the sole, original inventor and patentee of the

idea. Lord Macaulay's father was doing the same sort of agitating in

England about the same time. Westminster Abbey has its monument to

the elder Macaulay, just as Commonwealth Avenue has its monument to

the elder Garrison. Simultaneous like stirrings occurred elsewhere

throughout Christendom. But, of course, in America, arguments for

the emancipation of the slave first took root most readily in a

thrifty section of our liberty-loving country which had nothing to

lose by abolition.

John Quincy Adams once said that our government was "an experiment

upon the heart of man." It is because this government of the people

by the people for the people was a deliberate and thoughtful attempt

upon the part of its founders to apply the Golden Rule as a doctrine

of international and inter-individual law, that we believe our form

of government is the last hope of mankind. It is, as we conceive

it, the voice of humanity raised in protest against the proposition

that might makes right. It is, as we conceive it, a government which

entered the lists of the nations as the champion of the human mind,

in the great struggle of Mind for the mastery over Matter, the

world-old struggle between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. Our

government, like everything else, must follow the law of its being,

or die. Its first great sin in violation of the Rights of Man was due

to heredity. We inherited the institution of slavery, the governmental

exception to the rule that all men are created with equal right to

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was a sin against

human liberty, one of the "unalienable" Rights of Man, upon which

the Republic purported to be builded. The consequences of that sin

are still with us; but, except for the occasional bloody-shirt waver,

whose intellectual resources are not sufficient to provide him with a

live issue, we are meeting those consequences, as a nation, bravely,

and with the mutual forbearance born of the fact that none are wholly

free from responsibility for present difficulties.

Our second great national sin was a yielding to the temptation of

the environment which arose, unforeseen, after a splendid war waged

for the Rights of Man against Spain in Cuba. The Philippine war was

waged to subjugate the Filipino people, because Mr. McKinley believed

it would be financially profitable to us to own the islands, and in

the face of the fact that the only thing he knew officially about

the Filipino people was that Admiral Dewey thought them superior

to the Cubans and more capable of self-government. The war in the

Philippines was, therefore, a war against the Rights of Man. Nowhere

in any state paper has any American statesman, soldier, or sailor,

had the temerity to invoke the name of God in connection with the

retention of the Philippine Islands. Nowhere in any American state

paper connected with the Philippines is there any reference to "a

decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The sin of our Philippine

policy is that it is a denial of the right of a people to pursue

happiness in their own way instead of in somebody else's way. It is a

denial of the very principles in maintenance of which we went to war

against Spain to free Cuba, as we had previously gone to war against

England to free ourselves.

Now the reason the nation blundered into taking the Philippines was

that it believed the Filipinos to be, not a people, but a jumble

of savage tribes. But the reason the men who controlled the action

of the government at the time took the Philippines was because they

believed they would pay. Nevertheless, there was a sufficient number

of our fellow-citizens--controlled, some by altruistic motives and

some by sordid motives--to cause the nation to follow the lead of

those then in control. If the men then in control had taken the people

into their confidence, the blunder would never have been made. If the

correspondence between Mr. McKinley and the Paris Peace Commission

in the fall of 1898, from which the injunction of secrecy was not

removed until 1901, had been given out at the time, the treaty would

never have been ratified except after some such declaration as to

the Philippines as was made concerning Cuba, some reaffirmance of

allegiance to faith in our cardinal tenet--the right of every people

to pursue happiness in their own way, free from alien domination. The

Bacon resolution of 1899, which was along this line, was defeated only

by the deciding vote of the presiding officer, the Vice-President of

the United States. The passage of that resolution would have prevented

the Philippine Insurrection. Had it passed, the Filipinos would no more

have had occasion to think of insurrection than the Cubans did. It was

Mr. McKinley alone who decided to take the Philippines. Congress was

not called together in extra session. The people were not consulted,

except from the rear-end of an observation car.

