The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 37

I think the above table makes clear the enormity of the injustice I am now trying to crucify. Without stopping to use your pencil, you can see that Mindanao, the island where the "intractable Moros" Governor Forbes speaks of live, contains about a half million people. Half of these are civilized Christians, and the other half are the wild, crudely Mohammedan Moro tribes. Above Mindanao on the above list, you behold what practically is the Philippine archipelago (except Mindanao), viz., Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. If you will turn back to pages 225 et seq., especially to page 228, where the student of world politics was furnished with all he needs or will ever care to know about the geography of the Philippine Islands, you will there find all the rocks sticking out of the water and all the little daubs you see on the map eliminated from the equation as wholly unessential to a clear understanding of the problem of governing the Islands. That process of elimination left us Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands above, as const.i.tuting, for all practical governmental purposes all the Philippine archipelago except the Moro country, Mindanao (i.e., parts of it), and its adjacent islets; Luzon and the Visayan Islands contain nearly 7,000,000 of people, and of these the wild tribes, as you can see by a glance at the above table, const.i.tute less than 300,000, sprinkled in the pockets of their various mountain regions. Nearly all these 300,000 are quite tame, peaceable, and tractable, except, as Governor Forbes suggests, they "might possibly mistake the object of a visit." The half million "intractable Moros" of Mindanao, plus those in the adjacent islets, make up another 300,000. These last, it is true, will need policing for some time to come, but whether we do that policing by retaining Mindanao, or whether we let the Filipinos do it, is a detail that has no standing in court as a reason for continuing to deny independence to the 7,000,000 of people of Luzon and the Visayan Islands because they have some 300,000 backward people in the backwoods of their mountains. Yet see how the ingenuity of inspired ignorance states the case, by adding the 300,000 tame tribes of Luzon and the Visayas to the 300,000 fierce Moro savages away down in Mindanao, near Borneo, so as to get 600,000 "wild" people, and then alluding to the fact that so far only 200,000 Filipinos are qualified to vote. Says the report of the minority of the Committee on Insular Affairs on the pending Jones bill (proposing independence in 1921):

The wild and uncivilized inhabitants of the islands outnumber, 3 to 1, those who would be qualified to vote under the pending bill [the Jones bill].

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 indors.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances, 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. Wilc.o.x 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 doc.u.ment. 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, cla.s.sifying, 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 ma.s.s of the Filipino people as islets from the sea, had had no more to do with the insurrection against us, than the p.a.w.nees, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tutes 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 doc.u.ments 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 ent.i.tled "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 "Ill.u.s.trated 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 ent.i.tled "Eighteen Igorrot Fledglings Hatched by the American Bird of Freedom." Another is ent.i.tled "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 ill.u.s.trated 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 n.o.blest 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 Was.h.i.+ngton (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 a.s.sociation 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 att.i.tude of the Insular Government permits the native press much lat.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 "n.i.g.g.e.rs." 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 a.s.sembly, representing the whole Filipino people, and desiring to express the unanimous feeling of those people with regard to the Worcester speech, unanimously pa.s.sed, soon after the speech was delivered, a set of resolutions whereof the following is a translation:

Resolved that the regret of the a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sociation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 pet.i.tion which embodied a copy of the resolutions of the Philippine a.s.sembly.

It thus becomes apparent that one of Professor Worcester's princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly, 1907.

The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government Act, is ent.i.tled "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 a.n.a.logize 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 s.h.i.+ned, 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 succ.u.mb to the muchacho custom, you will get rid of the $50 in other ways fairly cla.s.sifiable 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 Was.h.i.+ngton (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 Was.h.i.+ngton, and $1800 as only $1200.