The Aristocracy, the Poor, and American Women
Aristocracy and "Caciquism" in the Philippines--Poverty of the
Filipino Poor--Happiness in Spite of Poverty--Virtual Slavery of the
Rustics--Their Loyalty to Their Employers--Wages in Manila and in the
Provinces--Many Resources Possessed by the Upper Classes--Chaffering
for All Kinds of Produce--Happiness Within the Reach of American
Women if Employed--American Women Safe in the Philippines--After a
Visit to America I Am Glad to Return to the islands.
To an American of analytical tendencies a few years in the Philippines
present not only an interesting study of Filipino life, but a novel
consciousness of our own. The affairs of these people are so simple
where ours are complex, so complex where ours are simple, that one's
angle of view is considerably enlarged.
The general construction of society is mediæval and aristocratic. The
aristocracy, with the exception of a few wealthy brewers and cigar
manufacturers of Manila, is a land-holding one. There is practically
no bourgeoisie--no commercial class--between the rich and the poor. In
Manila and all the large coast towns trade is largely in the hands of
foreigners, chiefly Chinese, some few of whom have become converted
to the Catholic faith, and established themselves permanently in the
country;--all of whom have found Filipino helpmates, either with or
without the sanction of the Church, and have added their contingent
of half-breeds, or _mestizos_, to the population.
The land-owning aristocracy, though it must have been in possession
of its advantages for several generations, seems deficient in jealous
exclusiveness on the score of birth. I do not remember to have heard
once here the expression "of good family," as we hear it in America,
and especially in the South. But I have heard "He is a rich man" so
used as to indicate that this good fortune carried with it unquestioned
social prerogative. Yet there must be some clannishness based upon
birth, for your true Filipino never repudiates his poor relations
or apologizes for them. At every social function there is a crowd of
them in all stages of modest apparel, and with manners born of social
obscurity, asserting their right to be considered among the elect. I am
inclined to think that Filipinos concern themselves with the present
rather than the past, and that the _parvenu_ finds it even easier to
win his way with them than with us. Even under Spanish rule poor men
had a chance, and sometimes rose to the top. I remember the case, in
particular, of one family which claimed and held social leadership in
Capiz. Its head was a long-headed, cautious, shrewd old fellow, with so
many Yankee traits that I sometimes almost forgot, and addressed him
in English. My landlady, who was an heiress in her own right, and the
last of a family of former repute, told me that the old financier came
to Capiz "poor as wood." She did not use that homely simile, however,
but the typical Filipino statement that his pantaloons were torn. She
took me behind a door to tell me, and imparted the information in a
whisper, as if she were afraid of condign punishment if overheard.
"Money talks" in the Philippines just as blatantly as it does in
the United States. In addition to the social halo imparted by its
possession, there is a condition grown out of it, known locally as
"caciquism." Caciquism is the social and political prestige exercised
by a local man or family. There are examples in America, where every
village owns its leading citizen's and its leading citizen's wife's
influence. Booth Tarkington has pictured an American cacique in "The
Conquest of Canaan." Judge Pike is a cacique. His power, however,
is vested in his capacity to deceive his fellowmen, in the American's
natural love for what he regards as an eminent personality, and his
clinging to an ideal.
A Filipino cacique is quite a different being. He owes his prestige
to fear--material fear of the consequences which his wealth and power
can bring down on those that cross him. He does not have to play a
hypocritical role. He need neither assume to be, nor be, a saint in
his private or public life. He must simply be in control of enough
resources to attach to him a large body of relatives and friends whose
financial interests are tied up with his. Under the Spanish regime
he had to stand in by bribery with the local governor. Under the
American regime, with its illusions of democracy, he simply points to
his _clientèle_ and puts forward the plea that he is the natural voice
of the people. The American Government, helpless in its great ignorance
of people, language, and customs, is eager to find the people's voice,
and probably takes him at his word. Fortified by Government backing,
he starts in to run his province independently of law or justice,
and succeeds in doing so. There are no newspapers, there is no
real knowledge among the people of what popular rights consist in,
and no idea with which to combat his usurpations. The men whom he
squeezes howl, but not over the principle. They simply wait the day
of revolution. Even where there is a real public sentiment which
condemns the tyrant, it is half the time afraid to assert itself,
for the tyrant's first defence is that they oppose him because he is a
friend of the American Government. Local justice of the peace courts
are simply farcical, and most of the cacique's violations of right
keep him clear at least of the courts of first instance, where the
judiciary, Filipino or American, is reliable. Thus our Government,
in its first attempts to introduce democratic institutions, finds
itself struggling with the very worst evil of democracy long before
it can make the virtues apparent.
The poor people among the Filipinos live in a poverty, a misery, and
a happiness inconceivable to our people who have not seen it. Their
poverty is real--not only relative. Their houses are barely a covering
from rain or sun. A single rude bamboo bedstead and a stool or two
constitute their furniture. There is an earthen water jar, another
earthen pot for cooking rice, a bolo for cutting, one or two wooden
spoons, and a cup made of cocoanut shells. The stove consists of three
stones laid under the house, or back of it, where a rice-pot may be
balanced over the fire laid between. There are no tables, no linen,
no dishes, no towels. The family eat with their fingers while sitting
about on the ground with some broken banana leaves for plates. Coffee,
tea, and chocolate are unknown luxuries to them. Fish and rice, with
lumps of salt and sometimes a bit of fruit, constitute their only
diet. In the babies this mass of undigested half-cooked rice remains
in the abdomen and produces what is called "rice belly." In the adults
it brings beriberi, from which they die quickly. They suffer from
boils and impure blood and many skin diseases. Consumption is rife,
and rheumatism attacks old and young alike. They are tormented by
gnats and mosquitoes, and frequently to rid themselves of the pests
build fires under the house and sleep away the hot tropical night in
the smoke. While the upper classes are abstemious, the lower orders
drink much of the native _vino_, which is made from the sap of cocoanut
and nipa trees, and the men are often brutal to women and children.
I think the most hopeful person must admit that this is an enumeration
of real and not fancied evils, that the old saw about happiness
and prosperity being relative terms is not applicable. The Filipino
laborer is still far below even the lowest step of the relative degree
of prosperity and happiness. Yet in spite of these ills he is happy
because he has not developed enough to achieve either self-pity or
self-analysis. He bears his pain, when it comes, as a dumb animal
does, and forgets it as quickly when it goes. When the hour of death
descends, he meets it stoically, partly because physical pain dulls
his senses, partly because the instinct of fatalism is there in spite
of his Catholicism.
Of course this poverty-stricken condition is largely his own fault. He
has apparently an ineradicable repugnance to continued labor. He
does not look forward to the future. Fathers and mothers will sit
the whole day playing the guitar and singing or talking, after the
fashion of the country, with not a bite of food in the house. When
their own desires begin to reinforce the clamors of the children,
they will start out at the eleventh hour to find an errand or an odd
bit of work. There may be a single squash on the roof vine waiting
to be plucked and to yield its few centavos, or they can go out to
the beach and dig a few cents' worth of clams.
The more intelligent of the laboring class attach themselves as
_cliente_ to the rich land-holding families. They are by no means
slaves in law, but they are in fact; and they like it. The men are
agricultural laborers; the women, seamstresses, house servants, and wet
nurses, and they also do the beautiful embroideries, the hat-plaiting,
the weaving of piña, sinamay, and jusi, and the other local industries
which are carried on by the upper class. The poor themselves have
nothing to do with commerce; that is in the hands of the well-to-do.
As the children of the _clientèle_ grow up, they are scattered
out among the different branches of the ruling family as maids and
valets. In a well-to-do Filipino family of ten or twelve children,
there will be a child servant for every child in the house. The
little servants are ill-fed creatures (for the Filipinos themselves
are merciless in what they exact and parsimonious in what they give),
trained at seven or eight years of age to look after the room, the
clothing, and to be at the beck and call of another child, usually a
little older, but ofttimes younger than themselves. They go to school
with their little masters and mistresses, carry their books, and play
with them. For this they receive the scantiest dole of food on which
they can live, a few cast-off garments, and a stipend of a medio-peso
(twenty-five cents cents U.S. currency) per annum, which their parents
collect and spend. Parents and child are satisfied, because, little
as they get, it is certain. Parents especially are satisfied, because
thus do they evade the duties and responsibilities of parenthood.
It was at first a source of wonder to me how the rich man came out even
on his scores of retainers, owing to their idleness and the demands
for fiestas which he is compelled to grant. But he does succeed in
getting enough out of them to pay for the unhulled rice he gives
them, and he more than evens up on the children. If ever there was
a land where legislation on the subject of child labor is needed,
it is here. Children are overworked from infancy. They do much of the
work of the Islands, and the last drop of energy and vitality is gone
before they reach manhood or womanhood. Indeed, the first privilege
of manhood to them is to quit work.
The feeling between these poor Filipinos and their so-called employers
is just what the feeling used to be between Southerners and their
negroes. The lower-class man is proud of his connection with the great
family. He guards its secrets and is loyal to it. He will fight for
it, if ordered, and desist when ordered.
