A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

Such as they are, the schoolboy desires to be. One of the periodic frenzies of the local American press is an appeal to teachers—why are they not remodelling character, why do not the aims and ideals which it is their business to instil make a greater showing after ten years of American occupation? American teachers have talked themselves hoarse, and as far as talking can go, they have influenced ideals. The child’s conscious ideal about which he talks in public, and to which he devotes about one one-thousandth of his thinking time, is some such person as George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or James A. Garfield, who drove the canal boat and rose to be President of the United States. But the subconscious ideal which is always in his mind, upon which he patterns unthinkingly his speech and his manners and his dreams of success, is—and it would be unnatural if it were otherwise—some local potentate who will not carry home his own little bag of Conant currency when he receives his salary at the end of the month. What are a name and a few moral platitudes about a dead-and-gone hero? What can they mean to a shirtless urchin with a hungry stomach, against the patent object-lesson of his own countryman whom not only his fellow citizens, but the invader, must treat with consideration? It would be far easier to distract the attention of the children of the State of Ohio from their distinguished fellow-citizens, William H. Taft and John D. Rockefeller, to fix it upon the late Lord Cromer or that Earl of Halifax known as the “Trimmer,” than it is to tell a Filipino child that the way to distinction lies through toil and sweat. Children are very patient about listening to talk, but they are going to pattern themselves upon what is obvious. Twenty or thirty years from now, when the American school system will have aided certain sons of the people, men of elemental strength, to bully and fight their way to the front, and they will have become the evidence that we were telling the truth—then will the results be visible in more things than in annual school commencements and in an increase in the output of stenographers and bookkeepers.

The weakest point in a Filipino child’s character is his quick jealousy and his pride. His jealousy is of the sort constitutionally inimical to solidarity. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, the Filipinos are more aristocratic in their theories of life than we are, and more democratic in their individual constitution. Our democracy has always been tempered by common sense and practicality. We like to say at church that all men are brothers, and on the Fourth of July to declare that they are born free and equal; but we do not undertake to put these theories into practice. Every individual citizen of the United States is not walking about with a harrowing dread of doing something that admits a lesser self-esteem than his neighbor may possess. If a fire breaks out in his neighborhood, and a little action on his part can stop it before it gets a dangerous start, he does not hesitate to act for fear doing so will show him possessed of less personal pride than his neighbor up the street. If he is earning sixty dollars a month, and learns that some other employee in another house is getting more money for the same work, he does not take the chances of starvation because to submit to the condition is to admit that he is less important than another man. Yet the whole laboring element of the Filipino people is permeated by just such a spirit. It is practically impossible to fix a price for labor or for produce by any of the laws of supply and demand that regulate such things elsewhere. The personal jealousies, the personal assertions of individuals continually interfere with the normal conditions of trade. If in the market some American comes along in a hurry and pays a peso for a fish, the normal price of which is about thirty-five cents, the price of fish goes up all through the market—for Americans. You may offer eighty cents and be refused, and the owner will sell two minutes after to a Filipino for thirty-five. But in so doing he does not “lose his face.” The other man got a peso from an American, and a man who takes less—from an American—is owning himself less able than his companions.

We talk of democracy, but we never know how little democratic we are till we come in contact with the real article. Can you conceive what would be the commercial chaos of America to-morrow if the humblest laborer had the quick personal pride of the millionaire? With all our alleged democracy, we realize the impossibility of ringing Mrs. Vanderbilt’s doorbell and asking her to sell us a few flowers from her conservatory or to direct us to a good dressmaker, though we can take just such liberties with houses where the evidences that money would be welcome are patent.

The American laborer does not mind going to and from his work in laboring clothes, and he makes no attempt to seem anything but a laboring man. But you cannot tell in a Manila street car whether the white-clad man at your side is a government clerk at sixty pesos a month or a day laborer at fifteen. I once lost a servant because I commanded him to carry some clothes to my laundress. “Go on the street with a bundle of clothes, and get into the street car with them! I would rather die!” he said; and he quitted rather than do it.

