Part 14 (1/2)

For the public health an especially fruitful work has been done by the Americans, albeit the Filipino has often had much to say in criticism of the methods of saving life, and but little in praise of the work itself. ”The hate of those ye better, the curse of those ye bless” may usually be confidently counted on by those who bear the White Man's Burden, and this seems to have been especially true with regard to health work in the East. In the Philippines the farmers object to the quarantine restrictions that would save their carabao from rinderpest; they object to the regulations that look to stamping out cholera, and I suppose the isolation and colonization of lepers, who formerly ran at large, has also been unpopular. In spite of opposition, vaccination is now general; pock-marked Filipinos will not be so common in future.

Nor is it likely that there will be many reports of cholera outbreaks such as an ex-army nurse described to me a few days ago: ”When I was in Iloilo in 1902,” she said, ”it was impossible to dig graves for the poor natives as fast as they died. The men were kept digging, at the point of the bayonet, all night long--pits 100 feet long, 7 feet wide and 7 feet deep, in which the bodies of the dead were thrown and quick-limed--and yet I remember that on one occasion 235 corpses lay for forty-eight hours before we could find graves for them.”

In Manila statistics show that 44 per cent. of the deaths are {171} of babies under one year old, and the ignorance of the mothers as to proper methods of feeding and nursing has resulted in a shockingly high death rate of little ones all over the Philippines. I noticed that the new school text-book on sanitation and hygiene gives especial attention to the care of infants, and it is said that already the school boys and girls are often able to give their mothers helpful counsel. In this fact we have another good suggestion for the school authorities at home, where it is said that proper knowledge and care would save the lives of a million infants a year.

Hardly less important than the school work has been the road-building undertaken by the American officials. And in Philippine road work a most excellent example has been set for the states at home, in that the authorities have given attention not only to building roads but to maintaining them after they are built. Too many American communities vote a heavy bond issue for roads and think that ends the matter. In the Philippines no such mistake has been made. ”With the heavy rains here,” the Governor-General said to me, ”our entire investment in a piece of good road would be lost in four years' time if repair work were not carefully looked after.”

The system adopted for keeping up the roads is very interesting.

Everywhere along the fine highways I travelled over there were at intervals piles or pens of crushed stone and other material for filling up any hole or break. For each mile or so a Filipino is employed--he is called a _caminero_--and his whole duty is to take a wheelbarrow and a few tools and keep that piece of road in shape.

Prizes of $5000 each are also offered to the province that maintains the best system of first-cla.s.s roads, to the province that spends the largest proportion of its funds on roads and bridges, and to the province that shows the best and most complete system of second-cla.s.s roads.

That the Filipinos are unfit to face the world alone there can be little doubt. As to whether it is our business in that {172} case to manage for them is another question. The Filipinos are, like our negroes, a child-race in habits of thought, whatever they may be from the standpoint of the evolutionist. ”I never get angry with them, however much they may obstruct my plans,” an American of rank said to me, ”for I look on them as children. We are running a George Junior Republic; that's what it amounts to.” Another American, who has had some experience with the a.s.sembly, said to me: ”When you have explained and reiterated some apparently simple proposition, they will come to you a day or so later with some elementary question amazing for its childishness.” A large number of excellent measures for which the a.s.sembly has received the credit were really instigated by the commission--”personally conducted legislation,” it is called.

The Filipinos come of a race which has achieved more than the negro race, but on the whole they are probably hardly better fitted for self-government than the negroes of the South would be to-day if all the whites should move away. As a Republican of some prominence at home said to me in Manila: ”A crowd of ten-year-old schoolboys in Chicago would know better how to run a government.”

The mere fact that the Filipinos are not capable of managing wisely for themselves, of course, is not enough to justify a colonial or imperialistic policy on the part of the United States. It is not our business to go up and down the earth taking charge of everybody who is not managing his affairs as well as we think we could manage for him.

But, in any case, there is no use to delude ourselves as to what are the real qualifications of Mr. Filipino.

I believe that the United States should eventually withdraw from the islands, but when it does so there should be an understanding with the Powers that will prevent the natives from being exploited by some other nation.

China Sea, off Manila Harbor.

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XVIII

ASIA'S GREATEST LESSON FOR AMERICA

The prosperity of every man depends upon the prosperity (and therefore upon the efficiency) of the Average Man.

So I have argued for years, in season and out of season, in newspaper articles and in public addresses; and the most impressive fact I have discovered in all my travel through the Orient is the fundamental, world-wide importance of this too little accepted economic doctrine.

It is the biggest lesson the Old World has for the New--the biggest and the most important.

In America, education, democratic inst.i.tutions, a proper organization of industry: these have given the average man a high degree of efficiency and therefore a high degree of prosperity as compared with the lot of the average man in Asia or Europe--a prosperity heightened and enhanced, it is true, by the exploitation of a new continent's virgin resources, but, after all, due mainly, primarily, as we have said, to the high degree of efficiency with which the average man does his work.

And while there may be ”too much Ego in our Cosmos,” as Kipling's German said about the monkey, for us to like to admit it, the plain truth is that, no matter what our business, we chiefly owe our prosperity not to our own efforts, but to the high standards of intelligence, efficiency, and prosperity on the part of our people as a whole. We live in better homes, eat more wholesome food, wear better clothing, have more leisure {174} and more recreation, endure less bitter toil; in short, we find human life fairer and sweeter than our fellow man in Asia, not because you or I as individuals deserve so much better than he, but because of our richer racial heritage. We have been born into a society where a higher level of prosperity obtains, where a man's labor and effort count for more.

In China a member of the Emperor's Grand Council told me that the average rate of wages throughout the empire for all cla.s.ses of labor is probably 18 cents a day. In j.a.pan it is probably not more, and in India much less. The best mill workers I saw in Osaka average 22 cents a day; the laborers at work on the new telephone line in Peking get 10 cents; wheelbarrow coolies in Shanghai $4 a month; linotype operators in Tokyo 45 cents a day, and pressmen 50; policemen 40; the ironworkers in Hankow average about 10 cents; street-car conductors in Seoul make 35 cents; farm laborers about Nankou 10 cents; the highest wages are paid in the Philippines, where the ordinary laborer gets from 20 to 50 cents.

Since writing the foregoing I have looked up the latest official statistics for j.a.pan in the ”Financial and Economic Annual for 1910,” the latest figures compiled to date being for 1908. In 1908 wages had increased on the whole 40 per cent, above 1900 figures, and I give herewith averages for certain cla.s.ses of workmen for 1899 and 1908:

Daily Wages in Cents 1899 1908 Farm laborer, male $0.13 $0.19 Farm laborer, female .08-1/2 .11-1/2 Gardener .24 .34 Weaver, male .15 .22 Weaver, female .09 .12 Shoemaker .22-1/2 .32-1/2 Carpenter .25 .40 Blacksmith .23 .34 Day laborer .17 .26-1/2

When I asked Director Matsui what he paid the hands I saw at work on the Agricultural College farm, he answered, ”Well, being so near Tokyo, we have to pay 30 to 40 sen (15 to 20 cents) a day, but in the country, generally, I should say 20 to 35 sen” (10 to 13-1/2 cents a day).

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Moreover, there is a savage struggle for employment even at these low figures; men work longer hours than in America, and their tasks are often heart-sickening in their heaviness: tasks such as an American laborer would regard as inhuman.