Social and Industrial Condition of the Filipinos
American and Tagalog Invaders of Visaya Compared--Doubt As to
the Aptitude of Filipinos for Self-Government--Their Civilization
Not Achieved by Themselves But Inherited from Spain--Their Present
Personal Liberty--Belief of the Poor That Alien Occupation is the
Root of Their Misery--How the Filipinos View Labor--Their Apathy
Toward Machinery--Their Interest Centred Not in Industry But in
Themselves--Their Hazy Conceptions of Government--Their Need of
a Remodelled Social System--Their Jealousy Lest Others Make Large
Profits in Dealing with Them--Zeal of the Aristocrats to Preserve
Their Prerogatives--A New Aristocracy Likely to Be Raised by the
American Public Schools.
Capiz was occupied by a company of the Tenth Cavalry and one of the
Sixth Infantry. The relations between Americans and Filipinos seemed
most cordial. There had never been any fighting in the immediate
neighborhood of the town. The Visayans are a peaceful race; even
in the insurrection against Spain the Capizeños felt a decided
pro-Spanish sentiment. Early in the rebellion a few boat-loads of
Tagalog soldiers came down from Luzon, and landed on the open north
coast two miles from the town. The valiant Capizeños had dug some
trenches on the beach and had thrown up a breastwork there, and
they went out to fight for Spain and Visaya. They fired two rounds
without disconcerting the Tagalogs very much, and then, having no
more ammunition, they "all ran home again," as my informant naïvely
described it. The Tagalogs took possession of the town, and the
Visayans lived in fear and trembling. Nearly all women, both wives
and young girls, carried daggers in fear of assault from Tagalog
soldiers. Some declared to me that they would have used the daggers
upon an assailant, others told me that the weapons were intended as
a last resort for themselves. The Spanish wife of our Governor said
that during the time of Tagalog occupation she seldom ventured out of
her home; that she discarded her European dress, affected the native
costume, wore her hair hanging down her back, and tried in every way
to keep from attracting the attention of the invaders. Nevertheless,
several young girls were seized in spite of their parents' efforts to
protect them. Many families fled from the town and took refuge in the
mountain villages inland. Others lived in boats, lurking about the
rivers and the innumerable waterways which criss-cross the swampy
coast plain. When the Tagalogs withdrew, the wanderers returned to
their homes, only to make a fresh exodus when the Americans came.
The Americans did not land on the north coast, but entered the
town from the south, having marched and fought their way up the
full length of the island from Iloilo. Horrid rumors preceded them
concerning their gigantic size and their bloodthirsty habits. It was
reported that they had burned hundreds of women and children alive at
Iloilo. The timid Capizeños had no idea of resistance, but, for the
most part, closed their houses, leaving some old servant in charge,
and took once more to the hills and the swamps. A few sage heads
had their own reasons for doubting the alleged American ferocity,
and decided to stay at home and risk it.
One of my pupils, a very intelligent young girl, described to me the
American entry. She said that the houses of the rich were closed,
shell windows were drawn to, and the iron-sheathed outer doors
were locked and barred. But most shell windows have in the centre a
little pane of glass to permit the occupants of the house to look out
without being seen. My young friend told me how her family were all
"peeking," breathless, at their window pane, and how the first view
of the marching columns struck fear to their hearts, so tall and
powerful seemed the well-clad, well-armed men. A halt was called,
and after the proper formalities at the _provoste_, or town hall,
the municipality was handed over to American rule, and the Stars and
Stripes floated from the local flagstaff. The soldiers were permitted
to break ranks, and they began buying fruits and bottles of beer and
of native wine in the _tiendas_, or shops. The soldiers overpaid,
of course, joked, picked up the single-shirted pickaninnies, tossed
them, kissed them, and otherwise displayed their content. Then, said
my informant, her father (who is an astute old fellow) decided that
the story of American ferocity was a lie. He ordered his house opened,
and the shell windows slid back, revealing his pretty daughters in
their best raiment, smiling and bowing. The officers raised their
caps and gave back smiles and bows; a few natives cried, "Viva los
Americanos," and behold, the terrible event was all over.
