It will be said of the affirmation that, the avowal of the possession of the Philippines as a responsibility without end would be a peace measure, and anything else make for war, does not take into account the attitude of the Philippine Dictator, by proclamation, General Aguinaldo, and his followers. We desire to speak with respect of the General, for he has shown in trying times, under strong temptations, the presence in his character of personal integrity in public matters, and reference is made to his refusal to consent to the division among insurgents alleged to be leaders, of the money paid by the Spaniards for the disarmament of the rebels, when two years ago there was an agreement upon the terms of a truce. This money transaction has been referred to as the sale of their cause by Aguinaldo and his associates, as if they, as individuals, had pocketed the usufruct of the bargain. The money was paid by Spain as an earnest of her sincerity, the Captain-General representing the force and good faith of the kingdom, in granting reforms to the Philippines. On condition of insurgent disarmament the people of the island were to be allowed representation in the Spanish Cortes, the orders of the Church were to be removed from relations to the Government that were offensive to the people. There was a long list of articles of specification of the reforms that were to be granted, the usual liberality of words of promise always bestowed by Spain upon her colonists. The representatives of Spain denied nothing that was asked; and to give weight to the program of concessions, there was paid in hand to Aguinaldo, through a transaction between banks in Manila and Hongkong, four hundred thousand dollars, the first installment of eight hundred thousand dollars agreed upon. [1] The Spaniards probably understood that they were bribing the insurgents and paying a moderate sum to cheaply end the war; and it did not cost the authorities of Spain anything, for they exacted the money from the Manila Bank of Spain, and still owe the bank. Aguinaldo's understanding, acted upon, was different. He accepted the money as a war fund, and has held and defended it for the purchase of arms, and resumed hostilities when all promises of reform were broken, and nothing whatever done beyond the robbery of the bank to bribe the rebel chiefs, which was the Spanish translation. Of course, it was claimed by the enemies of Aguinaldo that he was bought and paid for, but he has maintained the fund, though there were those professors of rebellion, who made claims to a share of the money. The second installment of the money that the rebels were to have been paid is yet an obligation not lifted, and the hostilities were revived as soon as the craft of the Spanish negotiators in promising everything because they meant to do nothing, became obvious. The actual proceedings in this case can be summed up in a sentence: The Spaniards took four hundred thousand dollars out of the Bank of Spain and gave it to the insurgents, for a temporary armistice. General Aguinaldo, though he appears very well in refusing to employ the money paid by Spain as a bribe for himself, has not the elements of enduring strength as the leader of the insurgents. As against the Spaniards he can keep the field, and carry on a destructive guerilla warfare, hopeless on both sides, like that going on in Cuba, when that island was invaded by the American army. But as against American rule the Philippines would cease to be insurgents. The islanders will not be controlled by sentimentalism. Government by the United States would differ from that by Spain, as the two nations are different in character, in the nature of their political institutions, in their progressive movement. America is all active and free, and her freedom would be extended to the islanders. The transformation would be one from the paralysis of despotism to the life of liberty. The words despotism and freedom would instantly have a distinct business meaning. Make known in the city of Manila that the Americans will abandon it, and the reviving hopes of the men of affairs would be instantly clouded, and the depression deepen into despondency and despair. Let it be the news of the day that the Americans will stay, and the intelligence of the city would regard its redemption as assured, every drooping interest revive, and an era of prosperity unknown under the dismal incompetency of Spain, open at once. It is legitimate that there should be freedom of speech as to the details of the proceedings. If our Government should do what Admiral Dewey did when he was the master of Manila, because he had annihilated the Spanish fleet and had the power to destroy the city—cast anchor and stay where we are already in command—the task is neither so complex nor costly as its opponents claim. Our territorial system is one easy of application to colonies. We have had experience of it from the first days of our Government. There is no commandment that a Territory shall become a State in any given time, or ever. We can hold back a Territory, as we have Arizona and New Mexico, or hasten the change to Statehood according to the conditions, and the perfect movement of the machinery requires only the presence in Congress of dominant good sense. Congress is easily denounced, but no one has found a substitute for it, and it is fairly representative of the country. Congress will never gamble away the inheritance of the people. It will probably, in spite of all shortcomings, have its average of ability and utility kept up. Congress may go