Our relations to the islands are such that the education and specialization of a distinct body of high class men purposely for this service as is done in England for the Indian service, will probably be always a practical impossibility.
He then goes on to reiterate his annual plea for a law providing for transfer as a matter of right, not of influence, from the Philippine Civil Service to the Federal Civil Service in the United States, and tells of a very capable official of his bureau who got a chance during the year just closed to transfer from the Philippines to a $1400 government position in the United States, and was glad to get it, although $1400 was “considerably less than half what he received here.” Mr. Fergusson quickly gives the key to all this in what he calls “the haunting fear of having to return to the States in debilitated health and out of touch with existent conditions, only to face the necessity of seeking a new position.” He adds:
That this is not a mere theory is proven by the number of army (civilian) employees who contentedly remain year after year.
In 1907, Mr. Fergusson reports on the same subject[3]: “Matters do not seem to be improving,” and that the Director of the Insular Civil Service informs him that “during the fiscal year there were five hundred voluntary separations from the service by Americans, of whom one hundred were college graduates.” He adds: “When the expense of getting and bringing out new men, and of training them to their new work is considered, the wastefulness of the present system is evident.”
You do not find any quotations from any of the Fergusson disclosures in Mr. Arnold’s North American Review article. He would probably have lost his job, if he had quoted them. Yet the evils pointed out by Mr. Fergusson come from one permanent source, the uncertainty of the future of every American out there, due to the failure of Congress to declare the purpose of the Government.
On January 30, 1908, Arthur W. Fergusson died in the service of the Philippine Government. No general law putting that service on the basis he pleaded for to the day of his death has ever yet been passed. Since his death, his tactful successor appears to have abandoned further pleading, and concluded to worry along with the permanently lame conditions inherent in the uncertainty as to whether we are to keep the Islands permanently or not, rather than embarrass President Taft by discouraging young Americans from going to the Islands.
The report of the Governor-General of the Philippines for 1907, Governor Smith, says[4]:
American officials and employees have rarely made up their minds to cast their fortunes definitely with the Philippines or to make governmental service in the tropics a career. Many of those who in the beginning were so minded, due to ill health or the longing to return to friends or relatives, changed front and preferred to return to the home land, there to enjoy life at half the salary in the environment to which they were accustomed. * * * That which operates probably more than anything else to induce good men drawing good salaries to abandon the service * * * is the knowledge that they have nothing to look forward to when broken health or old age shall have rendered them valueless to the government.
If Congress should ever care to do anything to improve the Philippine Civil Service and the status of Americans entering the same, certainly the one supremely obvious thing to do is to make transfer back to the civil service in the United States after a term of duty in the Islands a matter of right.