“Yours truly,
Ҡ[her mark] Garegorio Almario.
Witness: (Signed) “W. A. Cole.
“Address Garegorio Almario,
“c/o W. A. Cole, Rosales, Pang.”
I have not made the slightest effort to get the peonage records of Philippine assemblymen, but have taken cases as they came, yet three of the limited number here discussed concern members or ex-members of the assembly. Is it any wonder that that body refuses to consider a law prohibiting and penalizing peonage?
My investigation of this matter has developed some interesting phases of human nature. Knowing the certain unpopularity which would result from telling the truth, not a few persons who might have given valuable testimony refused to tell what they knew, or even denied that they knew anything. Others made written statements which I was unable to use, as they insisted that their names be withheld, and I wanted testimony only from witnesses who had the courage of their convictions. Fortunately there was no lack of people unafraid to tell the truth. Among witnesses to the existence of chattel slavery were army officers, constabulary officers, the Manila chief of police and many men of the police force of that city, judges, Catholic priests, the mother superior of a convent, the insular auditor and a number of his deputies, provincial governors, both Filipino and American, provincial treasurers, the director of education, school teachers, an ethnologist, newspaper men, business men and women both English and American. I accepted only written and signed statements. The long list of cases in my official report was a sample list, not an exhaustive one. I stand ready to furnish specific instances of chattel slavery, ad nauseam, giving names of slaves, their vendors and purchasers, prices paid and dates of transactions. I hold more than a thousand typewritten pages of evidence, and it continued to come in up to the day of my departure from Manila.
The attitude of the Filipino politicians toward this great mass of data and the witnesses who furnished it is a most interesting study, from which may be deduced logical conclusions of far-reaching importance. Let us examine it.
A Typical Peon.
Helpless and hopeless, she toils at her endless task, receiving in return a pittance that does not pay the interest on her constantly growing debt.
In the issue of the Boston Herald for June 24, 1912, Sr. Quezon, resident delegate from the Philippines to Congress, published an article entitled “The Filipinos as Legislators,”[13] attacking Governor-General Forbes for referring in a public speech to the attitude of the assembly on the slavery question. I will quote and comment on its essential statements:—