wrong, but will not betray. Our outlying possessions must be Territories until they are Americanized, and we take it Americans know what that word means. If a specification is wanted as a definition, we have to say the meaning is just what has happened in California since our flag was there. In the case of the Philippines, if we stick, and we do not see how we can help doing so, the President will, in regular course, appoint a Territorial Governor, and as a strong Government capable of quick and final decisions must be made, the Governor should be a military man, and have a liberal grant, by special Act of Congress, of military authority. He should be a prompt, and all around competent administrator. He will not have to carry on war offensive or defensive. He need not be in a hurry to go far from Manila. He will not be molested there. The country will gravitate to him. The opponents of the Republican form of Government, as it is in the United States and the Territories of the Nation will become insignificant in the Philippines. They will have no grievances, except some of them may not be called at once to put on the trappings of personal potentiality. General Aguinaldo would find all the reforms the Spanish promised when they paid him four hundred thousand dollars to prove their good intentions, free as the air. He could not make war against the benignancy of a Government, Republican in its form and its nature, which simply needs a little time, some years maybe, before erasing the wrongs that have had a growth of centuries. The American Governor-General need not send out troops to conquer districts, coercing the people. The people will soon be glad to see the soldiers of the United States, the representatives of the downfall and departure of the instruments of Spain. Aguinaldo and his party have a Congress. It might be an approved beginning of a Territorial Legislature, and the insurgent General might be the presiding officer. There would be abundant reason for the auspicious exercise of all his rights in the public service. As for the cost of the Philippines under our Government, that would fall upon the treasury of the United States. There can be no doubt that it would be for several years a considerable sum, but the public men who favored peace for the liberation of Cuba, did not make counting the cost the most prominent feature of the war they advocated, but accepted the fact that the national honor and fame, the glory of heroism and deeds of daring and sacrifice, are priceless, and their achievement beyond price. There is to be said under this head, that the Philippine Islands are of natural riches almost without parallel. The great isle of Luzon teems with productions that have markets the world over, and it is commonplace for the savages in the mountains to come out of their fastnesses with nuggets of gold to make purchases. Cotton, sugar, rice, hemp, coffee and tobacco, all tropical fruits and woods, are of the products. There is profusion of the riches that await the freedom of labor and the security of capital, and the happiness of the people. Under American government the Philippines would prosper, and it would be one of our tasks to frame legislation. The laws of Congress would be the higher code of law, and the Philippines would desire, and be invited, of course, to send their ablest men to be Territorial representatives in the Congress of the United States. In the name of peace, therefore, and in behalf of the dignity and authority of this Nation—in mercy to the Spaniards, in justice to the Filipinos, it is due ourselves, and should have the favor of all who would see our country expand with the ages, and walking in the footsteps of Washington and Jefferson, finding the path of empire that of freedom and taking our place as a great Power, accepting the logic of our history, and the discharge of the duties of destiny—we should hold on to the Philippines—and when the great distance of those islands from this continent is mentioned, remember that the Pacific may now be crossed in as few days as was the Atlantic forty years ago.
The labor questions and the silver questions even come into the Philippines problem to be scanned and weighed. In Eastern Asia, which we have invaded, and a part of which we have appropriated for a time, the people use silver for the measure of value, and in the islands that interest us, as they do not deal in the mysteries of rupees, but in dollars, the facts in the case are plainly within the common understanding. In Manila the Mexican dollar goes in ordinary small exchanges, payment of wages and settlement of bills, for fifty cents; but the banks sell the Mexicans twenty-one of them for ten gold dollars—an American eagle! So far as the native people go, labor and produce are counted in silver, and the purchaser, or employer gets as much for a silver dollar as for a gold dollar. The native will take ten dollars in gold for ten dollars only in all settlements of accounts, and would just as willingly—even more so, accept ten Mexican dollars as ten American dollars in gold coin. Salaries are paid and goods delivered according to the silver standard. Of course, in due time this state of things will pass away, if we hold to the gold standard, but as the case stands the soldiers and sailors of our army and fleet, paid under the home standard, receive double pay, and get double value received for clothing, tobacco and whatever they find they want—indeed, for the necessaries and luxuries of life. The double standard in this shape is not distasteful to the boys.
