False, interesting, and important. There were four Filipino members of the commission at this time, all of whom were in favour of ultimate independence, and one of whom was a leading advocate of immediate independence. All voted for the anti-slavery laws which the assembly refused to pass.
The Filipinos were not wholly to blame for the existence of slavery at the time of the American occupation, but the politicians are unable to grasp the fact that the way to deal with a cancer is to cut it out, not to deny its existence, and by their refusal to legislate have now made themselves fully responsible for the continued existence of slavery and peonage in the regularly organized provinces of the Philippines. The Filipino newspapers have even gone so far as to claim that there could be no slavery until a law defined it, hence to enact such a law would create slavery.
Resident Commissioners Earnshaw and Quezon were prompt and emphatic in their denials of the existence of slavery when Senator Borah read in the Senate Chamber my letter to Dr. Stillman. Sr. Earnshaw did not know any better. Sr. Quezon claims to know the facts. He himself has said:—
“As a Filipino familiar with the facts in the case, I do not hesitate to qualify the letter of Secretary Worcester as being at once false and slanderous. It is false, because there does not exist slavery in the Philippines, or, at least, in that part of the country subject to the authority of the Philippine Assembly. It is slanderous because it presents the Philippine Assembly, by innuendo, if not openly, as a body which countenances slavery.”
He was unquestionably familiar with the facts, or many of them. Did he know of the report of the Filipino Governor Dichoso, describing slavery in Isabela; of that of the Filipino Governor Corrales, describing slavery in Misamis; of that of the Filipino Governor Pimentel, describing the sale of Filipino children into slavery to Chinese;[14] of that of the American Governor George Curry, describing slavery in Isabela;[15] of that of the American Governor Knight, describing slavery in Nueva Vizcaya;[16] of that of the Filipino Governor Sanz,[17] describing the enticing from their homes of numerous Filipino children of Romblón and the disposal of them as peons or slaves; of the reports of army, constabulary and police officers; and of the records of courts on slavery and peonage? Under the circumstances explanation or retraction would seem to be in order, but we have had from him only two more puerile quibbles. In a published statement he has said that slavery does not exist as an institution in the Philippines. Who ever said it did? It exists there as a demonstrated fact, and it ought to be made a crime. In another published statement,[18] Quezon says:—
“The allegation is a most serious one and we think it desirable to meet the charge directly without hesitation by asserting that it is unqualifiedly false and that the accusations made in the report are not only not sustained, but cannot be sustained by any evidence tending to show that such a ‘system’ exists.”
The placing in quotation marks of a word not used by me fairly illustrates one of the typical methods of the Filipino politician, and for this reason alone I refer to it and to the following statements from the same editorial, which will serve a similar purpose:—
“There is a very serious aspect of this report of Commissioner Worcester’s. If the system he speaks of exists and is known to him—indeed has been known to him for a long time—why did he never correct it? He says that the Philippine Assembly has blocked action. The truth is that he and his fellows had absolute power long before the Philippine Assembly ever came into existence.
“... Mr. Worcester now practically admits that he knew of similar conditions elsewhere than among the Moros, but that he never had anything to say about them and allowed them to go on until, it would seem, he thought that he could make some political capital out of a controversy with the Philippine Assembly regarding anti-slavery legislation.”
It did not lie in my power to correct it. On the Philippine Commission rests the full responsibility for failure to enact anti-slavery legislation from the time when it first learned of the existence of this crime among the Filipinos until it passed its first act prohibiting and penalizing it on April 29, 1909. As I have already shown, the matter was dealt with, in 1903, by directing the inclusion of proper legislation in a proposed new Penal Code never completed. Valuable years were then lost in testing the adequacy of existing law, and when it proved inadequate further time was, in my opinion, needlessly wasted in drafting the necessary act. To this extent, and to this extent only, the commission shares responsibility for existing conditions. Since April 29, 1909, that responsibility has rested on the assembly alone.