A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

About this time, however, the gentlemen who were running that province engaged in the real game which we were imitating, and became involved in a quarrel which threatened to strain the relations between Americans and Filipinos to the breaking point. Governor Taft came down in person to look into the affair. There was a banquet and there were speeches. The Filipino Governor prefaced his oratorical flight by the statement that three times only in his life had he trembled. Time has clouded my memory, but I think he said the first of these was when he took his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Spain; the second was when he led his fair partner to the matrimonial altar; and the third was that present occasion when he stood up before that illustrious assembly, seeking words in which to welcome the distinguished guest.

He did not look as if he were suffering from nervousness, and his words flowed with sufficient ease to indicate that he was not having much trouble in the search. Sitting at the far end of the festal board, contemplating my glass of tinto (I am unable to say whether I drank tinto because the champagne ran short or because, being feminine and educational, I was deemed unworthy of the best), I reflected somewhat cynically that if he was telling the strict truth, his childhood must have been singularly barren of the penalties which follow real childish joy, or else his was a remarkable personality.

But that is neither here nor there. The utterance wafted me a gentle amusement at the time. But from that time on, the boys of my literary society began to tremble—always twice anteriorly, and for the third time when they stood up before that intellectual and critical assemblage. Every boy for weeks to come used that worn-out preface for his remarks. The pupils gave no signs either of amusement or scorn. Apparently they received it seriously as an eminently becoming preface of oratory, just as they do the “Dominus vobiscum” of the mass. But one day I spoke of it in one of the classes—intentionally not in the society. When they saw our viewpoint, they shrieked with delight, and from that time on, the budding orators ceased to tremble.

At last we arrived at the point of an open session, and the event was what is described in society papers as one of the social events of the season. We had really a good programme, we transacted quite a little business in accordance with parliamentary usage: we elected the Governor, the Presidente, and several prominent citizens honorary members, and they acknowledged the compliment with appropriate remarks.

About a week after our open session I was about to retire one night, when I heard the sound of music and saw lights approaching. Transparencies were waving about in the warm air. As there was no cholera, and therefore no occasion for a San Roque procession, I hung out of the window, local fashion, to find out what it was all about. It was a newly organized parliamentary society parading. In less than a month three new societies had blossomed among the youths and old men of the town. American teachers were engaged as parliamentarians, although the societies were conducted in Spanish, not English. The societies all died a natural death in a little while; but of course, the school society being compulsory could not die, and so far as I know is still going on. Every public school of the secondary class has its school societies, and they must form the ideals of the new generation.

One of the most irritating features of life in those early days, and one which offered a problem rather difficult for the Government to solve, was the matter of currency. The money in use was silver, with a small paper circulation of Banco Espagnol-Filipino notes. The notes were printed on a kind of pink blotting paper which looked as if it would be easy to counterfeit. The silver was what we called at first “Mex” and later “Dobie.” There were some pieces coined especially for the Philippines, but in general “Mex” was made up of coins of Spain, Mexico, Islas Filipinas, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Canton, and Amoy—only the experts of the Government could tell where it all came from. With the public at large, any coin that looked as if it contained the fair average of silver was accepted. Every month the paymasters of the United States Army and Navy issued thousands of dollars in American silver and paper, but this disappeared in a twinkling, swallowed up by the local agents who were buying gold with which China paid her indemnity. Each incoming steamer brought loads of “Dobie” from the Asiatic coast, but our good dollars and quarters went out of sight like falling stars.

The silver coins consisted of pesos, medio-pesos, pesetas (twenty-cent pieces), media-pesetas (ten-cent pieces), and it seems to me that I have a hazy recollection of a silver five-cent piece, though I cannot be certain. The copper coins were as mongrel as the silver.

There were English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese coins from the neighboring coasts, but the greater part of the copper coins consisted of roughly pounded discs with ragged edges, which were made, they said, by the Igorrotes. The coins had no inscriptions, but went with the natives by the name of “dacolds”—the native word for “big,” The Americans renamed the dacolds “claquers,” and used either name at pleasure. It required eighty dacolds to equal one peso, forty to a half-peso, sixteen to a peseta, eight to a media-peseta. Theoretically a peso was a hundred cents, as a peseta was twenty cents, but there was no cent with which to make change. You accepted the dacold at its value of eighty to a peso, or you transacted no business. The Filipinos also had a way of figuring a medio-peso as cuatro reales, thus giving the real a value of twelve and a half cents, though there was no coin called a real. Nevertheless, the real figured in all business transactions.

At the time we landed in Manila “Mex” stood with gold at an even ratio of two pesos “Mex” for one dollar gold. I innocently allowed a bank to transfer a gold balance on a letter of credit to an account in local currency at that ratio. A few weeks later, when I wanted to change back and carry my account in gold, they wrote me courteously but firmly that I would have to buy back that account at the ratio of 2.27, and by the time that the transfer was finally effected, gold had jumped to 2.66. We had been told by a circular from the War Department, at the time our appointments were made, that we should be paid in gold. I drew just one cheque in U.S. currency after reaching the Islands. My second cheque was drawn in local currency at a ratio of 2.27, but, by the time it had reached me at Capiz, gold had gone to 2.46. We had to endure the evils of a fluctuating currency for over two years. On all money sent to the States we lost heavily. So far as our daily expenses were concerned we in the provinces had very little inconvenience to suffer on account of “Mex”; but in Manila all merchants fixed their prices in gold and took occasion to put them up mercilessly. I remember trying to buy some Japanese matting which could have been bought for twenty-five cents a yard in the States, but which was priced at seventy-five cents in Manila. The merchant wanted me to pay him in “Mex” at a ratio of 2.66, or at the rate of two pesos a yard for matting which he bought in Japan at probably less than twenty sen a yard.