The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

[1] The greatest defect of the Philippine Government was in the beginning, and still is, that the Philippine Commission, which is the executive authority, controls the appointment and assignment of the trial judges, and also, largely, their chances for promotion to the Supreme Bench of the Islands. The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President of the United States, often on recommendation of the Commission, but thereafter they are absolutely independent. The trial judges ought also to be appointed by the President of the United States.

[2] Republished, Congressional Record, January 9, 1900, p. 715.

Chapter XXIV

The Philippine Civil Service

Is our Occupation of the Philippines to be temporary, like our occupation of Cuba after the Spanish War, or “temporary” like the British Occupation of Egypt since 1882? The Unsettled Question.

The policy to be pursued is for Congress to determine. I have no authority to speak for Congress in respect to the ultimate disposition of the Islands.

Secretary of War Wm. H. Taft to Philippine Assembly, 1907.

The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government Act, is entitled “An Act temporarily to provide” a government for the Philippine Islands. The young American who goes out to the Philippines to take a position with the Insular Government there has usually read his share of Kipling, and his imagination likes to analogize his prospective employment to the British Indian Civil Service. The latter, however, offers a career. But what does the former offer? Take the prospects of the rank and file, as set forth by Mr. J. R. Arnold, of the Executive Bureau of the Philippine Government, in an article published in the North American Review for February, 1912. Suppose a young man goes out to the Philippines at a salary of $1200. Mr. Arnold discusses fully and frankly the cost of living in the Islands, and how much higher board, lodging, etc., are out there than in the United States. He states that board and lodging will cost $15 to $20 a month more than here. So that, so far, a salary of $1200 in the Philippines would seem equivalent to a salary of say approximately $950 in the United States—say in Washington. Also he calls attention to the fact that the government will pay your way out, but you must get back the best way you can. He does not say so, but the walking is not good all the way from Manila to Washington. Seriously, according to the authority from whom we are quoting, it costs $225 to $300 to get back. So if you come back at the end of a three years’ stay—you must contract to stay at least that long—you must have laid by, taking his maximum return fare as the more prudent figure to reckon on, one hundred dollars a year to buy your return ticket. Mr. Arnold does not say so, but it is a fact, that various little expenses will creep in that are sure to amount, even with the most rigidly frugal, to $50 per annum that you would never have spent in the United States. You are hardly respectable in the Philippines if you do not have a muchacho. Muchacho, in Spanish, means the same as garçon in French, or valet in English. But muchachos are as thick as cigarettes in the Philippines. And you can hire one for about $5 a month. To resolve not to have a muchacho in the Philippines would be like resolving at home never to have your shoes shined, or your clothes pressed. It would be contrary to the universal custom of the country, and would therefore be “impossible.” You have not been long in the Philippines before you get tired of telling applicants for the position of muchacho that you do not want one, and, benumbed by the universal custom, you accept the last applicant. You must figure on a muchacho as one of your “fixed charges.” Count then an extra $50 annual necessary expense that you would not have at home. If you do not succumb to the muchacho custom, you will get rid of the $50 in other ways fairly classifiable as necessary current expenses. Thus, if you take from your $1200, worth $950 in Manila, as above stated, the $100 per annum necessary to be laid by against your home-coming, and the other $50 last suggested, your salary of $1200 per annum in Manila becomes equivalent to one of $800 at home, so far as regards what you are likely to save by strict habits of economy. In other words, to figure how you are going to come out in the long run, if you go out as a $1200 man, while your social position will be precisely that of a man commanding the same salary in a government position in Washington, you must knock off a third of the $1200. This is not the way Mr. Arnold states the case exactly. I am simply taking his facts, supplemented by what little I have added, and stating them in a way which will perhaps illustrate the case better to some people. Mr. Arnold says you are apt to get up as high as $1500 and finally even to $1800 in three to five years. Suppose you do have that luck. Still, if, as has been made plain above, you must consider $1200 in Manila as equal to only $800 in Washington (so far as regards what you are going to be able to save each year), by the same token you must consider $1500 in Manila as being equal to only $1000 in Washington, and $1800 as only $1200.

The utmost limit of achievement in the Philippine Government service, the only one of the higher positions not subject to political caprice, the only one regarded out there as a “life position”—and this excepts neither the Governorship of the Islands nor the Commissionerships—is the position of Justice of the Supreme Court. The salary is $10,000 per annum, American money. But there is not an American judge on that bench who would not be glad at any moment to accept a $5000 position as a United States District Judge at home. All of them whom I know are most happily married. But I believe their wives would quit them if they refused such an offer from the President of the United States, or else get so unhappy about it that they would accept and come home.