Assembly Bill 170, “An Act obliging manufacturing, industrial, agricultural, and commercial enterprises in the Philippine Islands to provide themselves with a duly qualified physician and a medicine chest for urgent cases of accident and disease among their laborers, and for other purposes,” would have had the effect of forcing the employment of a large number of incompetent Filipino physicians for the reason that no one else would have been available to fill many of the positions in question.
Assembly Bill 172, “An Act protecting the plantation of the cocoanut tree,” prohibited the damaging, destroying, uprooting or killing of any cocoanut plant or plants without the owner’s consent. There was then going on a large amount of highway construction and widening. This bill would have strengthened the position of certain persons disposed to ask exorbitant prices for land needed for rights of way. At about this time the Manila Railroad Company was compelled to pay a large sum for orange trees on a piece of land through which its road was to pass. On investigation the orange trees proved to be cuttings from branches, or young seedlings, recently stuck into the ground, many of them being already dead.
Assembly Bill 250 would if passed have had the effect of depriving agents of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of the power to make arrests, and of compelling the payment of all fines imposed and collected through the efforts of the society into the insular treasury, so that the society would have been dependent upon direct appropriations for funds with which to prosecute its work. For three successive years there had been no appropriation bill. The Filipinos have little sympathy with the work of this society, and this was a scheme to kill it. Under the existing law one-half of the fines in question go to it for use in promoting its objects.
Assembly Bill 251, “An Act to create rural guards in all the municipalities organized under Act No. 82, and for other purposes,” would seriously have interfered with the maintenance of a proper state of public order. The duties which it proposed to vest in rural guards are now performed most satisfactorily by the Philippine Constabulary. The effect of the bill would have been to restrict the administrative authority of the director of constabulary over the movements of his force, and to interfere with the administrative authority of municipal presidents to utilize their police as in their judgment the public interests require.
Assembly Bill 262 contained the following:—
“Provided: That the Director of Agriculture or his agents shall not adopt quarantine measures in provinces organized under Act No. 83 without previous agreement with the Provincial Boards concerned.”
For many years no more serious problem has faced the insular government than that of stamping out the contagious diseases which were decimating the horses and cattle of the islands and threatening to render agriculture almost impossible. The director of agriculture was necessarily given wide authority in the matter of establishing proper quarantines. This act would have taken necessary powers from him and vested them in provincial boards. Quarantining was very unpopular with the very people who were benefited most by it, hence the passage of this act.
Assembly Bill 282 was designed to do away with the public improvement tax in the provinces of Palawan, Mindoro and Batanes, and to substitute therefor the so-called double cedula tax. This would have resulted in decreasing by one-half the amount of money available for the construction of public works in those provinces and increasing in the same amount that available for paying salaries of officials and employees.
Assembly Bill 312, amending “The Philippine Road Law” “so as to punish the violent occupation of land on both sides of any public highway, bridge, wharf, or trail at present occupied by other persons, since prior to the passage of such Act,” would have prevented the recovery by the government of highway rights of way where they had been encroached upon by abutting owners during the long period of neglect of road maintenance attendant upon war.
Assembly Bill 319, entitled “An Act to prohibit, and punish judges for the issuance of orders of arrest at hours of the night or on days other than working days,” was a most extraordinary measure, the object and effect of which are apparent from merely reading its title. There are 365 nights and 63 legal holidays in the year, so that the time during which judges could issue orders of arrest without exposing themselves to punishment would have been somewhat restricted.