A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

Filipinos have come in contact, not with life but with books, and their immediate ambition is to produce the things which are talked of in books. Situated as these Islands are, remote from any great modern civilization, there is no criterion by which the inhabitants can arrive at a correct estimate of their condition. If here and there a single Filipino educated in Europe should dazzle society with novels or plays or happy speeches, most of his countrymen would be satisfied with his vindication of Filipino capacity.

There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the future development of the Philippines, whether they remain under our flag or become independent. One is a new aristocracy to be a new type of incentive to the laborer; the other is an increase in the laborer’s wants which will keep him toiling long after he has discovered the futility of the hopes which urged him in the beginning. At present, the American Government is trying to remodel a social system which consists of a land-holding aristocracy and an ignorant peasantry, the latter not exactly willing to work for a pittance, but utterly helpless to extricate themselves from the necessity of doing so. To the aristocrat the Government says, “Come and aid us to help thy brother, that he may some day rob thee of thy prerogatives”; and to the peasant, “O thou cock-fighting, fiesta-harboring son of idleness and good-nature, wake up, struggle, toil, take thy share of what lies buried in thy soil and waves upon thy mountainsides, and be as thy brother, yonder.” Nor is my picture complete if I do not add that, under his breath, both peasant and aristocrat reply, “Fool I for what? That I may pick thy chestnuts out of the fire.”

There is a story which illustrates the Filipino’s sensitiveness to picking somebody else’s chestnuts out of the fire, not inappropriate to be told here. The agent of the Kelly Road Roller Company had made an agreement with a number of Filipinos in the Maraquina Valley to take up a rice thresher and to thresh their crops for one-twelfth of the output. As this was cheaper than the usual cost of rice-threshing, they accepted the offer, but they were anxious to compare the new machine with their own system. One way of threshing rice is to have a kind of stone table like an armchair, in which the seat is a bowl for the grain which drops down as the thresher strikes the laden stalks against the stone back. On the appointed day the American appeared with his thresher, and the Filipinos were on hand with their stone table and a confident expert who was reputed the best rice-thresher in the district. The American began to feed his machine, and the Filipino made his bundles cut the air. In a few seconds the Filipino had quite a little handful of grain collected in his stone bowl, but not a grain of rice had appeared from the thresher. The workman cast supercilious glances at the machine, when suddenly a stream of rice as thick as his wrist began to pour out, and continued to pour in startling disproportion to his tiny pile. He stood it half a minute and then laid down his bundle of stalks and strode away. The onlooking land-holders were at first amazed and delighted. Then suddenly a horrible thought struck them! They got out their pocket pads and pencils and began to figure. Then they held a consultation and declared that the deal was off—that for one-twelfth the amount of rice streaming out of the thresher, the American’s profits would be highway robbery of the poor Filipino. In vain the agent pointed out to them that the one-twelfth was a ratio in which their gain would always be proportionate to his. They could see nothing except that he was going to make a large sum of money at their expense. The economy of the thresher over their own wasteful system made no impression against the fact that his commission would be a bulk sum which they were unwilling to see him gain. They could not afford to buy the machine, but they stopped the threshing then and there; and the agent learned that what is good advertising in America is not necessarily good in the Philippines.

The reader may fancy that he perceives in this chapter a direct contradiction of what I said in a preceding chapter about the Filipino aristocrat’s desiring the best of everything for his country. But the Filipino is like the sinner who says with all sincerity that he desires to be saved, but who, when confronted with the necessity of giving up certain of his pleasures as the price of salvation, feels that salvation comes rather high, and begins to figure on how he can accomplish the desired result without personal inconvenience. The present land-holding aristocracy is jealous to the last degree of its prerogatives, and it has fought every attempt to equalize taxation and to make the rich bear their fair share in the national expense account. The land tax and the rentas internes, or internal revenue tax, are two governmental measures which the rich classes fought to the extreme of bitterness, and which they would revoke to-morrow if it lay in their power to do so.

A High-class Provincial Family, Capiz

The lady in the centre is Spanish.

An aristocracy represents a survival of the fittest—not necessarily the ideally fit, but the fittest to meet the conditions under which it must prove a survivor. The conditions which Spain created here to mould Filipino character were mediæval, monarchical, and reactionary. The aristocracy is a land-holding one, untrained in the responsibilities of land-holders who grow up a legitimate part of the body politic of their country. Previous to American occupation the aristocracy was excluded from any share in the government, and the Spaniards were exceedingly jealous of any pretensions to knowledge or culture on its part. The aristocracy which could survive such conditions had to do so by indirectness and courtier-like flattery, by blandishment and deceit. The aristocrats learned to despise the poor and the weak; for the more extravagant the alms-giving, the more arrogant the secret attitude of the giver. They trusted less to their own strength than to others’ weakness. They relied less on their own knowledge than on others’ ignorance. Whatever solidarity the aristocracy had and has to-day is of a class nature rather than of a racial. In the insurrection against Spain it allied itself with its lower-class brethren simply because Spain forced it to do so. Had the friars made concessions to the aristocracy as a class, and permitted them a voice in Filipino affairs, there would have been no insurrection against Spain, nor would the entrance of a Filipino governing class have made large changes in the conditions of the great mass of the Filipino people.

Under a democratic Government the present aristocracy cannot retain its present place and prestige, and a portion of its eagerness for independence comes from a recognition of that fact. The American Government has practically opened the way for the creation of a new aristocracy in establishing the public schools. In the provinces the primary schools are patronized by rich and poor alike, though it has required considerable effort to make the poor people understand that their children have as much right to the enjoyment of school privileges as have the children of the rich. The secondary schools of the provinces are patronized chiefly by the middle and upper classes, and in the city of Manila the children of the really wealthy hardly ever attend the public schools. The wealthy citizens of Manila prefer to send their sons to the religious schools, and their daughters to the colegios, or sisterhood schools, of which there are many. While English is taught in all these schools, general instruction is in Spanish; the courses of study include the usual amount of catechism, expurgated history, and the question-and-answer method of “philosophy” of the old Spanish system. If the American Government remain here, a new aristocracy, the result of her public school system, is inevitable. If it should not remain here, the Spanish-reared product will continue to hold its present place.