Part 41 (2/2)
After the occupation of Luzon, General Otis's extension of our occupation to the Visayan islands was reviewed, and in that connection it was pointed out that each of the six largest of those islands to wit, Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte, Samar, Bohol, might be ultimately evolved into six states. [536]
The smaller islands lying between Luzon and Mindanao could easily be disposed of governmentally by being attached to the jurisdiction of one of the said six islands.
There is to-day no reason why a dozen Americans could not be at once appointed governors of the twelve prospective autonomous commonwealths above indicated, just as the President of the United States has in the past appointed governors for New Mexico, Arizona, and other territories of the United States which have subsequently been admitted to the Union. If the Congress of the United States should promise the Filipinos independence, to be granted as soon as American authority in the Islands should so recommend, the dozen territorial governments intended to be evolved into states of an ultimate federal union could soon be whipped into shape where they could take care of themselves to the extent that our state governments to-day take care of themselves. American representatives of American authority in the Islands, sent out to work out such a programme, might be instructed to watch these twelve territorial governments, granting to each the right to elect a governor in lieu of the appointed governor as soon as in their judgment a given territory was worthy of it. I have no doubt that such recommendations would follow successively as to all of said prospective states inside of four or five years. Whether this plan is wise or not, it certainly is not, as far as I am concerned, ”half baked.” Some five years ago, in the North American Review, [537] I suggested that Luzon could be so organized within less than ten years by American territorial governors selected for the work, naming the Honorable George Curry of New Mexico, formerly Governor of the territory of New Mexico, and now a member of Congress therefrom, as an ideal man to organize one such territory. It is true that there are not eleven other men as well qualified for the work as Governor Curry. In fact he is probably better qualified for the work than any man living. The language used as to Governor Curry in the North American Review article referred to was as follows:
If the inhabitants of these regions were told by a man whom they liked and would believe, as they would Curry, that they were to have autonomous governments like one of the Western Territories of the United States, at the very earliest possible moment, and urged to get ready for it, they could and would, under his guidance. We would get a co-operation from those people we do not now get and never will get, so long as we keep them in uncertainty as to what we are going to do with them. If next year we should formally disclaim intention to retain the islands permanently, and set to work to create autonomous Territories destined ultimately to be States of a Federated Philippine Republic, whenever fit, we would soon see the way out of this tangle, and behold the beginning of the end of it.
Whenever the twelve territorial governments should be gotten into smooth working order under elected native governors, the Philippine archipelago would then be nearly ready for independence, so far as its internal affairs are concerned. The danger of their being annexed on the first pretext by some one of the great land-grabbing powers should be met by our guaranteeing them their independence, as we do Cuba, until they could be protected by neutralization treaties, such as protect Belgium and Switzerland to-day, as explained in the chapter which follows this. Powers not specifically granted to the several states-in-embryo should of course, until the final grant of independence, be reserved to the central government at Manila. Manila and Rizal province would be available at almost any time as a thirteenth state. So that when the twelve states above suggested had shown themselves capable of local self-government, Manila and Rizal province might be added to make the final one of thirteen original states of a Philippine Republic.
Any American who has seen a Filipino pueblo transformed, as if by magic, from listless apathy to a state of buzzing and busy enthusiasm suggestive of a bee-hive, by preparations for some church fiesta, or for the coming of some dignitary from Manila, has seen something a.n.a.logous to what would happen if the Filipino body politic should suddenly be electrified by a promise of independence under some such programme as the above. A generous rivalry would at once ensue all over the archipelago in each of the twelve prospective states. Each would seek to be the first to be recommended by American authority as ready for statehood. I do not believe the annals of national experience contain any a.n.a.logy where every member of a given community has rallied to a common cause more completely than the whole Filipino people would rally to such a prospective programme of independence. The unanimity would be as absolute as the kind we saw among the American people at the outbreak of the Spanish War, when Congress one fine morning placed fifty millions of dollars at the disposal of President McKinley by a unanimous vote.