Most people, whether they be lawyers or not, are more or less

acquainted with the doctrine of what is called in law a "bona

fide purchaser without notice." No man can claim to be a bona fide

purchaser without notice, when he knows enough about the subject

matter of his purchase to put him on reasonable notice of the

existence of facts which, had he taken the trouble to verify them,

would have caused him to halt and not purchase. The correspondence

in 1898, made public in 1901, withheld by Mr. McKinley until after

his second election in 1900, is sufficient to have made any honest

man ask himself some such question as this: "After all, is it not

quite possible that those people can run a decent government of

their own? Admiral Dewey says they are superior to the Cubans." But

Mr. McKinley did not pursue this inquiry, as it was his duty to

do. He took the islands because he believed they would pay, knowing

nothing in particular about the Filipinos, except what he had learned

from Admiral Dewey's brief comment, yet hoping in spite of it that

they would turn out sufficiently unfit for self-government for the

event to vindicate the purchase. To demonstrate that the Filipinos

were wholly unfit for the treatment accorded the Cubans was the only

possible justification of the initial departure from the traditions of

the Republic and from the principles which were its corner-stone. And

he made the departure because the business "interests" of the country

then believed--erroneously they all now admit--that it would pay. He

decided to treat eternal principles as "worn-out formulae." Senator Hoar

once declined an invitation extended by his own city of Worcester,

to deliver a eulogy on Mr. McKinley, because of his Philippine

policy. True, he tempers the asperity of this action thus: "It was

not because I was behind any other man in admiration or personal

affection for that lofty and beautiful character. But * * * if a great

Catholic prelate were to die, his eulogy should not be pronounced

by a Protestant." [530] But all Senator Hoar's speeches against the

McKinley Philippine policy were as emphatic as Luther's ninety-five

theses. He was in possession at the time, along with the rest of the

Senate, of the correspondence with the Paris Peace Commission made

public after the presidential election of 1900.

Ever since Mr. McKinley took the Philippines, it has been the awkward

but inexorable duty of the defenders of that good man's fame to

deprecate Filipino capacity for self-government. President Taft's

chief life-work since this century began has been to take care

of his martyred predecessor's fame, by proving that Mr. McKinley

guessed right in 1898 when he bought the Philippines and trusted

to luck to be able to make out, in spite of what Admiral Dewey had

said, a case sufficiently derogatory to Filipino intelligence to

justify the purchase and subjugation of the islands at the very

time we were freeing Cuba. Obviously, then, the more utterly unfit

for self-government in the present or the near future Mr. Taft can

make the Filipinos out, the nearer he gets to vindicating the memory

of Mr. McKinley, that is, with men of his own, (Mr. Taft's) high

character. He insists on treating as children a people who got up a

well-armed army of thirty-odd thousand men in three or four months

and held at bay, for two years and a half, some 125,000 husky American

soldiers, over five times as many as it took to drive Spain from the

Western hemisphere. Physical force is the basis of all government

among men. If President Taft had anything of the soldier instinct

of his immediate predecessor, he would not sniff demagoguery in the

proposition that military efficiency is a better guaranty of capacity

for self-government than all the school-books in the world, and that

proven passionate willingness to die for freedom from alien domination

is the best guaranty conceivable against internecine strife. It was

a tremendous struggle with his own conscience that Mr. McKinley went

through with before he decided to repudiate the principles on which we

took Cuba in order, for a money consideration euphemistically called

"trade expansion," to take the Philippines. He had advices before him

at the time making it reasonably certain that this meant trouble with

the Filipinos, i.e., bloodshed in the Philippines, the extent of which

none could foresee, and about which he was of course apprehensive. In

the matter of instructing our Paris Peace Commissioners to insist on

Spain's ceding us the Philippines, Mr. McKinley took no moral ground

tenable like a rock, such as truly great men take in great crises of

their country's history. He did not attempt to lead the people. He

simply decided that it would be a popular thing to do to take the

islands. Fresh from a war entered upon to emancipate the Cubans from

alien domination, he took a step which both Admiral Dewey and General

Merritt warned him beforehand would probably mean war--to subjugate,

against their will, a people superior to the Cubans. And in taking

this step, he took into his confidence, neither the people who paid

for the war, nor the soldiers who fought it. To deny that his motives

were benevolent would be simply stupid. But he followed the mob which

shouted from the rear-end of his observation car and repeated by cable

to the Paris Peace Commission, what the mob yelled. Ever since the

supposed Philippine Klondyke whispered in President McKinley's ear

"Eat of the imperial fruits of a colonial policy," the archives of

this government--the reports of the State, War, and Navy Departments,

and the Congressional Documents--have reeked with the inevitable

consequences of our fall from our high estate. No man can serve two

masters. Philanthropy for pecuniary profit is a paradox. Duplicity

ever follows deviation from principle. In our dealings in 1898 with

Aguinaldo you find vacillation on the part of military commanders who

personally did not know what fear was, and embarrassed hypocrisy in

dealing with him on the part of men wearing the shoulder-straps of the

American army, athwart the frankness of whose gaze no such shadow had

ever fallen before. You find systematic concealment of our intentions

in dealing with the insurgents, for fear they would insurge before the

Treaty was signed, and thus cause such a revulsion of feeling in our

country against the purchase of theirs as to defeat the ratification

of the treaty. After that, you find a systematic minimizing of

the opposition to our rule, reinforced by subtle depreciation of

Filipino intelligence, and backed up by a "peace-at-any-price" policy,

periodically punctuated by the horrors of war without its dignity. The

denial of Filipino opposition to our rule, which opposition means

merely a natural longing for freedom from alien rule, has gradually

been abandoned. Nobody now clings to that stale fiction. Also, a long

course of chastening, through reconcentration and kindred severities

subsequent to the official announcement of a state of general peace,

has at last gotten the situation as to public order well in hand. The

only question for those who affect that "decent respect to the opinions

of mankind" which the men of 1776 had in mind is, "Are the Filipinos

a people?" President Taft was originally with Senator Hoar on the

Philippine question. At least he was an "anti-expansionist." In all

the heat of subsequent controversy he has never made bold to deny

the general proposition of the unalienable right of every people to

liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their own way. His position

is that the Filipino people must be made an exception to the rule

because they are not a people. This is the strongest I can state his

proposition for him. It is very difficult to state even with apparent

plausibility, anything which denies the right of every community of

people to immunity from alien domination. The case must be an extreme

one. The issue which the writer raises with the President's policy

is that the Filipinos are a people.

I know of no graver responsibility that an American statesman can

take upon himself before the bar of history than to deny the right

of any given people to self-government. Certainly any man who denies

that right at least assumes the burden of proof that they are unfit

to attend to their own affairs. Mr. McKinley assumed it without

pretending to know anything much about the Filipinos, the motive being

that the Islands would be profitable to us. When Mr. Taft went to the

Philippines in 1900, he went, not to investigate the correctness of

Mr. McKinley's assumption, which was implied in the purchase, but to

champion it; not to give advice concerning the righteousness of having

taken over the Philippines, but to bolster up the policy. He assumed

the burden of proof before he knew anything about the facts. The

burden has been on him ever since. Any subordinate who helps him

to bear that burden, finds favor in his eyes. But the burden is

greater than he can bear. The proof fails. The proof shows that the

Filipino people ought to be allowed to pursue happiness in their

own way instead of being made to pursue it in Mr. Taft's way. Once

you pretend that our true object in the Philippines is the "pursuit

of happiness" for them, The Taft policy is condemned by the facts;

and that is why I am opposed to it. The record shows this. He admits

it. But he insists, with a sigh, that in some other generation they

will be happy. Meantime, we are drifting toward our next war carrying

in tow 8,000,000 of human beings who, if neutralized and let alone

would not be disturbed by our next war, but whose destinies now must

be dependent upon the outcome of such war, however little they may

be concerned in the issues which bring it about.