The second house I lived in in Capiz was smaller than the first,
and had on the lower floor a Filipino family in one room. I demanded
that they be ejected if I rented the house, but the owner begged me
to reconsider. They were, she said, old-time servants of hers to whom
she felt it her duty to give shelter. They had always looked after
her house and would look after me.
I yielded to her insistence, but doubtingly. In six weeks I was
perfectly convinced of her wisdom and my foolishness. Did it rain,
Basilio came flying up to see if the roof leaked. If a window stuck and
would not slide, I called Basilio. For the modest reward of two pesos
a month (one dollar gold) he skated my floors till they shone like
mirrors. He ran errands for a penny or two. His wife would embroider
for me, or wash a garment if I needed it in a hurry. If I had an errand
which took me out nights, Basilio lit up an old lantern, unsolicited,
and went ahead with the light and a bolo. If a heavy rain came up when
I was at school, he appeared with my mackintosh and rubbers. And while
a great many small coins went from me to him, I could never see that
the pay was proportional to his care. Yet there was no difficulty in
comprehending it. Pilar (my landlady) had told him to take care of me,
and he was obeying orders. If she had told him to come up and bolo
me as I slept, he would have done it unhesitatingly.
The result of American occupation has been a rise in the price of
agricultural labor, and in the city of Manila in all labor. But
in the provinces the needle-woman, the weaver, and the house
servant work still for inconceivably small prices, while there
has been a decided rise in the price of local manufactures. Jusi,
which cost three dollars gold a pattern in 1901, now costs six and
nine dollars. Exquisite embroideries on piña, which is thinner than
bolting cloth, have quadrupled their prices, but the provincial women
servants, who weave the jusi and do the embroidering, still work for
a few cents a day and two scanty meals.
When I arrived here a seamstress worked nine hours a day for twenty
cents gold and her dinner. Now in Manila a seamstress working for
Americans receives fifty cents gold and sometimes seventy-five cents
and her dinner, though the Spanish, Filipinos, and Chinese pay less. In
the province of Capiz twelve and a half cents gold per day for a
seamstress is the recognized price for an American to pay--natives
get one for less. A provincial Filipino pays his coachman two and
a half dollars gold a month, and a cook one dollar and a half. An
American for the same labor must pay from four to eight dollars for
the cook and three to six dollars for the coachman. As before stated,
the subordinate servants in a Filipino house cost next to nothing,
because of the utilization of child labor.
A provincial Filipino can support quite an establishment, and keep
a carriage on an income of forty dollars gold a month where to an
American it would cost sixty or eighty dollars. This is due partly to
our own consumption of high-priced tinned foods, partly to the better
price paid for labor, but chiefly to our desire to feed our servants
into good healthy condition. We not only see that they have more food,
but we look more closely to its variety and nutritious qualities. We
employ adults and demand more labor, because our housekeeping is more
complex than Filipino housekeeping, and we expect to employ fewer
servants than Filipinos do.
The Filipinos, the Spanish, and even the English who are settled
here cling to mediæval European ideas in the matter of service. If
they have any snobbish weakness for display, it is in the number of
retainers they can muster. Just as in our country rural prosperity is
evinced by the upkeep of fences and buildings, the spic and span new
paint, and the garish furnishings, here it is written in the number of
servants and hangers-on. The great foreign trading firms like to boast
of the tremendous length of their pay rolls. They would rather employ
four hundred underworked mediocrities at twenty pesos a month than
half a hundred abilities at four times that amount. The land-holders
like to think of the mouths they are responsible for feeding so very
poorly, and the busy housewife jingles her keys from weaving-room to
embroidery frame, from the little _tienda_ on the ground floor, where
she sells _vino_, cigars, and betel-nut, to the extemporized bakery
in the kitchen, where they are making rice cakes and taffy candy,
which an old woman will presently hawk about the streets for her.