We have both theories and conditions confronting us in these aspects of the silver and labor questions. The Oriental people are obdurate in their partiality for silver. It is the cheaper labor that adheres to the silver standard, partially, it is held, because silver is the more convenient money for the payment of small sums. But labor cannot be expected, at its own expense, to sustain silver for the profit of capital, or rather of the middle man between labor and capital. Labor, so far as it is in politics in this country, should not, without most careful study and deliberation, conclude that its force in public affairs would be abated, and its policy of advancing wages antagonized by the absorption of the Philippines in our country. On the contrary, the statesmanship that is representative of labor may discover that it is a great fact, one of the greatest of facts, that the various countries and continents of the globe are being from year to year more and more closely associated, and that to those intelligently interested, without regard to the application of their views of justice or expediency, in the labor and silver questions—the convictions, the fanaticisms, of the vast silver nations—and enormous multitudes of the people of Asia, touching the silver standard—and the possible progress of labor, as a guiding as well as plodding ability increases incessantly in interest, and must grow in inheritance. As the conditions of progressive civilization are developed our interests cannot be wholly dissevered from those of the Asiatics. We would be unwise to contemplate the situation of to-day as one that can or should perpetuate itself. Suppose we accept, the governing responsibility in the Philippines. It is not beyond the range of reasonable conjecture that American labor can educate the laborers of the Philippines out of their state of servitude as cheap laborers, and lead them to co-operate rather than compete with us, and not to go into the silver question further than to consent that it exists, and is in the simplest form of statement, whether the change in the market value of the two money metals is natural or artificial. It is necessary in common candor to state that the most complete solution of the money metal embarrassments would be through the co-operation of Asia and America. Europe is for gold, Asia for silver, and the Americas divided. Japan is an object lesson, her approximation to the gold standard has caused in the Empire an augmentation of the compensation of labor. This is not wholly due to the change in the standard. The war with China, the increase in the army and navy, and the absorption of laborers in Formosa, the new country of Japan, have combined with the higher standard of value, to elevate wages. All facts are of primary excellence in the formation of the policies of nations.
CHAPTER IX
The Philippine Islands As They Are.
Area and Population—Climate—Mineral Wealth—Agriculture—Commerce
and Transportation—Revenue and Expenses—Spanish Troops—Spanish
Navy—Spanish Civil Administration—Insurgent Troops—Insurgent Civil
Administration—United States Troops—United States Navy—United
States Civil Administration—The Future of the Islands.
General Frank V. Greene made an exhaustive study of all reports of an official character regarding the area, population, climate, resources, commerce, revenue and expenses of the Philippines Islands, and prepared a memorandum for the general information that is the most thorough and complete ever made, and is the latest and highest authority on all the subjects to which it relates, and they include the solid information the business men of the United States want respecting our Asiatic associations. The memorandum is herewith submitted in substance, and all the particulars of public concern.
Area and Population.
These islands, including the Ladrones, Carolinas and Palaos, which are all under the Government of Manila, are variously estimated at from 1,200 to 1,300 in number. The greater portion of these are small and of no more value than the islands off the coast of Alaska. The important islands are less than a dozen in number, and 90 per cent. of the Christian population live on Luzon and the five principal islands of the Visayas group.
The total population is somewhere between 7,000,000 and 9,000,000. This includes the wild tribes of the mountains of Luzon and of the islands in the extreme south. The last census taken by the Spanish Government was on December 31, 1887, and this stated the Christian population to be 6,000,000 (in round numbers). This is distributed as follows: