The trouble with this country to-day is that, under long domination by the protected interests, a partnership has grown up between them and the Government which the best men in the Republican party could not break up if they would.—Woodrow Wilson.
When Governor Forbes assumed the duties of Governor-General of the Philippines, some ten years after the ratification of the Treaty of Paris whereby we bought the Islands, he was the ninth supreme representative of American authority we had had there since the American occupation began. The following is the list:
| (1) Gen. | Thomas M. Anderson | June 30, 1898–July 25, 1898 |
| (2) Gen. | Wesley Merritt | July 25, 1898–Aug. 29, 1898 |
| (3) Gen. | Elwell S. Otis | Aug. 29, 1898–May 5, 1900 |
| (4) Gen. | Arthur MacArthur | May 5, 1900–July 4, 1901 |
| (5) Hon. | William H. Taft | July 4, 1901–Dec. 23, 1903 |
| (6) Hon. | Luke E. Wright | Dec. 23, 1903–Nov. 4, 1905 |
| (7) Hon. | Henry C. Ide | Nov. 4, 1905–Sept. 20, 1906 |
| (8) Hon. | James F. Smith | Sept. 20, 1906–May 7, 1909 |
| (9) Hon. | W. Cameron Forbes | May 7, 1909–[1] |
No one of these distinguished gentlemen has ever had any authority to tell the Filipinos what we expect ultimately to do with them. They have not known themselves. Is not this distinctly unfair both to governors and governed?
Before Governor Forbes went to the Philippines he had been a largely successful business man. He is a man of the very highest personal character, and an indefatigable worker. He has done as well as the conditions of the problem permit. But he is always between Scylla and Charybdis. American capital in or contemplating investment in the Islands is continually pressing to be permitted to go ahead and develop the resources of the Islands. To keep the Islands from being exploited Congress early limited grants of land to a maximum too small to attract capital. So those who desire to build up the country, knowing they cannot get the law changed, are forever seeking to invent ways to get around the law. And, being firm in the orthodox Administration belief that discussion of ultimate independence is purely academic, i.e., a matter of no concern to anybody now living, Governor Forbes is of course in sympathy with Americans who wish to develop the resources of the Islands. On the other hand, he knows that such a course will daily and hourly make ultimate independence more certain never to come. So do the Filipinos know this. Therefore they clamor ever louder and louder against all American attempts to repeal the anti-exploiting Acts of Congress by “liberal” interpretation. Many an American just here is sure to ask himself, “Why all this ‘clamor’? Do we not give them good government? What just ground have they for complaint?” Yes, we do give them very good government, so far as the Manila end of the business is concerned, except that it is a far more expensive government than any people on the earth would be willing to impose on themselves. But their main staples are hemp, sugar, and tobacco, and we raise the last two in this country. Their sugar and tobacco were allowed free entry into the United States by the Paine Law of 1909 up to amounts limited in the law, but the Philippine people know very well that American sugar and tobacco interests will either dwarf the growth of their sugar and tobacco industries by refusing to allow the limit raised—the limit of amounts admitted free of duty—or else that our Sugar Trust and our Tobacco Trust will simply ultimately eliminate them by absorption, just as the Standard Oil Company used to do with small competitors. In this sort of prospect certainly even the dullest intellect must recognize just ground for fearing—nay for plainly foreseeing—practical industrial slavery through control by foreign[2] corporations of economic conditions. So much for the two staples in which the Philippines may some day become competitors of ours. It took Mr. Taft nine years to persuade American sugar and tobacco that they would not be in any immediate danger by letting in a little Philippine sugar and tobacco free of duty. Then they consented. Not until then did they promise not to shout “Down with cheap Asiatic labor. We will not consent to compete with it.” Their mental reservation was, of course, and is, “if the Philippine sugar and tobacco industries get too prosperous, we will either buy them, or cripple them by defeating their next attempt to get legislation increasing the amounts of Philippine sugar and tobacco admitted into the United States free of duty.” And the Filipinos know that this is the fate that awaits two out of the three main sources of the wealth of their country. Their third source of wealth, their main staple, is the world-famous Manila hemp. This represents more than half the value of their total annual exports. And as to it, “practical industrial slavery through control by foreign corporations of economic conditions” is to-day not a fear, but a fact. The International Harvester Company has its agents at Manila. The said company or allied interests, or both, are large importers of Manila hemp. The reports of all the governors-general of the Philippines who have preceded Governor Forbes tell, year after year, of the millions “handed over” to American hemp importers through “the hemp joker” of the Act of Congress of 1902, hereinafter explained, in the chapter on Congressional Legislation ([Chapter XXVI].). Why did these complaints—made with annual regularity up to Governor Forbes’s accession—cease thereafter? You will find these complaints of his predecessors transcribed in the chapter mentioned, because if I had re-stated them you might suspect exaggeration. The “rake-off” of the American importers of Manila hemp for 1910 was nearly $750,000, as fully explained in [Chapter XXVI].