Acquaintance was at once struck up. The officers came to pay their
respects, drank beer and muscatel, consumed sweets, and paid florid
compliments in Spanish. They began to take possession of those houses
whose owners were out of town, and the news went out. Then there was
as great a scramble to get back as there had been to get away. In
a few days everything was running smoothly, and, as my interlocutor
remarked, all the American officers were much in love with the charming
Filipino girls.
Almost the first act of the military was to open the schools. The
schoolhouses had been used as barracks by the Tagalogs. The chaplain
of the Eighteenth Infantry, the children told me, was their first
teacher. The opening of the schools was a great surprise to the
Filipinos, who were clever enough to appreciate the national standards
which the act implied.
At the time of my arrival the foregoing facts were, in the rush of
events, almost ancient history. Two years had passed. American women,
wives of officers, had come and gone. Peace had been declared and
the machinery of civil government had been put in action.
It would be foolish for me to spend time discussing the Filipino's
aptitude for self-government. Wiser heads than mine have already
arrived at a hopeless _impasse_ of opinion on that point. There are
peculiarities of temperament in the Filipino people which are seldom
discussed in detail, but which offer premises for statements and
denials, not infrequently acrimonious, and rarely approached in a
desire to make those judging from a distance take into consideration
all that makes opinions reliable. Such peculiarities of character
seem to me pertinent to a book which deals with impressions.
Whatever their capacity for achieving the Anglo-Saxon ideal of
self-government, it ought to be recognized that the Filipinos are both
aided and handicapped by receiving not only their government but their
civilization ready made. Their newly aroused sense of nationality
is asserting itself at a period in the world's development when
the mechanical aids to industry and the conscience of a humane and
civilized world relieve Filipino development from the birth throes by
which other nations have struggled to the place at which the Filipinos
begin. Thus, at the same time that individuals are spared the painful
experiences which have moulded and hardened the individual units of
other races, the Filipinos have, as a race, received an artificial
impetus which tends to deceive them as to their own capacity, and
to increase their aggregate self-confidence, while the results of
personal ineptitude are continually overlooked or excused.
Both civilization, as acquired in the three hundred years of Spanish
occupation, and self-government have descended upon the Filipino
very much as the telephone and the music box have done--as complete
mechanisms which certain superficial touches will set in motion,
the benefits of which are to certain classes and individuals quite
obvious, and the basic principles of which they have memorized but
have not _felt_. At present there are not, in the emotional being
of the Filipinos, the convictions about liberty and government
which are the heritage of a people whose ancestors have achieved
liberty and enlightenment by centuries of unaided effort, and
who are willing to die--die one and all--rather than lose them;
and yet there is a sincere, a passionate desire for political
independence. The Filipino leaders, however, have no intention of
dying for political independence, nor do they desire to sacrifice
even their personal pleasures or their effects. They talk a great
deal about independence, they write editorials about it, it fills
a great part of their thoughts; and no reasonable person can doubt
their sincerity. But most of the political talk in the Philippines is
on a par with certain socialistic thought in the United States--the
socialistic talk of modern writers and speakers, of idealists and
dreamers. It seems as great a perversion of abstract justice, to a
Filipino, that an alien nation should administer his Government, as
it seems to a hard-working American woman that she should toil all
her life, contributing her utmost to the world's progress and the
common burden of humanity, while her more fortunate sisters, by the
mere accident of birth, spend their lives in idleness and frivolity,
enriched by the toil of a really useful element in society. But
to most Filipinos, as to most American women, the contemplation of
the elemental injustice of life does not bring pangs sufficient to
drive them into overt action to right the injustice. There are a few
Filipinos upon whom the American administration in the Philippines
presses with a sense of personal obstruction and weight heavy enough
to make them desire overt action; but upon the majority of the race
the fact of an alien occupation sits very lightly. No man, American
or Filipino, wants to risk his life for the abstract principles of
human justice until the circumstances of life growing out of the
violation of those principles are well-nigh unendurable to him. The
actual condition of the Philippines is such that the violation of
abstract justice--that is, alien occupation--does not bear heavily
upon the mass of the people. For the entire race alien occupation
is, for the time being, an actual material benefit. Personal liberty
in the Philippines is as absolute as personal liberty in the United
States or England. Far from making any attempt to keep the native in
a condition of ignorance, the alien occupiers are trying to coax or
prod him, by all the short cuts known to humanity, into the semblance
of a modern educated progressive man. There is no prescription which
they have tried and found good for themselves which they are not
importing for the Philippines, to be distributed like tracts. And to
the quick criticism which Filipinos of the restless kind are prone
to make, that what is good for an American is not necessarily good
for a Filipino, the alien occupiers may reply that, until the body
of the Filipino people shows more interest in developing itself, any
prescription, whether it originate with Americans or with those who
look upon themselves as the natural guides and rulers of this people,
is an experiment to be tried at the ordinary experimental risk.