I especially invite attention to the fact that the above programme throws away nothing that has been done by us in the Islands in the last twelve years in the way of organization. It simply takes it and builds upon it. Congress should not attempt to work out the details from this end of the line. We should send men out there from here to work them out, with local co-operation from the leading Filipinos. Men animated by the idea of working out a programme under which the living may hope to see the independence of their country, should be sent out to take the place of the men now there who are irrevocably committed to the programme of indefinite retention with undeclared intention, which holds out no hope to the living. It is not wise to arrange the details of the programme by act of Congress without a year or two of study of the situation by such men on the ground. An act of Congress which goes into details before getting the recommendations of such men will inevitably set up a lot of straw men easy for the other side to knock down. All you need is a program, sanctioned by Congress, containing a promise of independence, and men sent out to the islands to work out the program. They would report back from time to time, and the Congress by whose authority they went out would have no hesitation in being guided by their recommendations. If unpatriotic greed for office among the Filipinos, or other opposition animated by evil motives, should block the game, your Americans so sent out would have to recommend the calling of a halt. This ever-present shadow in the background would in turn throw the shadow of ostracism over all demagogues.
Meantime the Filipinos should be given a Senate, or upper house, in which, the thirteen prospective ”states” should be represented by two men, the bill therefor to be framed out there, and sent back here to Congress for approval. This would give them under the plan here suggested, as soon as the Americans sent out should so recommend, a Senate of twenty-six members. At present, if the native a.s.sembly, or lower house, does not pa.s.s the annual appropriations necessary to run the government, the appropriation act of the preceding year again becomes law. At present, the upper house is the Philippine Commission. By withholding its consent, it can prevent any legislation whatsoever. So, at present, the a.s.sembly is little more than a debating society. All questions as to appropriations, veto of legislation, and other details, in the event the Filipinos are given a Senate also, should be left to be fixed in the bill recommended by the men sent out to work out the program of promise.
On March 20, 1912, Honorable W. A. Jones, the distinguished veteran Congressman from Virginia, who is Chairman of the Committee on Insular Affairs, introduced in the House of Representatives a bill ent.i.tled ”A bill to establish a qualified independence for the Philippines, and to fix the date when such qualified independence shall become absolute and complete.” The greater part of what precedes this paragraph of this chapter was written prior to March 20, 1912. Mr. Jones's bill works out the details of the independence problem in a manner somewhat different from the plan I suggest, but that does not make me any the less heartily in favor of the principle which his bill embodies. The supreme virtue of the Jones bill is that it promises Independence at a fixed date, July 4, 1921. It ends the cruel uncertainty, so unjust to both the Filipinos and to the Americans in the Philippines, that is contained in the present program of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. Five years ago, in the North American Review for January 18, and June 21, 1907, the writer hereof expressed the belief that an earlier date was feasible, thus:
If three strong and able men, familiar with insular conditions, and still young enough to undertake the task [538] were told by a President of the United States, by authority of the Congress, ”Go out there and set up a respectable native government in ten years, and then come away,” they could and would do it, and that government would be a success; and one of the greatest moral victories in the annals of free government would have been written by the gentlemen concerned upon the pages of their country's history.
As Mr. Jones's bill allows four years more of time, I believe it to be absolutely safe.
Governor Curry, the Congressman from New Mexico hereinabove mentioned, who spent eight years in the Philippines, agrees with the fundamental principle of the Jones bill, that as to making a definite promise of Independence within a few years, and does not consider 1921 too early.
