At the next session of the legislature the commission again passed the bill. The assembly referred it to committee on October 26, and tabled it without discussion on January 8, 1913.
From the above record it will be plain that, beginning in 1909, the commission passed laws prohibiting and penalizing slavery and peonage annually during four successive years, and that the assembly tabled each of the four measures without deigning to give any of them one moment’s discussion. Much less have they ever asked for any information as to the necessity for such legislation.
While no member of the assembly had ever made any official statement on the subject, the Filipino press had on various occasions denounced me as a liar or an ignoramus, and an enemy of “the Filipino people,” for saying that slavery existed.
In preparation for what I deemed to be a probable request from Congress for a detailed statement of facts, I now proceeded to get together the information on file in government offices and courts, called upon various officers of the government for data in their possession which had never been made of record, and initiated new investigations, using for this purpose the police of Manila, the Philippine constabulary and various other agencies. Drawing on the abundant material thus obtained, I began the preparation of a report to the commission, recommending that the necessity for legislation be called to the attention of Congress, and supplying abundant data relative to the existence of slavery and peonage in the Philippines.
Before this report was completed there occurred a most unexpected event.
Dr. W. O. Stillman, President of the American Humane Association, had written me months before asking about the power of the Philippine Legislature to enact humane legislation, and further inquiring what laws of this sort, if any, had been enacted. In my reply I had called his attention to the act of the commission prohibiting slavery and peonage in certain provinces, and to the fact that the attitude of the assembly had prevented the enactment of similar prohibitive legislation for the remaining territory. My letter, which furnished no supporting data, was eventually published by this gentleman and was read in the United States Senate by Senator Borah. On May 1, 1913, the senate passed the following resolution:—
“Resolved, That the Secretary of War be, and he is hereby, directed to send to the Senate any and all facts bearing directly or indirectly upon the truth of the charge publicly made that human slavery exists at this time in the Philippine Islands and that human beings are bought and sold in such Islands as chattels.”
The reply addressed by the secretary of war to the president of the Senate on May 6, 1913, contains the following statement:—
“There is not in this Department, to the knowledge of the Secretary thereof or of the head of the Bureau having charge of insular affairs, a record of any facts bearing directly or indirectly upon the truth of the charge, publicly made, that human slavery exists at this time in the Philippine Islands and that human beings are bought and sold in such Islands as chattels.”
This was a most peculiar statement. The passage cut out of my 1909 report was certainly on file there, and it explicitly stated that slavery existed in the Islands.