The shifty opportunism which once actually held out to the Filipinos

the hope of some day becoming a State of the United States of America,

has long since lapsed into the silence of shame, because no American

ever honestly believed that the American people would ever countenance

any such preposterous proposition. And so a free republic based on

representative government is face to face with the proposition of

having a "crown colony" on its hands which wishes to be, and could

soon be made fit to be, a free republic also.

If a federal republic cannot live half slave and half free, can it

live with millions of the governed denied a voice in the federal

government confessedly forever?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ROAD TO AUTONOMY

Oh be ye not dismayed

Though ye stumbled and ye strayed.

Kipling--A Song of the English.

He who points out a wrong without being prepared to suggest a remedy

presumes upon the patience of his neighbor without good and sufficient

cause. Up to this point the wrong has been unfolded, with such ability

as was vouchsafed the narrator, "from Genesis to Revelations," so to

speak; also his own attitude as an eye-witness, and its evolution from

the Mosaic doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,

to the more Christian doctrines of the New Testament. Let us now

consider the remedy.

In the course of our travels with the army in the earlier chapters of

this book, we first followed its northern advance, from Manila over

the great central plain drained by the Rio Grande and crossed by the

railroad connecting Manila Bay with Lingayen Gulf; its further advance

from the northern borders of the plain over the mountains of Central

Luzon; and its march from the central mountains to the northern sea,

at the extreme northern end of the archipelago. We thus saw in detail

the military conquest and occupation of that part of Luzon lying

north of the Pasig River. Before leaving that part of the subject, the

way the provinces thus occupied were grouped into military districts

was indicated. Following the lines of the military occupation, it was

shown that Northern Luzon was naturally and conveniently susceptible of

division into four groups of provinces, which groups might ultimately

be evolved into self-governing commonwealths--States of a Philippine

Federal Union, as follows:

Name of State Area (sq. m.) Population

Ilocos [531] 6,500 650,000

Cagayan [532] 12,000 300,000

Pangasinan [533] 4,500 625,000

Pampamga [534] 5,000 650,000

------ ---------

Total 28,000 2,225,000

It will be remembered that after our narrative had followed the

occupation of Northern Luzon by the American forces to practical

completion, we turned to that part of Luzon lying south of Manila,

and followed the military occupation as it was gradually extended

from the Pasig River to the extreme point of Southern Luzon. Before

closing the review of that military panorama, suggestions were made

for an ultimate grouping of the provinces of Southern Luzon into two

governmental units intended to be ultimately evolved into states. Those

suggestions contemplated grouping the provinces of the lake region

bordering on the Laguna de Bay and the adjacent provinces, into a

territory designated for convenience as Cavite. [535] This territory

was to include all of Southern Luzon except the hemp peninsula,

which lies to the south of the Lake country. It was also suggested

in the same connection that the three provinces of the hemp peninsula

might form a convenient ultimate State of Camarines. In other words,

two states can be made out of Southern Luzon as follows:

Name of State Area (sq. m.) Population

Cavite 8,500 700,000

Camarines 7,000 600,000

------ ---------

Total 15,500 1,300,000

To recapitulate: All of Luzon except Manila and the vicinity

can at once be divided into the six groups of provinces above

mentioned--"territories," having what we are accustomed in the United

States to call a "territorial form of government," and intended to

be made states later. Luzon is about the size of Cuba (a little over

40,000 sq. miles), is twice as thickly populated (nearly 4,000,000 to

Cuba's 2,000,000), and is not cursed with a negro question, as Cuba is.

The above totals, be it remembered, are only round numbers, but

they get us "out of the woods" so to speak, and away from a lot of

unpronounceable names. They show you how to handle Luzon as if it were

about the size of Ohio--which it is. And, as has already been made

clear in the earlier part of this volume, Luzon "is" the Philippines,

in a very suggestive sense of the phrase, since it contains half the

land area of the archipelago (outside of the Mohammedan island of

Mindanao), and half the total population of the whole archipelago,

besides being eight or ten times as large as any other island of the

group except Mindanao; and it also contains the city which is the

capital and chief port of the archipelago, and has been the seat of

government for over three hundred years--Manila. And Manila is eight

or ten times as large as any other town in the archipelago.

