Agriculture, the main source of the country’s wealth, was conducted in a most primitive manner, modern methods and modern machinery being practically unknown. Worse yet, it was threatened with complete prostration, owing to the prevalence of surra among the horses and of rinderpest among the horned cattle. At a time when great areas were lying uncultivated because of lack of draft animals, and when the horses and cattle of the archipelago seemed doomed to extinction, a vigorous campaign was inaugurated against animal diseases. It has been carried out in the face of manifold obstacles up to the present day, and is resulting in the re-stocking of the islands through natural reproduction and the safeguarding of the young animals. Strenuous efforts, made through the medium of the public schools and through demonstration stations, are bringing about a slow change in the previously existing antiquated agricultural methods, and the example set by Americans is leading to the gradual introduction of a considerable amount of modern farm machinery.
A Typical Group of Filipinos.
The placing of the currency of the country on a gold basis has been a powerful factor in promoting material prosperity, and together with the other measures previously enumerated, supplemented by favourable tariff legislation giving the Philippines a market in the United States, has led to an era of extraordinary commercial development.
There has been a very rapid increase in the trade between the Philippines and the United States, the former country purchasing from us, practically dollar for dollar, as much as it sells to us, and furnishing us tropical products of a sort which we should otherwise be obliged to buy from countries with which we have a trade balance on the wrong side of the ledger.
The Philippines have a potential source of great wealth in their fifty-four thousand square miles of forest. We have introduced a conservation system which, if maintained and developed, will permanently preserve the more important forests while at the same time facilitating the establishment of a great lumber industry. The free use of forest products from government lands for other than commercial purposes has been granted to the people.
In the face of quiet but determined opposition from the cacique class, material progress has been made in assisting the common people to become owners of agricultural land, while in spite of the restrictions imposed by unwise legislation, several modern agricultural estates have been established. They are not only serving as great demonstration stations, of far more practical value than any agricultural college could be at the present stage of development of the Filipinos, but have materially raised the daily wage of agricultural labourers in the regions where they are situated.
We have established an efficient civil service in which national politics have played no part, and appointments and promotion have depended on merit alone. This rule has been made to apply to Filipinos as well as to Americans, with the result that the former have for the most part been compelled to enter the lower grades because of defective preparation, but with the further consequence that they have been promoted as rapidly as the result of subsequent careful training has fitted them for advancement. The proportion of Filipino employees as compared with Americans has increased from forty-nine per cent in 1903 to seventy-one per cent in 1913.
We have given to the country religious liberty. We have also given it free speech and a free press, both of which have been shamelessly abused. We have created, prematurely in my opinion, a legislature with an elective lower house composed exclusively of Filipinos and having equal powers with the upper house in the matter of initiating and passing legislation.
I reserve for the following chapter a statement of the opportunities which we have given the Filipinos to participate in the executive control of their towns and provinces, and of the results of these experiments.