The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912

by James H. Blount

If three strong and able men, familiar with insular conditions, and still young enough to undertake the task[8] were told by a President of the United States, by authority of the Congress, “Go out there and set up a respectable native government in ten years, and then come away,” they could and would do it, and that government would be a success; and one of the greatest moral victories in the annals of free government would have been written by the gentlemen concerned upon the pages of their country’s history.

As Mr. Jones’s bill allows four years more of time, I believe it to be absolutely safe.

Governor Curry, the Congressman from New Mexico hereinabove mentioned, who spent eight years in the Philippines, agrees with the fundamental principle of the Jones bill, that as to making a definite promise of Independence within a few years, and does not consider 1921 too early.

Under the present law, the Philippine Assembly has some eighty members, each supposed to represent 90,000 people, more or less. This tallies, roughly, with the census total of population, which is 7,600,000.[9] Under the existing law in the Philippines, the qualifications for voting are really of two kinds, though nominally of three kinds. There is a property qualification, and there is an educational qualification. In any case, in order to vote, the individual must be twenty-one years old, and must have lived for six months in the place where he offers to vote. The property qualification requires that the would-be voter own at least $250 worth of property, or pay a tax to the amount of $15. The explanation of how a man may not own $250 worth of property and yet pay $15 taxes is that under the old Spanish system, which we partially adopted, a man might pay such cedula or poll-tax as he preferred, according to a graduated scale, certain civic rights being accorded to those voluntarily paying the higher poll-tax which were denied to those paying less. The educational qualification requires the would-be voter to speak, read, and write either English or Spanish, or else to have held certain enumerated small municipal offices under the Spaniards—before the American occupation. Mr. Jones’s bill proposes to add the speaking, reading, and writing of the native dialect of a given locality[10] to the educational qualification. This would double, or perhaps triple, the electorate, and would, in my judgment, be wise. Thousands upon thousands of natives who only speak a little Spanish can both speak, read, and write their native Tagalo, Ilocano, or Visayan, as the case may be. The total of those qualified to vote for members of the Assembly in 1907 was only about 100,000. At a later election, that number was doubled. If there are 7,500,000 people in the archipelago, one fifth of these should represent the adult male population, say 1,500,000. Under Mr. Jones’s bill, the electorate would probably increase to half a million long before the date he proposes for independence, July 4, 1921. But all such details as qualification for voting might, it seems to me, be left to people on the ground, their recommendations controlling. Under a promise of independence by 1921, a very fair electorate of at least one third, possibly one half, of the adult male population, could be built up. As the majority report on the Jones Bill, dated April 26, 1912, says:

For nearly ten years the average public-school enrolment has not been less than 500,000.[11]

I believe that the Moros should be left as they are for the present. The time for solving that problem has not yet been reached. Mr. Jones himself evidently bases his idea of allowing the Moro country representation in the Philippine Congress, or legislature provided by his bill, on the probability that enough Christian people will vote, down there, to make up an electorate that would not be “impossible,” i.e., absurd. For instance, he tells me that a great many people have moved into Mindanao from the northern islands for commercial reasons, and, if I recollect correctly, that Zamboanga, the most beautiful little port in Mindanao, which hardly had 10,000 people when I was there, now has possibly 50,000. But the Moro question need not stand in the way of setting up an independent government in the Philippines in 1921, as proposed by his bill. You have material for thirteen original states, representing a population of nearly seven million Christian people, in Luzon and the six main Visayan Islands. Why delay the creation of this republic on account of 250,000 semi-civilized, crudely Mohammedan Moros in Mindanao—a separate island lying off to the south of the proposed republic?[12] A happy solution of the matter would be to send Mr. Jones out there as Governor-General and let him work out the problem on the ground. He has had a long and distinguished career in the public service, twenty-two years in Congress. His public record and speeches on the Philippine question from the beginning would make him to the Filipinos the very incarnation of a bona fide intention on our part to give them their independence at the earliest practical moment, that is, at some time which the living might hope to see. When Governor Taft and Mr. Root drew the Philippine Government Act of 1902, the former had already been president of the Philippine Commission for two years, had been all over the archipelago, and knew it well. Suppose the Taft policy should be substituted by the more progressive Jones policy. Mr. Jones, or whoever is to change the policy, ought to have as much acquaintance with the subject, acquired on the ground, as Mr. Taft had when he formulated his policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention. The nucleus of the Taft policy was stated by Governor Taft to the Senate Committee in 1902, as follows[13]:

My own judgment is that the best policy, if a policy is to be declared at all, is to declare the intention of the United States to hold the islands indefinitely, until the people shall show themselves fit for self-government, under a gradually increasing popular government, when their relation to the United States, either of statehood, or of quasi-independence, like the colony of Australia or Canada, can be declared after mutual conference.

The policy which Mr. Jones has favored for the last twelve years is almost as well known to the Filipinos as are the views of Mr. Taft himself.

In conclusion, the writer desires to say, with especial emphasis, that the suggestions outlining the plan which forms the bulk of this chapter are presented in a spirit of entire deference to the views of any one else who may have considered this great subject carefully, especially to the views of Mr. Jones, whose bill is so entirely right in principle. The one supreme need of the situation is a definite legislative declaration which shall make clear to all concerned—to the Filipino demagogue and the American grafter, as well as to the great body of the good people of both races out there—that the governing of a remote and alien people is to have no permanent place in the purposes of our national life; and that we do bona fide intend to give the Filipinos their independence at a date in the future which will interest the living, by extending to the living the hope to see the independence of their country. And the Jones Bill does that.