One of the curious things here is the multiplicity of resource which
the rich classes possess. A rich land-holder will have his rice fields,
sugar mill, vino factory, and cocoanut and hemp plantations. He will
own a fish corral or two, and be one of the backers of a deep-sea
fishing outfit. He speculates a little in rice, and he may have some
interest in pearl fisheries. On a bit of land not good for much else
he has the palm tree, which yields _buri_ for making mats and sugar
bags. His wife has a little shop, keeps several weavers at work,
and an embroidery woman or two. If she goes on a visit to Manila,
the day after her return her servants are abroad, hawking novelties in
the way of fans, knick-knacks, bits of lace, combs, and other things
which she has picked up to earn an honest penny. If a steamer drops
in with a cargo of Batangas oranges, she invests twenty or thirty
pesos, and has her servants about carrying the trays of fruit for
sale. According to her lights, which are not hygienic, she is a good
housekeeper and a genuine helpmeet. She keeps every ounce of food under
lock and key, and measures each crumb that is used in cooking. She
keeps the housekeeping accounts, handles the money, never pries into
her husband's affairs, bears him a child every year, and is content,
in return for all this devotion, with an ample supply of pretty
clothes and her jewels. She herself does not work, busy as she is,
and it speaks well for the faith and honor of the Filipino people
that she can secure labor in plenty to do all these things for her,
to handle moneys and give a faithful account of them. It is pitiful
to see how little the Filipino laboring class can do for itself,
how dependent it is upon the head of its superiors, and how content
it is to go on piling up wealth for them on a mere starvation dole.
As before said, the laboring man who attaches himself to a great
family does so because it gives him security. He is nearly always
in debt to it, but if he is sick and unable to work he knows his
rice will come in just the same. Under the old Spanish system, a
servant in debt could not quit his employer's service till the debt
was paid. The object of an employer was to get a man in debt and
keep him so, in which case he was actually, although not nominally,
a slave. While this law is no longer in force, probably not ten per
cent of the laboring population realize it. They know that an American
cannot hold them in his employ against their will, but they do not
know that this is true of Filipinos and Spaniards. Nor is the upper
class anxious to have them informed. The poor frequently offer their
children or their younger brothers and sisters to work out their debts.
Children are sold here also. Twice in my first year at Capiz, I refused
to buy small children who were offered for sale by their parents lest
the worse evil of starvation should befall them; and once, on my going
into a friend's house, she showed me a child of three or four years
that she had bought for five pesos. She remarked that it was a pity
to let the child starve, and that in a year or two its labor would
more than pay for its keep.
Filipinos who have capital enough all keep one or more pigs. These
are yard scavengers, and, as sanitary measures are little observed
by this race, have access to filth that makes the thought of eating
their flesh exceedingly repulsive. When the owners are ready to kill,
however, the pig is brought upstairs into the kitchen, where it lives
luxuriously on boiled rice, is bathed once a day, and prepared for
slaughter like a sacrificial victim. If you are personally acquainted
with a pig of this sort and know the day set for his decease, you
may send your servant out to buy fresh pork; otherwise you had better
stick to chicken and fish.
Before the Insurrection, when the rinderpest had not yet destroyed the
herds, beef cattle were plenty, and meat was cheap enough for even the
poorest to enjoy. A live goat, full grown, was not worth more than a
peso (fifty cents gold). Now there are practically no beef cattle at
all, so the only meat available is goats' flesh, which is sold at from
twenty to sixty cents a pound (ten to thirty cents gold). Americans
living in the provinces rely largely upon chicken, though in the coast
towns there is always plenty of delicious fish. There are also oysters
(not very good), clams, crabs, shrimps, and crayfish.
One of the most irritating features of housekeeping here is the
lack of any fixed value, especially for market produce. There are no
grocery stores, every article must be chaffered over, and is valued
according to the owner's pressing needs, his antipathy for Americans,
or his determination to get everything he can.
You may be driving in the country and see a flock of chickens
feeding under or near a house. You ask the price. The owner has just
dined. There is still enough _palay_ (unhulled rice) to furnish the
evening meal. He has no pressing need of money, and he doesn't want
to disturb himself to run down chickens. His fowls simply soar as to
price. They are worth anywhere from seventy-five cents to a dollar
apiece. The current price of chickens varies according to size and
season from twenty to fifty cents. You may offer the latter price and
be refused. The next day the very same man may appear at your home,
offering for twenty or thirty cents the fowls for which the day before
he refused fifty.
Except in the cold storage and the Chino grocery shops of Manila,
nothing can be bought without chaffering. The Filipinos love this;
they realize that we are impatient and seldom can hold out long at it,
and in many cases they overcharge us from sheer race hatred. Also
they have the idea, as they would express it, that our money is
two times as much as theirs, and that therefore we should pay two
prices. Often they put a price from sheer caprice or effrontery and
hang to it from obstinacy. In the same market I have found mangoes
of the same quality ranging all the way from thirty cents to a dollar
and fifty cents a dozen.
