Volume V Part 21 (1/2)
During the long session of the Fifty-seventh Congress, a Cuban reciprocity bill being before the House, the sugar-beet interest demonstrated its power. The House ”insurgents,” joining the Democratic members, overrode the Speaker and the Ways and Means chairman, and attached to the bill an amendment cutting off the existing differential duty in favor of refined sugar. A locking of horns thus arose, which outlasted the session, neither side being able to convince or outvote the other. Sanguine Democrats thought that they espied here a hopeful Republican schism like that of 1872.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE UNITED STATES IN THE ORIENT
PHILIPPINES AND FILIPINOS
[1899]
The Philippine Archipelago lies between 4 degrees 45 minutes and 21 degrees north lat.i.tude and 118 and 127 degrees east longitude. It consists of nineteen considerable and perhaps fifteen hundred lesser islands, an area nearly equal that of New Jersey, New York, and New England combined. The island of Luzon comprises a third of this, that of Mindanao a fifth or a sixth. The archipelago is rich in natural resources, but mining and manufactures had not at the American occupation been developed. Agriculture was the main occupation, though only a ninth of the land surface was under cultivation. The islands were believed capable of sustaining a population like j.a.pan's 42,000,000.
Luzon boasted a glorious and varied landscape and a climate salubrious and inviting, considering the low lat.i.tude. Manila hemp, sugar, tobaco, coffee, and indigo were raised and exported in large amounts.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Sixteen men seated in a small room.]
General Bates. The Sultan.
The Jolo Treaty Commission.
The islands lay in three groups, the Luzon, the Visaya (Negros, Panay, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, and islets), and the Mindanao, including Palawan and the Sulu Islands. Some of these islands were in parts unexplored. The Tagals and the Visayas, Christian and more or less civilized Malay tribes, dominated respectively the first and the second group. The Mindanao coasts held here and there a few Christian Filipinos, but the chief denizens of the southern islands were the fierce Arab-Malay Mohammedans known as Moros, most important and dangerous of whose tribes were the Illanos.
In all, there were thirty or more races, with an even greater number of different dialects. Northern Luzon housed the advanced Ilocoans, Pampangos, Pangasinanes, and Cagayanes, with their hardy bronze heathen neighbors, the Igorrotes. The Visayas had many degraded aborigines, the Negritos among them. Over against the Moros in the Mindanao group one could not ignore the warlike Visayan variation, or the swarming savages of the interior, hostile alike to Moro and Visaya.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Parade.]
Three Hundred Boys in the Parade of July 4, 1902, Vigan, Ilocos.
The population of the islands numbered 8,000,000 or 10,000,000, 25,000 being Europeans. Half the islanders were Christians, eight or ten per cent. Mohammedan, perhaps ten per cent. heathen. One considerable fraction were Chinese, another of mixed extraction. Probably none of the races were of pure Malay blood, though Malay blood predominated.
Mercantile pursuits were largely in Chinese hands. The Moros disdained tillage and commerce alike, living on slave labor and captures in war.
Spain had done in the islands much more educational work than the Americans at first recognized, though none of an advanced kind. Schools were numerous but not general. Many Filipinos had studied in Europe.
There was a select cla.s.s possessing information and manners which would have admitted them to cultivated circles in Paris or London, and thousands of Filipinos were intellectually the peers of average middle-cla.s.s Europeans. The University of St. Thomas graced Manila. Some seventy colleges and academies at various centres professed to prepare pupils for it.
Filipinos of aught like cosmopolitan intelligence numbered less than 100,000. Below them were the half-breeds, perhaps 500,000 strong, white, yellow, or brown, according to the special blend of blood. They were ”intelligent but uneducated, active but not over industrious. They loved excitement, military display, and the bustle and pomp of government.”
Farther down still were the vast toiling ma.s.ses neither knowing nor caring much who governed them. Only in suffering were they experts, having learned of this under the iron heel of Spain all there was to be known.
[Ill.u.s.tration: About fifty girls.]
Girls' Normal Inst.i.tute, Vigan, Ilocos, April, 1902.
In the Philippines one had incessantly before him social and economic problems in their rudimentary form--populations the debris of centuries, and the reactions upon them of their first contact with real civilization. In case of any but the most advanced tribes the immediate suggestion was despair, a feeling that they could never appropriate the culture offered them. But the heartiness of the response which even such communities made to our advances brought hope. Our methods were better than the Spanish, and our progress correspondingly rapid; yet the task we undertook bade fair to last centuries. Nor were its initial steps undefaced by errors.
A Blue Book would not suffice to describe this motley material. We can only ill.u.s.trate.
The Iocoros were in a forward state, if not of civilization, of preparation therefor. On all hands their youth were anxiously waiting to be taught. Compared with Teutonic races they were superficial and emotional, but they had great ambition and perseverance.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Several men.]