Governor Forbes will be in this country when this book is issued. I think he owes it to the American people to explain why he does not continue the efforts of his predecessors to halt the depredations of the Hemp Trust. Why does he content himself in his last annual report with a mild allusion to the fact that the condition of the hemp industry is “not satisfactory”? I have said that Governor Forbes is a man of high character, and take pleasure in repeating that statement in this connection. The truth is we are running a political kindergarten for adults in the Philippines, and those responsible for the original blunder of taking them, and all their political heirs and assigns since, have sought to evade admitting and setting to work to rectify the blunder. Unmasked, this is what the policy of Benevolent Assimilation now is. They allege an end, and so justify all the ways and means. Benevolent Assimilation needs the support of the International Harvester Company and of all other Big Business interested directly or indirectly in Manila hemp. The end justifies the means. Hence the silence. Philippine gubernatorial reticence is always most reticent about that particular subject on which at the time the American people are most peculiarly entitled to information. As long as public order was the most pressing question, Philippine gubernatorial reticence selected that branch of our colonial problem either for especial silence or for superlatively casual allusion, as we have already seen. So now with the economic distresses. Frankness would obviously furnish too much good argument for winding up this Oriental receivership of ours. The Philippine Government will never tell its main current troubles until after they are over. But as the present trouble—the economic depredations of powerful special interests—must necessarily be fruitful of discontent which will crop out some day to remind us that as we sow so shall we reap, any one who helps expose the root of the trouble is doing a public service. No Congressman who in silence would permit Big Business to prey upon his constituents as Governor Forbes has, could long remain in office. Taxation without representation may amount to depredation, and yet never be corrected, when the powers that prey have the ear of the court, and the victims cannot get the ear of the American people. So the Hemp Trust continues to rob the Filipinos under the forms of law, and the Mohonk Conference continues to kiss Benevolent Assimilation on both cheeks. And Dr. Lyman Abbott periodically says Amen. I am not speaking disrespectfully of Dr. Abbott. I am deploring the lack of information of our people at home as to conditions in the Philippines.
It is a relief to turn from such matters to some of the real substantial good we have done out there to which Governor Forbes has heretofore publicly pointed with just pride. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1909, Governor Forbes (then Vice-Governor) said, among other things:
We have completed the separation of Church and State, buying out from the religious orders their large agricultural properties, which are now administered by the government for the benefit of the tenants.
This statement I cannot too cordially endorse. It would be grossly unfair not to accord full measure of acclaim to Governor Taft for the way he worked out the problem of the Friar Lands. He has been attacked in some quarters in this regard, and most unjustly. Not being a Catholic, and all my people being Protestants, I have no fear of being suspected of special pleading in the matter. The working out of the Friar Land problem by Governor Taft in the Philippines was a splendid piece of constructive statesmanship. He was at his greatest and best in that very transaction. The Treaty of Paris had guaranteed that all vested rights should be respected, including those of ecclesiastical bodies. The friars had long owned the lands in question. There can be no particle of doubt on this point. The tenants on the land had all long ago attorned to them, father and son, from time out of mind, paying rent regularly. But by claiming jurisdiction over their tenants’ souls also, and getting that jurisdiction effectively recognized, the thrifty friars used to raise the rent regularly, quieting incipient protest with threats of eternal punishment, or protracted stay in purgatory. The advent of our government let loose a revolt against the authority of the friars generally, and, their spiritual hold once loosened, this led the tenants to dispute the land titles of their spiritual shepherds, who were also their temporal landlords. Of course the titles had all been long recorded, and looked after by the best legal talent the country afforded. As long as you control the future of your tenant’s soul, you can make him pay his last copeck for rent. But as soon as that control is lost, the man on whom the governing of the country thereafter devolves has a certain prospect of a great agrarian revolution on his hands, having in it many elements of substantial righteousness. Governor Taft’s capacious mind, prompted by his strongest instinct, love of justice, conceived the idea of having the Philippine Government raise the money to buy the Friar Lands, by issuing bonds, and then buying the Friars out and re-selling the land to the tenants on long time, on the instalment plan, the instalments to be so graduated as to be equal to a moderate rental. Each tenant stayed right where he had been all the time, in possession of the tract he had always tilled, he and his father before him. To arrange all this it took an Act of Congress authorizing the bond issue, and a visit to Rome to arrange the bargain with the Pope. Some say His Holiness drove a hard bargain with Governor Taft, or to put it another way, that Governor Taft paid the Church people too much for the land. He did not. He may not have counted pennies with them, but the lands were worth what he paid for them. And the purchase protected the faith and honor of our government, as pledged by the Treaty of Paris, and at the same time prevented an agrarian revolution—which would have had a lot of elemental justice on its side.
Another of the good works we have done in the Philippines, to which Governor Forbes points in his magazine article above mentioned, is thus noted by him: