Now why all this public boasting about our “disinterestedness,” when, if he had been a Filipino, Colonel Roosevelt would probably have hunted up all the American speeches of 1776 about taxation without representation, and played hide-and-seek with the public prosecutor at Manila, to see how far he could violate the sedition statute without getting in jail? And why this private admission to his friend Mr. Carnegie, which neither he nor Mr. Taft has ever publicly made? Why did he not send a message to Congress showing up the hemp rebate system? Simply because to do so would lose support for the Administration, would alienate powerful interests from the fatuous policy of Benevolent Assimilation bequeathed to Mr. Roosevelt by Mr. McKinley. His party was irrevocably committed to indefinite retention of the Islands. It was like Lot’s wife. It could not turn back. So the protected and subsidized interests were permitted to continue to prey upon the Philippine people. Tariff evils were never President Roosevelt’s specialty. Nor has war against intrenched privilege of any sort ever been Mr. Taft’s specialty. Mr. Taft went out to the Philippines in 1907 to open the Philippine Assembly. In 1908 he came back and made a report to President Roosevelt which is as bland as his Winona declaration that the Payne-Aldrich bill is “the best tariff bill the Republican party ever passed.” It makes the American reader’s heart swell with pious pride at what he is doing for his “little brown brother,” in the matter of vaccination, sewers, school-books, and the like. President Roosevelt sent this report to Congress, accompanied by a message, from which we have already quoted. In that same message he said:
I question whether there is a brighter page in the annals of international dealing between the strong and the weak than the page which tells of our doings in the Philippines.
Apparently, Messrs. Roosevelt and Taft thought, in 1907, that granting the Filipinos a little debating society solemnly called a legislative body, but wholly without any real power, was ample compensation for deserted tobacco and cane plantations and for the price of hemp being beat down below the cost of production by manipulation through an Act of Congress passed for the benefit of American hemp manufacturers. If we had had a Cleveland in the White House about that time, he would have written an essay on taxation without representation, with the hemp infamy of this Philippine Tariff Act of 1902 as a text, and sent it to Congress as a message demanding the repeal of the Act. But the good-will of the Hemp Trust is an asset for the policy of Benevolent Assimilation. The Filipino cannot vote, and the cordage manufacturer in the United States can. No conceivable state of economic desolation to which we might reduce the people of the Philippine Islands being other than a blessing in disguise compared with permitting them to attend to their own affairs after their own quaint and mutually considerate fashion, the Hemp Trust’s rope, tied into a slip-knot by the Act of 1902, must not be removed from their throats. By judicious manipulation of sufficient hemp rope, you can corral much support for Benevolent Assimilation. Therefore, to this good hour, the substance of the hemp part of the Philippine Tariff Act of March 8, 1902, remains upon the statute books of the United States, to the shame of the nation.
At last, under the Payne tariff law of 1909, Mr. Taft’s long and patient quiet work with Congressional committees prevailed upon Congress and the interests to admit Philippine sugar and tobacco to this country free of duty, up to amounts limited in the Act.[15] Since then you find the reports of our American officials in the Philippines palpitating with gratitude to Congress. As a matter of fact all Congress had said to the Filipinos by its action may be summed up about thus: “The sugar and tobacco interests of this country have at last realized that such little of the sugar and tobacco you raise as may stray over to this side of the world will not be in the least likely to hurt them. Therefore they have graciously decided, in their benignity, to permit you to live, provided you do not get too prosperous.” But this very same Payne bill continued the export tax features of the Act of 1902. Section 13 of the Payne bill is as follows:
Section 13. That upon the exportation to any foreign country from the Philippine Islands, or the shipment thereof to the United States or any of its possessions, of the following articles there shall be levied, collected, and paid thereon the following export duties: Provided, however, that all articles the growth and product of the Philippine Islands coming directly from said islands, to the United States or any of its possessions for use and consumption therein shall be exempt from any export duties imposed in the Philippine Islands:
| 352. | Abaca (hemp), gross weight, 100 kilos, 75 cents. |
| 353. | Sugar, gross weight, 100 kilos, 5 cents. |
| 354. | Copra, gross weight, 100 kilos, 10 cents. |
| 355. | Tobacco, gross weight: |
(a) Manufactured or unmanufactured, except as otherwise provided, 100 kilos, $1.30.
(b) Stems, clippings, and other wastes of tobacco, 100 kilos, 50 cents.
Let us briefly glance at the net results of this law, and its predecessor, the Act of 1902, the export features of which it re-enacted. It is important that every fair-minded American who can possibly spare the time should take such a glance at what Congress has done to the Philippine hemp industry, because of the obvious bearing that such taxation without representation will probably have on the attitude of the Philippine people whenever we get into a war with a foreign power. Certainly the legislation Congress has perpetrated upon them, at the behest of special interests in the United States, has not soothed the original desire of those people to be free and independent.
At page 27 of the report of the Philippine Collector of Customs for 1910, a table is given showing the export duties subject to refund collected under the Act of Congress of March 8, 1902, and deposited in the Philippine treasury to the credit of the Insular Government at the end of each fiscal year (June 30), as follows: