Rejoinder usually proceeded by denying the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government without long training. Even waiving this consideration, men found in international law no such mid-status between sovereignty and non-sovereignty as anti-imperialists wished to have the United States assume while the Filipinos were getting upon their feet. Many made great point of minimizing the abuses of our military government and of dilating upon native atrocities. The material wealth of the archipelago was described in glowing terms. Only American capital and enterprise were needed to develop it into a mine of national riches. The military and commercial advantages of our position at the doorway of the East, our duty to protect lives and property imperilled by the insurgents, and our manifest destiny to lift up the Filipino races, were dwelt upon. The argument having chief weight with most was that there seemed no clear avenue by which we could escape the policy of American occupation save the dishonorable and humiliating one of leaving the islands to their fate—anarchy and intestine feuds at once, conquest by Japan, Germany, or Spain herself a little later.
All demanded that abuses in connection with our rule should be punished and the repetition of such made impossible, and that whatever power we exercised should be lodged, without regard to party, in the hands of men of approved fitness and high and humane character. American tutelage, if it were to exist, must present to our wards the best and not the worst side of our civilization, and do so with tact and sympathy.
The Inauguration of Governor Taft, Manila, July 4. 1901.
On April 17, 1900, William H. Taft, of Ohio; Dean C. Worcester, of Michigan; Luke E. Wright, of Tennessee; Henry C. Ide, of Vermont; and Bernard Moses, of California, were commissioned to organize civil government in the archipelago. Three native members were subsequently added to the commission. Municipal governments were to receive attention first, then governments over larger units. Local self-government was to prevail as far as possible. Pending the erection of a central legislature, the commission was invested with extensive legislative powers. Civil government was actually inaugurated July 4, 1901. Judge Taft was the first civil governor, General Adna R. Chaffee military governor under him.
Educational work in the Philippines was pressed from the very beginning of American control. Our military authorities reopened the Manila schools, making attendance compulsory. In a short time the number of schools in the archipelago doubled. By September, 1901, the commission had passed a general school law, and had placed the schools throughout the archipelago under systematic organization and able headship. About 1,000 earnest and capable men and women went out from the States to teach Filipino youth. Five hundred towns received one or more American teachers each. Associated with them there were in the islands some 2,500 Filipino teachers, mostly doing primary work.
Group of American Teachers on the steps of the Escuela Municipal, Manila.
American teachers advanced into the interior to the neediest tribes. Nine teachers early settled among the Igorrotes, scattered in towns along the Agno River, and an industrial and agricultural school was soon planned for Igorrote boys. Normal schools and manual training schools were organized. Colonial history, whether ancient or modern, had never witnessed an educational mission like this.