After the occupation of Luzon, General Otis's extension of our

occupation to the Visayan islands was reviewed, and in that connection

it was pointed out that each of the six largest of those islands to

wit, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, Bohol, might be ultimately

evolved into six states. [536]

The smaller islands lying between Luzon and Mindanao could easily be

disposed of governmentally by being attached to the jurisdiction of

one of the said six islands.

There is to-day no reason why a dozen Americans could not be at

once appointed governors of the twelve prospective autonomous

commonwealths above indicated, just as the President of the United

States has in the past appointed governors for New Mexico, Arizona,

and other territories of the United States which have subsequently

been admitted to the Union. If the Congress of the United States should

promise the Filipinos independence, to be granted as soon as American

authority in the Islands should so recommend, the dozen territorial

governments intended to be evolved into states of an ultimate federal

union could soon be whipped into shape where they could take care of

themselves to the extent that our state governments to-day take care

of themselves. American representatives of American authority in the

Islands, sent out to work out such a programme, might be instructed

to watch these twelve territorial governments, granting to each the

right to elect a governor in lieu of the appointed governor as soon

as in their judgment a given territory was worthy of it. I have no

doubt that such recommendations would follow successively as to all

of said prospective states inside of four or five years. Whether this

plan is wise or not, it certainly is not, as far as I am concerned,

"half baked." Some five years ago, in the North American Review,

[537] I suggested that Luzon could be so organized within less than

ten years by American territorial governors selected for the work,

naming the Honorable George Curry of New Mexico, formerly Governor of

the territory of New Mexico, and now a member of Congress therefrom,

as an ideal man to organize one such territory. It is true that there

are not eleven other men as well qualified for the work as Governor

Curry. In fact he is probably better qualified for the work than

any man living. The language used as to Governor Curry in the North

American Review article referred to was as follows:

If the inhabitants of these regions were told by a man whom they

liked and would believe, as they would Curry, that they were to

have autonomous governments like one of the Western Territories

of the United States, at the very earliest possible moment,

and urged to get ready for it, they could and would, under his

guidance. We would get a co-operation from those people we do not

now get and never will get, so long as we keep them in uncertainty

as to what we are going to do with them. If next year we should

formally disclaim intention to retain the islands permanently, and

set to work to create autonomous Territories destined ultimately

to be States of a Federated Philippine Republic, whenever fit,

we would soon see the way out of this tangle, and behold the

beginning of the end of it.

Whenever the twelve territorial governments should be gotten into

smooth working order under elected native governors, the Philippine

archipelago would then be nearly ready for independence, so far as

its internal affairs are concerned. The danger of their being annexed

on the first pretext by some one of the great land-grabbing powers

should be met by our guaranteeing them their independence, as we

do Cuba, until they could be protected by neutralization treaties,

such as protect Belgium and Switzerland to-day, as explained in

the chapter which follows this. Powers not specifically granted

to the several states-in-embryo should of course, until the final

grant of independence, be reserved to the central government at

Manila. Manila and Rizal province would be available at almost any

time as a thirteenth state. So that when the twelve states above

suggested had shown themselves capable of local self-government,

Manila and Rizal province might be added to make the final one of

thirteen original states of a Philippine Republic.

Any American who has seen a Filipino pueblo transformed, as if by

magic, from listless apathy to a state of buzzing and busy enthusiasm

suggestive of a bee-hive, by preparations for some church fiesta,

or for the coming of some dignitary from Manila, has seen something

analogous to what would happen if the Filipino body politic should

suddenly be electrified by a promise of independence under some such

programme as the above. A generous rivalry would at once ensue all

over the archipelago in each of the twelve prospective states. Each

would seek to be the first to be recommended by American authority as

ready for statehood. I do not believe the annals of national experience

contain any analogy where every member of a given community has rallied

to a common cause more completely than the whole Filipino people would

rally to such a prospective programme of independence. The unanimity

would be as absolute as the kind we saw among the American people at

the outbreak of the Spanish War, when Congress one fine morning placed

fifty millions of dollars at the disposal of President McKinley by

a unanimous vote.

I especially invite attention to the fact that the above programme

throws away nothing that has been done by us in the Islands in the

last twelve years in the way of organization. It simply takes it and

builds upon it. Congress should not attempt to work out the details

from this end of the line. We should send men out there from here to

work them out, with local co-operation from the leading Filipinos. Men

animated by the idea of working out a programme under which the living

may hope to see the independence of their country, should be sent out

to take the place of the men now there who are irrevocably committed

to the programme of indefinite retention with undeclared intention,

which holds out no hope to the living. It is not wise to arrange

the details of the programme by act of Congress without a year or

two of study of the situation by such men on the ground. An act of

Congress which goes into details before getting the recommendations

of such men will inevitably set up a lot of straw men easy for the

other side to knock down. All you need is a program, sanctioned by

Congress, containing a promise of independence, and men sent out to

the islands to work out the program. They would report back from time

to time, and the Congress by whose authority they went out would have

no hesitation in being guided by their recommendations. If unpatriotic

greed for office among the Filipinos, or other opposition animated by

evil motives, should block the game, your Americans so sent out would

have to recommend the calling of a halt. This ever-present shadow

in the background would in turn throw the shadow of ostracism over

all demagogues.

Meantime the Filipinos should be given a Senate, or upper house,

in which, the thirteen prospective "states" should be represented by

two men, the bill therefor to be framed out there, and sent back here

to Congress for approval. This would give them under the plan here

suggested, as soon as the Americans sent out should so recommend,

a Senate of twenty-six members. At present, if the native Assembly,

or lower house, does not pass the annual appropriations necessary

to run the government, the appropriation act of the preceding year

again becomes law. At present, the upper house is the Philippine

Commission. By withholding its consent, it can prevent any legislation

whatsoever. So, at present, the Assembly is little more than a debating

society. All questions as to appropriations, veto of legislation, and

other details, in the event the Filipinos are given a Senate also,

should be left to be fixed in the bill recommended by the men sent

out to work out the program of promise.

On March 20, 1912, Honorable W. A. Jones, the distinguished veteran

Congressman from Virginia, who is Chairman of the Committee on Insular

Affairs, introduced in the House of Representatives a bill entitled

"A bill to establish a qualified independence for the Philippines, and

to fix the date when such qualified independence shall become absolute

and complete." The greater part of what precedes this paragraph of

this chapter was written prior to March 20, 1912. Mr. Jones's bill

works out the details of the independence problem in a manner somewhat

different from the plan I suggest, but that does not make me any the

less heartily in favor of the principle which his bill embodies. The

supreme virtue of the Jones bill is that it promises Independence at

a fixed date, July 4, 1921. It ends the cruel uncertainty, so unjust

to both the Filipinos and to the Americans in the Philippines, that

is contained in the present program of indefinite retention with

undeclared intention. Five years ago, in the North American Review

for January 18, and June 21, 1907, the writer hereof expressed the

belief that an earlier date was feasible, thus:

If three strong and able men, familiar with insular conditions,

and still young enough to undertake the task [538] were told by

a President of the United States, by authority of the Congress,

"Go out there and set up a respectable native government in

ten years, and then come away," they could and would do it,

and that government would be a success; and one of the greatest

moral victories in the annals of free government would have

been written by the gentlemen concerned upon the pages of their

country's history.

As Mr. Jones's bill allows four years more of time, I believe it to

be absolutely safe.

Governor Curry, the Congressman from New Mexico hereinabove mentioned,

who spent eight years in the Philippines, agrees with the fundamental

principle of the Jones bill, that as to making a definite promise of

Independence within a few years, and does not consider 1921 too early.