The common people of the Philippine Islands enjoy a personal liberty
never previously obtained by a class so rudimentary in its education
and in its industrial development. They would fight blindly, at the
command of their betters, but not because they are more patriotic than
the educated classes. The aristocrats, who would certainly hesitate
to fight for their convictions, really think a great deal more about
their country and love it a great deal more than do the common people,
who would, under very little urging, cheerfully risk their lives. But
the poorer people live under conditions that seem hard and unjust
to them. The country is economically in a wretched state, and the
working-classes have neither the knowledge nor the ambition to apply
themselves to its development. Unable to discover the real cause of
their misery (which is simply their own sloth), they have heard just
enough political talk to make them fancy that the form of government
is responsible for their unhappy condition. With them the causes which
drive men into dying for an abstract idea do exist; and it is easy
for a demagogue to convince them that the alien occupation is the
root of all evil, and that a political change would make them all rich.
Among the extremely poor of the Filipinos there exists a certain
amount of bitterness against Americans, because they think that our
strong bodies, our undoubtedly superior health and vitality, our
manner of life, which seems to them luxurious past human dreams,
and our personal courage are attributes which we enjoy at their
expense. The slow centuries which have gone to our building up,
mental and physical, are causes too remote for their limited thinking
powers to take into consideration. Moreover, though we say that we
have come to teach them to work and to make their country great,
we ourselves do not work; at least, they do not call what we do
_work_. A poor Filipino's conception of work is of something that
takes him into the sun or that soils his clothing. Filipinos hate and
fear the sun just as they hate the visible tokens of toil on their
persons. Where they know the genteel trades such as hat weaving,
dressmaking, embroidering, tailoring, and silversmithing, there
is relatively a fair industrial willingness. Men are willing to be
cooks and house servants, but they do not want to learn carpentry or
blacksmithing or gardening, all of which mean soiled clothes and hot
work; and women are unwilling to work in the kitchen. From the poor
Filipinos' standpoint, the Americans do not work--they rule. It would
be difficult to make a Filipino of the laboring class believe that
a teacher or a provincial treasurer had done a day's work. Loving,
as all Filipinos do, to give orders to others, ignorant as they are
of the responsibilities which press upon those who direct, they see
merely that we do not soil our hands, and they envy us without giving
us credit for the really hard work that we do.
Meanwhile there pours in upon the country a stream of modern mechanism
and of modern formulated thought, and the laborer has just as little
real interest in knowing what is inside the machine as his slightly
more intelligent neighbor has in examining the thought and in accepting
or rejecting it on its merits. Some accept all that we offer them,
doing so in a spirit of real loyalty, on the assumption that we know
more than they do, and that our advice is to be accepted. Others
reject everything with a blind resentment because it comes from
our hands. They feel that, in accepting or rejecting, they are
demonstrating their capacity to do their own thinking, when in reality
they are only asserting their right to do their own _feeling_. A sense
of discrimination in what they accept or reject in our thought has
not yet appeared, to any great extent, in those classes of Filipinos
with whom I have come in contact; nor as yet have I ever beheld in the
laboring classes a desire to understand the mechanisms to which they
are constantly introduced, which will be the first symptoms of growth.
