Part 39 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVI
CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION
Taxation without representation is good cause for revolt.
American Speech of 1776.
As a colony of Spain the Philippines enjoyed certain special privileges in the way of trade with the ”mother country.” When at the beginning of our military occupation in 1898 General Otis detailed an army officer to take charge of the Customs House, he continued for the time being the Spanish tariff laws concerning imports and exports. On September 17, 1901, the Philippine Commission pa.s.sed a tariff act [511] fixing the duties on imports into the Islands and also continuing to a considerable extent the system of duties on Philippine exports inherited from the Spanish regime. Among the products of the Philippine Islands on which the Act of September 17, 1901, imposed an export tax were the following:
Hemp, 75c. per 100 kilos [512]; sugar, 5c. per 100 kilos; manufactured tobacco, $1.50 per 100 kilos; raw tobacco, $1.50 down to 75c. per 100 kilos. [513]
On March 8, 1902, the United States Congress pa.s.sed an Act, ”temporarily to provide revenue for the Philippine Islands and for other purposes.” The Act of 1902 re-enacted the Commission's tariff law for the Philippines of September 17, 1901, with one change, hereinafter to be discussed, as to its export tax features. As to the tariffs to be collected at our custom-houses on Philippine products s.h.i.+pped to the United States, the Act of 1902 reduced the rates fixed by the Dingley tariff to seventy-five per cent. of said rates. That was all Congress did in the way of lowering our tariff wall to Philippine products until 1909, when the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill became a law. This twenty-five per cent. reduction was no better than no reduction whatever would have been.
Governor Taft pleaded very earnestly with Congress, at the time of the pa.s.sage of the Philippine Tariff Act of March 8, 1902, for a substantial reduction of the Dingley tariff rate on sugar and tobacco, so as to give his ”const.i.tuents”--his Filipinos--something in lieu of the markets they had had under Spain. But our sugar and tobacco interests defeated his efforts, because they feared what they termed ”compet.i.tion with cheap Asiatic labor.”
The Act of Congress of March 8, 1902, repealed the export duties imposed by the Act of the Philippine Commission of September 17, 1901, as to exports to the United States, leaving unrepealed, however, the export duty on Philippine products s.h.i.+pped to foreign countries. Section 2 of said Act of 1902 provided, as to exports from the Philippines to the United States, that the rates of duty upon products of the Philippine Archipelago coming into the United States, should be less any duty or tax levied, collected, and paid thereon (under the Act of the Philippine Commission of September 17, 1901, aforesaid) upon the s.h.i.+pment thereof from the Philippine Archipelago. This sounds liberal enough. It is, as far as it goes. But what those familiar with the hemp infamy of the Act of 1902 call ”the joker” in it, is as follows:
All articles, the growth and product of the Philippine Islands, admitted into the ports of the United States free of duty under the provisions of this act, and coming directly from said islands to the United States, for use and consumption therein, shall be hereafter exempt from any export duties imposed in the Philippine Islands.
This also sounds liberal, on first reading, but its object was, and its effect has been, to enable the American Hemp Trust to corner and control the Manila hemp industry. There is but one article of Philippine export which any one in the United States is interested in, that was admitted into the United States free of duty under the Dingley Act. [514] That article is hemp. The object of the law was to favor Americans interested in exporting hemp from Manila to the United States as against Europeans exporting it to England and other foreign countries. This does not look, on its face, either unpatriotic or un-Christian. It is not unpatriotic or un-Christian, ordinarily, to favor your own people, as against their foreign compet.i.tors. The moral quality of such favoritism, however, must depend on who is to pay for it. Under the Act of 1902, the Manila authorities have always collected an export tax on hemp coming to the United States, just as they do on hemp going from Manila to foreign countries, exactly as if the law abolis.h.i.+ng the export tax on hemp coming to the United States had never been pa.s.sed. Later, on proof that the hemp was in fact carried to the United States and used and consumed therein, they refund the export tax. This is on the idea that they cannot tell where the hemp is going to until they know where it went to, nor where it is going to be ”used and consumed” until they know where it was in fact finally ”used and consumed.” Of course the small farmer is in no position to follow his bale of hemp into the markets of the world and show, if it happens to go to the United States, that it did in fact go there and that it was there ”used and consumed,” and, finally obtaining the proof of this, submit it to the Manila Government and get his little export tax on his bale of hemp refunded. Only the big buyer's agents at Manila are in a position to do this. So the hemp crop is bought and moved under conditions which are the same as if all hemp were subject to an export tax. And only the big fish get the benefit. For instance, the International Harvester Company has its hemp buyers at Manila. And as to the part of the Philippine hemp crop it handles, it can, of course, follow the hemp to its ultimate consumption in the United States, make the proof, and get the refund.
The wealth of the Philippines is practically entirely agricultural. Neither mining nor manufactures cut any appreciable figure. Hemp, sugar, tobacco, and copra [515] are the chief staples and main exports, and of the first of these Secretary of War Taft says in one of his reports: [516]
The chief export in value and quant.i.ty from the Philippines is Manila hemp, it amounting to between 60 and 65 per cent. of the total exports.
Let us see just how far, according to the annual reports of our own agents in the Philippines--those charged by us with governing them,--this piece of legislation gotten through by ”special privilege”
has depressed the Manila hemp industry, the chief source of wealth of the Islands. And before we even get to the main trouble, let us permit the Insular Government to ”place on the screen,” as a preliminary ”view,” a glance at what the instinct of self-preservation of American sugar and tobacco interests, fearing compet.i.tion from ”cheap Asiatic labor,” have deemed it necessary to do to the Philippine sugar and tobacco industries, through the Dingley tariff. The annual report of the Philippine Commission for 1904, before it gets to the subject of hemp, draws a most gloomy picture of how we killed the markets for sugar and tobacco the Islands had under Spain, and gave them none instead. They speak of ”the languis.h.i.+ng state of these industries”
(p. 26), and describe a state of affairs that sounds more like Egypt under Pharaoh than anything else, including a cattle disease that carried off ninety per cent. of the beasts of burden of the country, and wholesale destruction of crops by locusts. [517] What they have to say of the annual tribute levied by the American Hemp Trust, through Congress, on the Manila hemp industry, should not be re-stated, but quoted. They say: [518]
We desire to call attention to the injustice effected upon the revenues of the islands by section 2 of the Act of Congress approved March 8, 1902, which provides that the Philippine Government shall refund all export duties imposed upon articles exported from the islands into and consumed in the United States. Under the provisions of this section there has been collected in the Philippine Islands, since its enactment down to the close of the fiscal year 1904, the sum of $1,060,460.20 United States currency, which is refundable. These refundable duties are princ.i.p.ally upon hemp exportations to the United States, and are in effect a gift of that amount to the manufacturers of the United States who use hemp in their operations.
They add:
It is manifestly a discrimination in favor of our manufacturers as against those of foreign countries. No good reason is perceived why this bounty to American manufacturers should be extracted from the treasury of the Philippine Islands, and it is respectfully submitted that the law authorizing it should be repealed.