Compare that with the average common-sense attitude of the American laboring man or even the professional man. Until he becomes really a great man and lives in the white light of publicity, the American citizen does not concern himself with his conduct at all as it relates to his personal importance. He is likely to argue that he cannot do certain things which violate his ideal of manhood, or other things which are inconsistent in a member of the church, or other things which are unworthy of a democrat, or of a member of the school board, or even of an “all-round sport.” Whatever the prohibitive walls which hedge the freedom of his conduct, each is a perfectly defined one, a standard of conduct definitely outlined in his mind, to which he has pledged his allegiance; but he has no large conception that most useful things are forbidden pleasures to him because of a sense of personal importance. He has no God of the “I,” no feeling that makes him stay his hand at helping a cochero to free a fallen and injured horse, while he looks to see that some other man of his class is helping also.

There is a perfectly defined class system in the Philippines, and, between class and class, feeling is not bitter; but within each class jealousy is rampant. The Filipino, though greatly influenced by personality, does not yet conceive of a leadership based upon personality to which loyalty must be unswervingly paid. He feels the charm of personality, he yields to it just so long as it falls in with his own ideas, but the moment it crosses his own assertiveness he is ready to revolt. Many Americans speak of this characteristic as if it were a twist in character. My own opinion is that it is a passing phase, due to the Filipino’s lack of the “narrow, but most serviceable fund of human experience.” But no matter to what cause the condition is due, it makes a great difference in the life of the individual and of the social body as a whole that each unit has fixed his ideal of conduct upon an illimitable consciousness of personal importance, instead of upon perfectly defined ideals in particular matters. It makes for femininity in the race.

If the reader will meditate a little upon the difference between masculine pride and feminine pride in America, he will probably agree with me that masculine pride centres largely in loyalty to well-defined ideals of what is manly, or honorable, or bold, or just, or religious—in short, it tries to live up to the requirements of a hundred separate standards. On the other hand, feminine pride, outside of its adherence to what is chaste and womanly, consists of pride in self, a kind of self-estimate, based frequently upon social position, sometimes on a consciousness of self-importance which comes through the admiration of men. In either case the pride is likely to show itself in a jealous exaction of consideration for the individual. Such is Filipino pride. It is almost wholly concerned in guarding its vested rights, in demanding and exacting the consideration due the importance of its possessor.

Filipinos are hard to enlist in any new undertaking until they are certain that success will bring “consideration.” They love newspaper notices and publicity, they love the centre of the stage, and every new advance in intelligence is bulwarked by a disproportional demand for “consideration.”

Filipino men are not lacking in manly qualities. They have the stronger courage, the relatively stronger will and passions which distinguish the men of our own race. But they are harder to get along with than are Filipino women, because their sense of sex importance is so much exaggerated, and because, as Mr. Kipling would put it, they “have too much ego in their cosmos.” The secret consciousness of power is not enough for them. They must flash it every minute in your eyes, that you may not forget to yield the adulation due to power. Like women, they get heady on a small allowance of power; and indeed in both sexes there are emphasized certain characteristics which we are accustomed to look upon as feminine. Their pride is feminine as I have analyzed it. They rely upon intuition to guide them more than upon analysis. In enlisting coöperation, even in public matters, they are likely to appeal to a sentiment of friendship for themselves instead of demonstrating the abstract superiority of their cause. They will make a haughty public demand, but will not scruple to support it with secret petition and appeal. They are adepts at playing upon the weakness and petty vanity of others; and they deal gently with the strong, but boldly with the weak. Both men and women possess an abundance of sexual jealousy, and have, in addition, the quick sensitiveness about rank, worldly possessions, and precedence which with us has become the reproach of the feminine. Lastly, they have, in its highest development, the capacity to make a volte-face with grace and equanimity. They are cunning, but not shrewd; their reasoning is wholly deductive, they are inclined to an enthusiastic assent to large statements, especially when these take the form of moral or political truisms; but they do not submit their convictions to practical working tests. They seem often inconsistent, but observation will show that, however inconsistent their practice is with their professions, it is always consistent with their pride, as I have analyzed it in these pages.