I can give no explanation of the reasons for these four great failures, but I conjecture that all these firms were in too much of a hurry, and tried to “hustle the East.” Yet in face of this calamitous experience, Oscar F. Williams advises more to come, “pledges every aid,” and predicts that “trade can, and probably will, be multiplied by twenty during the coming twenty years.”
For my part, I should think it great progress if the exports and imports of the Philippines could be doubled in twenty years. The idea of sending plumbers to Manila where lead pipes are not used, is a comicality only matched by the suggestion that tailors are wanted amongst a population dressed in cotton shirts and trousers, and where the white people wear veranda-made white duck suits.
Both notions are more suitable for a comic opera than for an official document.
There is only one more paragraph in this letter that I need comment on.
Mr. Williams says: “Good government will be easier, the greater the influx of Americans.”
To those who know the East there is no necessity to argue on this point. I therefore state dogmatically that the presence of white settlers or working people in the Islands would add enormously to the difficulties of government. This is my experience, and during the Spanish Administration it was generally admitted to be the case.
In British India the Government does not in the least degree favour the immigration of British workmen. The only people who are recognised as useful to that country are capitalists and directors of Agricultural or Industrial enterprises.
A large number of American mechanics turned loose amongst the population would infallibly, by their contempt for native customs, and their disregard of native feeling, become an everlasting source of strife and vexation. Impartial justice between the parties would be unattainable; the whites would not submit to be judged by a native magistrate, and the result would be a war of races.
It may be taken as probable that there is no crime, however heinous, that could be committed by an American upon a native, that would involve the execution of the death penalty on the criminal.[2] On the other hand, I can quite believe that natives laying their hands upon Americans, whatever the provocation, would be promptly hanged, if they were not shot down upon the spot. The natives, it should be remembered, are revengeful, and will bide their time; either to use the bolo upon one who has offended them, to burn down his house, set fire to his crop, or put a crow-bar in amongst his machinery. I fear that American brusqueness and impatience would often lead to these savage reprisals.
I think, therefore, that the American Administration of the Philippines should be empowered to prevent or regulate the immigration of impecunious Americans or Europeans whose presence in the Islands must be extremely prejudicial to the much-desired pacification. No, the poor white is not wanted in the Islands, he would be a curse, and a residence there would be a curse to him. He would decay morally, mentally, and physically. The gorgeous East not only deteriorates the liver, but where a white man lives long amongst natives, he suffers a gradual but complete break-up of the nervous system. This peculiarity manifests itself amongst the natives of the Far East in the curious nervous disorder which is called mali-mali in the Philippines and sakit-latah amongst the Malays of the Peninsula and Java. It seems to be a weakening of the will, and on being startled, the sufferer entirely loses self-control and imitates the movements of any person who attracts his attention. It is more prevalent amongst women than men. I remember being at a performance of Chiarini’s Circus in Manila, when General Weyler and his wife were present. The clown walked into the ring on his hands, and a skinny old woman amongst the spectators who suffered from the mali-mali at once began to imitate him with unpleasing results, and had to be forcibly restrained by the scandalised bystanders.