In the provinces market produce is very limited. In fresh foods there
is nothing but sweet potatoes, several varieties of squash, a kind of
string bean, lima beans, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers (in season),
spinach, and field corn. Potatoes and onions can be procured only
from Manila, bought by the crate. If there be no local commissary,
tinned foods must be sent in bulk from Manila. The housekeeper's task
is no easy one, and the lack of fresh beef, ice, fresh butter, and milk
wears hard on a dainty appetite. The Philippines are no place for women
or men who cannot thrive and be happy on plain food, plenty of work,
and isolation. Nor is there any sadder lot than that of the American
married woman in the provinces who is unemployed. Her housekeeping
takes very little time, for the cheapness of native servants obviates
the necessity of all labor but that of supervision. There is nowhere
to go, nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to talk about. She
has nothing to do but to lie in a steamer chair and to think of
home. Most women break down under it very quickly; they lose appetite
and flesh and grow fretful or melancholy. But to a woman who loves
her home and is employed, provincial life here is a boon. Remember
that for an expenditure of forty or fifty dollars a month the single
woman can maintain an establishment of her own--a genuine home--where
after a day's toil she can find order and peace and idleness awaiting
her. Filipino servants are not ideal, but any woman with a capacity
for organization can soon train them into keeping her house in the
outward semblance at least of order and cleanliness. She had better
investigate it pretty closely on Saturdays and Sundays; if she does
so, she can leave it to run itself very well during the five days of
her labor. And what a joy it is--I speak in the bitter remembrance
of a long line of hotels and boarding-houses--to go back to one's
home after a day's labor instead of to a hall bedroom; to sit at
one's own well-ordered if simple table, and escape the chatter of
twenty or thirty people who have no reason for association except
their economic necessities!
In the six years I have lived in these Islands, I have never heard of
indignity or disrespect shown to American women. [1] They are perfectly
safe, and if they choose to exercise any common sense, need not be
nervous. Housebreaking outside of Manila is unknown. I myself lived
for four years in a provincial town, the greater part of the time quite
removed from the neighborhood of other Americans, with only two little
girls in the house with me. I remember one evening having a couple of
civil engineers, who had been fellow passengers on the transport and
were temporarily in town, to dinner. When they were ready to leave,
at half-past ten, the little girls had both gone to sleep, so I went
downstairs to let them out and bar the door after them. One burst
out laughing and remarked that my bolting the door was a formality,
and that I must have confidence in the honesty of the natives. The
door was of bamboo, tied on with strips of rattan in place of hinges,
which any one could have cut with a knife. I admitted that the man was
right, but the closed door was the symbol that my house was my castle,
and I had no fear of Filipino thieves. The only time I was ever really
afraid was when there were two or three disreputable Americans in town.
The two girls from Radcliffe were in a town in Negros where there was
no other American, man or woman, and held their position for over a
year; nor were they once affrighted in all that time.
After five years of this peace and security in the "wilds," I went back
to the United States and met the pitying ejaculations of the community
on my exile. Well, there was a difference. I noted it first on the
dining-car of the Canadian-Pacific Railroad, where one's plate was
surrounded by a host of little dishes, where the clatter of service
was deafening (so different from the noiselessness of the Oriental),
and the gentleman who filled my water glass held it about three feet
from the water bottle, and manipulated both in sympathetic curves
which expressed his entire mastery of the art. I found it again on the
Northwestern, where the colored porter, observing some Chinese coins
in my purse when I tipped him, said, "Le's see," with a confidence
born of democracy, and sat down on the arm of the Pullman seat to
get a better view of them.
But it was in Chicago--the busy, noisy, dusty, hustling Chicago--that
all the joys of civilization fell on me at once. It seemed to be in a
state of siege with house thieves, assassins, and "hold-ups." There
had been several murders of women, so revolting that the newspapers
would not print the details. I found my brother's flat equipped with
special bolts on all outside doors, so that they could be opened for
an inch or two without giving anybody an opportunity to push in. Once
when a police officer called at the door to ask for subscriptions
for the sufferers of the San Francisco disaster, I locked him out
on the back porch while I did some telephoning to see if it was all
right. Women were afraid to be on the streets in the early dusk. Extra
policemen had been sworn in, preachers had delivered sermons on the
frightful condition of the city.
At night I locked my bedroom door, and dreamed of masked burglars
standing over me threatening with drawn revolver. For the thirty days
I remained there, I knew more of nervousness and terror than the whole
time I spent in the Philippines, and I came back to resume the old
life where there is security in all things, barring a very remote
insurrection and the possibility of hearing the roar of Japanese
guns some fine morning. And through and through a grateful system I
felt the lifting of the tremendous pressure, the agonizing strain,
competition, and tumult of American life. Thank Heaven! there is still
a mañana country--a fair, sunny land, where rapid transportation and
sky-scrapers do not exist.