A few weeks ago a Filipino workman was making an electric light
installation in my house. He handled the wires very carelessly, and
I asked him if he was not afraid of a shock. On his replying that
the current was very light, I put the inevitable American query, How
did the company manage to get a light current on one street, and at
the same time to keep up the current in other parts of the city? His
reply was, "There is a box on Calle San Andres, and the current goes
in strong on one side and comes out light on the other," On my asking
if he knew how the box was able to produce such a result, he replied
blithely that he did not know; and to a third question, why he did
not try to find out, he asked me why he should _want_ to know. He
was a very ignorant man, but his attitude was not uncharacteristic of
much wiser men than he. I discovered one morning, in talking to the
most advanced class in the Manila School of Arts and Trades, that not
one of them knew what steam is, or had any idea of how it is applied
to manufacture; and yet they were working every day, and had been
working, most of them for two or three years, in the machine-shops
and the wood-working shops where a petroleum engine was in constant
operation. The boys had shown such a courteous interest in what was
pointed out to them, and had so little real interest and curiosity
in what they were working with, that their shop teachers had never
guessed that they did not know the elementary principles of mechanics.
If a flying machine should suddenly descend in an American village
with no sign of steam gear, electric motor, compressed air, or any
other motive power with which we are familiar, can you imagine that
eighty per cent of the population of the village would stand around,
begging the inventor to make it fly and alight again, exhibiting all
the delight of children in a strange toy, but giving it not one close
glance, one touch to determine how it is made, and not even wondering
anything about it? Can you imagine all those people placidly accepting
the fact that there are other nations interested in making strange
machines, and receiving the strange toy as an example of foreign energy
with which, at that or at any other time, they had no concern? Yet
such is the actual condition of affairs in the Philippine Islands,
and I am not sure that my estimate of eighty per cent is not too
low. Filipinos of the educated classes, gentlemen who can talk about
"The grandeur that was Greece,
And the glory that was Rome,"
or who can quote Tom Paine or Voltaire or Rousseau, or discuss the
fisherman's ring of the Pope, or the possibilities of an Oriental
race alliance, would give a glance at such a machine and dismiss
it with such a remark as this: "Ah! a new flying machine. Very
interesting. If it proves practical, it should be a great benefit to
the Philippines. The Government should buy two or three and put them
in operation to show the people how they can be used."
The great majority of the Filipino people are simply apathetic toward
the material and spiritual appliances of their present status. (Please
do not infer, however, that they are apathetic toward the status
itself.) Fortune is continually thrusting upon them a ready-made
article, be it of transportation, of furniture, of education, or
even of creed. With no factories of its own, their land is deluged
with cheap manufactured goods. With almost no authors, they have been
inundated with literature and texts. With no experience in government,
they have a complicated system presented to them, and are told to go
ahead, to fulfil the requirements, to press the button, and to let
the system do the rest. And they are, with few exceptions, making
the mistake of assuming that their aptitude in learning to press the
button is equivalent to the power of creating the system. They are like
some daring young chauffeur who finds that he can run an automobile,
and can turn it and twist it and guide it and control it with the
same ease that its inventor does, and who feels that he is as fully
its master--as indeed he is, till something goes wrong.
The intelligent Filipinos who are pressing for immediate
self-government have no intentions of changing the "press-the-button"
system if they get what they want. Nor can the American Government, if
it remain here, do any more than it is now doing to urge the Filipino
into real industrial and mental activity. Until the Filipino takes
more interest in _things_ than he takes in himself; until he learns to
approach life from some other standpoint than the social one, and with
some other object than seeing how large a figure he can cut in it,
it makes no difference what flag flies over his head, his national
existence is an artificial one, a semblance of living nourished by
the selfishness of those with whom he has commercial relations.
The intelligent Filipinos (I speak of the ordinary middle classes
of Manila and the provinces, not of the really eminent Filipinos
who are associated with the Government, for with them I have
little acquaintance) have had so little practical contact with
the great world, so little conception of what a strong commercial
and manufacturing nation is, that it is impossible to make them
understand that no nation of the present day can achieve greatness
except by industry. If you can get them to talk freely, you find
them absorbed in a glorious dream of the Filipino people dazzling
the world with pure intellectuality--a Philippines full of poets,
artists, orators, authors, musicians, and, above all, of eloquent
statesmen and generals. They do not reflect that a statesman is wasted
who has nothing but a handful of underfed people to govern, and that
it is commerce and agriculture which furnish the propelling power
to the ship of state on which the statesman is a pilot. They want
to be progressive, and their idea of progress is a constant stream
of mechanical appliances flowing like water into the Philippines
from other lands; but they do not even consider where the money is
to come from to pay for all the things they want. They howl like
victims over taxation, but they have a hazy idea that it is the duty
of their Government to seek out every labor-saving machine in the
world and to buy it and to put it in operation in the Philippines
till the inhabitants have accustomed themselves to its use, and have
obtained through its benefits the wherewithal to indulge in more
of the same sort. They do not concern themselves with the problem
of the Government's getting the money to do all this, other than
they think that if we Americans were out of the way, and the six or
eight million pesos of revenue which go annually into our pockets
were going to Filipinos instead, there would be money in plenty for
battleships, deep-water harbors, railroads, irrigation, agricultural
banks, standing armies, extended primary and secondary education;
and that the resources of the Government would even permit of the
repeal of the land tax, of the abolition of internal revenue taxes,
and of the lowering of the tariff. One of their favorite dreams of
raising money is to put a tremendously high license upon all foreigners
doing business in the Islands; and so high an opinion have they both
of their value to the world at large and of their prowess, that they
do not take into consideration the probability of the foreigner's
either getting out of the country or appealing to his own Government
to protect his invested capital. When they speak of independence,
they invariably assume that America is going to protect them against
China, Japan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.
Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-class
Filipino--a class holding the ballot by the grace of God and the
assistance of the American Government. Their inverted ideas come
from real inexperience in highly organized industrial society, and
from perfectly natural deductions from books. When they study Roman
and Greek history, they learn there the names of generals, poets,
artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians. Books do not dwell
upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian
archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores
of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules. The Filipinos learn that
Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war,
but they do not reflect that the predatory age--at least in the Roman
sense--is past. Their imaginations seize upon the part played by the
little island republic of Venice, and they gloat over the magnificence
of the Venetian aristocracy, but they hardly give a thought to the
thousands of glass-blowers, to the weavers of silken stuffs, to the
shipbuilders and the artisans, and to the army of merchants that
piled up the riches to make Venice a power on the Mediterranean.
Filipinos have come in contact, not with _life_ but with _books_, and
their immediate ambition is to produce the things which are talked
of in books. Situated as these Islands are, remote from any great
modern civilization, there is no criterion by which the inhabitants
can arrive at a correct estimate of their condition. If here and there
a single Filipino educated in Europe should dazzle society with novels
or plays or happy speeches, most of his countrymen would be satisfied
with his vindication of Filipino capacity.
There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the future
development of the Philippines, whether they remain under our flag
or become independent. One is a new aristocracy to be a new type of
incentive to the laborer; the other is an increase in the laborer's
wants which will keep him toiling long after he has discovered the
futility of the hopes which urged him in the beginning. At present,
the American Government is trying to remodel a social system which
consists of a land-holding aristocracy and an ignorant peasantry,
the latter not exactly willing to work for a pittance, but utterly
helpless to extricate themselves from the necessity of doing so. To
the aristocrat the Government says, "Come and aid us to help thy
brother, that he may some day rob thee of thy prerogatives"; and
to the peasant, "O thou cock-fighting, fiesta-harboring son of
idleness and good-nature, wake up, struggle, toil, take thy share
of what lies buried in thy soil and waves upon thy mountainsides,
and be as thy brother, yonder." Nor is my picture complete if I do
not add that, under his breath, both peasant and aristocrat reply,
"Fool I for what? That I may pick _thy_ chestnuts out of the fire."
There is a story which illustrates the Filipino's sensitiveness to
picking somebody else's chestnuts out of the fire, not inappropriate to
be told here. The agent of the Kelly Road Roller Company had made an
agreement with a number of Filipinos in the Maraquina Valley to take
up a rice thresher and to thresh their crops for one-twelfth of the
output. As this was cheaper than the usual cost of rice-threshing,
they accepted the offer, but they were anxious to compare the new
machine with their own system. One way of threshing rice is to have a
kind of stone table like an armchair, in which the seat is a bowl for
the grain which drops down as the thresher strikes the laden stalks
against the stone back. On the appointed day the American appeared
with his thresher, and the Filipinos were on hand with their stone
table and a confident expert who was reputed the best rice-thresher
in the district. The American began to feed his machine, and the
Filipino made his bundles cut the air. In a few seconds the Filipino
had quite a little handful of grain collected in his stone bowl,
but not a grain of rice had appeared from the thresher. The workman
cast supercilious glances at the machine, when suddenly a stream
of rice as thick as his wrist began to pour out, and continued to
pour in startling disproportion to his tiny pile. He stood it half a
minute and then laid down his bundle of stalks and strode away. The
onlooking land-holders were at first amazed and delighted. Then
suddenly a horrible thought struck them! They got out their pocket
pads and pencils and began to figure. Then they held a consultation
and declared that the deal was off--that for one-twelfth the amount
of rice streaming out of the thresher, the American's profits would
be highway robbery of the poor Filipino. In vain the agent pointed
out to them that the one-twelfth was a ratio in which their gain would
always be proportionate to his. They could see nothing except that he
was going to make a large sum of money at their expense. The economy
of the thresher over their own wasteful system made no impression
against the fact that his commission would be a bulk sum which they
were unwilling to see him gain. They could not afford to buy the
machine, but they stopped the threshing then and there; and the agent
learned that what is good advertising in America is not necessarily
good in the Philippines.
The reader may fancy that he perceives in this chapter a direct
contradiction of what I said in a preceding chapter about the Filipino
aristocrat's desiring the best of everything for his country. But
the Filipino is like the sinner who says with all sincerity that he
desires to be saved, but who, when confronted with the necessity of
giving up certain of his pleasures as the price of salvation, feels
that salvation comes rather high, and begins to figure on how he can
accomplish the desired result without personal inconvenience. The
present land-holding aristocracy is jealous to the last degree of its
prerogatives, and it has fought every attempt to equalize taxation
and to make the rich bear their fair share in the national expense
account. The land tax and the _rentas internes_, or internal revenue
tax, are two governmental measures which the rich classes fought to
the extreme of bitterness, and which they would revoke to-morrow if
it lay in their power to do so.
An aristocracy represents a survival of the fittest--not necessarily
the ideally fit, but the fittest to meet the conditions under which it
must prove a survivor. The conditions which Spain created here to mould
Filipino character were mediæval, monarchical, and reactionary. The
aristocracy is a land-holding one, untrained in the responsibilities
of land-holders who grow up a legitimate part of the body politic of
their country. Previous to American occupation the aristocracy was
excluded from any share in the government, and the Spaniards were
exceedingly jealous of any pretensions to knowledge or culture on
its part. The aristocracy which could survive such conditions had
to do so by indirectness and courtier-like flattery, by blandishment
and deceit. The aristocrats learned to despise the poor and the weak;
for the more extravagant the alms-giving, the more arrogant the secret
attitude of the giver. They trusted less to their own strength than
to others' weakness. They relied less on their own knowledge than
on others' ignorance. Whatever solidarity the aristocracy had and
has to-day is of a class nature rather than of a racial. In the
insurrection against Spain it allied itself with its lower-class
brethren simply because Spain forced it to do so. Had the friars
made concessions to the aristocracy as a class, and permitted them
a voice in Filipino affairs, there would have been no insurrection
against Spain, nor would the entrance of a Filipino governing class
have made large changes in the conditions of the great mass of the
Filipino people.
Under a democratic Government the present aristocracy cannot retain
its present place and prestige, and a portion of its eagerness for
independence comes from a recognition of that fact. The American
Government has practically opened the way for the creation of a new
aristocracy in establishing the public schools. In the provinces
the primary schools are patronized by rich and poor alike, though it
has required considerable effort to make the poor people understand
that their children have as much right to the enjoyment of school
privileges as have the children of the rich. The secondary schools of
the provinces are patronized chiefly by the middle and upper classes,
and in the city of Manila the children of the really wealthy hardly
ever attend the public schools. The wealthy citizens of Manila prefer
to send their sons to the religious schools, and their daughters to
the _colegios_, or sisterhood schools, of which there are many. While
English is taught in all these schools, general instruction is in
Spanish; the courses of study include the usual amount of catechism,
expurgated history, and the question-and-answer method of "philosophy"
of the old Spanish system. If the American Government remain here,
a new aristocracy, the result of her public school system, is
inevitable. If it should not remain here, the Spanish-reared product
will continue to hold its present place.