Under the present law, the Philippine a.s.sembly has some eighty members, each supposed to represent 90,000 people, more or less. This tallies, roughly, with the census total of population, which is 7,600,000. [539] Under the existing law in the Philippines, the qualifications for voting are really of two kinds, though nominally of three kinds. There is a property qualification, and there is an educational qualification. In any case, in order to vote, the individual must be twenty-one years old, and must have lived for six months in the place where he offers to vote. The property qualification requires that the would-be voter own at least $250 worth of property, or pay a tax to the amount of $15. The explanation of how a man may not own $250 worth of property and yet pay $15 taxes is that under the old Spanish system, which we partially adopted, a man might pay such cedula or poll-tax as he preferred, according to a graduated scale, certain civic rights being accorded to those voluntarily paying the higher poll-tax which were denied to those paying less. The educational qualification requires the would-be voter to speak, read, and write either English or Spanish, or else to have held certain enumerated small munic.i.p.al offices under the Spaniards--before the American occupation. Mr. Jones's bill proposes to add the speaking, reading, and writing of the native dialect of a given locality [540] to the educational qualification. This would double, or perhaps triple, the electorate, and would, in my judgment, be wise. Thousands upon thousands of natives who only speak a little Spanish can both speak, read, and write their native Tagalo, Ilocano, or Visayan, as the case may be. The total of those qualified to vote for members of the a.s.sembly in 1907 was only about 100,000. At a later election, that number was doubled. If there are 7,500,000 people in the archipelago, one fifth of these should represent the adult male population, say 1,500,000. Under Mr. Jones's bill, the electorate would probably increase to half a million long before the date he proposes for independence, July 4, 1921. But all such details as qualification for voting might, it seems to me, be left to people on the ground, their recommendations controlling. Under a promise of independence by 1921, a very fair electorate of at least one third, possibly one half, of the adult male population, could be built up. As the majority report on the Jones Bill, dated April 26, 1912, says:
For nearly ten years the average public-school enrolment has not been less than 500,000. [541]
I believe that the Moros should be left as they are for the present. The time for solving that problem has not yet been reached. Mr. Jones himself evidently bases his idea of allowing the Moro country representation in the Philippine Congress, or legislature provided by his bill, on the probability that enough Christian people will vote, down there, to make up an electorate that would not be ”impossible,” i.e., absurd. For instance, he tells me that a great many people have moved into Mindanao from the northern islands for commercial reasons, and, if I recollect correctly, that Zamboanga, the most beautiful little port in Mindanao, which hardly had 10,000 people when I was there, now has possibly 50,000. But the Moro question need not stand in the way of setting up an independent government in the Philippines in 1921, as proposed by his bill. You have material for thirteen original states, representing a population of nearly seven million Christian people, in Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. Why delay the creation of this republic on account of 250,000 semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros in Mindanao--a separate island lying off to the south of the proposed republic? [542]
A happy solution of the matter would be to send Mr. Jones out there as Governor-General and let him work out the problem on the ground. He has had a long and distinguished career in the public service, twenty-two years in Congress. His public record and speeches on the Philippine question from the beginning would make him to the Filipinos the very incarnation of a bona fide intention on our part to give them their independence at the earliest practical moment, that is, at some time which the living might hope to see. When Governor Taft and Mr. Root drew the Philippine Government Act of 1902, the former had already been president of the Philippine Commission for two years, had been all over the archipelago, and knew it well. Suppose the Taft policy should be subst.i.tuted by the more progressive Jones policy. Mr. Jones, or whoever is to change the policy, ought to have as much acquaintance with the subject, acquired on the ground, as Mr. Taft had when he formulated his policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. The nucleus of the Taft policy was stated by Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902, as follows [543]:
My own judgment is that the best policy, if a policy is to be declared at all, is to declare the intention of the United States to hold the islands indefinitely, until the people shall show themselves fit for self-government, under a gradually increasing popular government, when their relation to the United States, either of statehood, or of quasi-independence, like the colony of Australia or Canada, can be declared after mutual conference.
The policy which Mr. Jones has favored for the last twelve years is almost as well known to the Filipinos as are the views of Mr. Taft himself.
In conclusion, the writer desires to say, with especial emphasis, that the suggestions outlining the plan which forms the bulk of this chapter are presented in a spirit of entire deference to the views of any one else who may have considered this great subject carefully, especially to the views of Mr. Jones, whose bill is so entirely right in principle. The one supreme need of the situation is a definite legislative declaration which shall make clear to all concerned--to the Filipino demagogue and the American grafter, as well as to the great body of the good people of both races out there--that the governing of a remote and alien people is to have no permanent place in the purposes of our national life; and that we do bona fide intend to give the Filipinos their independence at a date in the future which will interest the living, by extending to the living the hope to see the independence of their country. And the Jones Bill does that.
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