(6) The carrying out of such work and services as cannot be performed by private citizens, conducive to the common welfare and public prosperity—the Department of Commerce and Communications.
II. ADOPTION OF A BUDGETARY SYSTEM.—A scientific budgetary system has been adopted. Under the system the estimates are made under the supervision and control of the department heads who have the power to add or cut down items. These different estimates are then submitted to the Secretary of Finance, who coördinates them. Any conflict between a departmental head and the Secretary of Finance is submitted to the Council of State for decision. Once the budget is definitely approved by the Council of State the Governor-General submits it with a message to the Legislature.
The Gilbert Steel bridge, Laoag, Ilocos Norte
The lower house is the first one to take up the budget. The corresponding Department Secretary appears before it to explain the details of the budget for his Department and to answer all questions by the members. Once the budget is approved in principle it is sent to the Committee on Appropriations with instructions to draft the appropriation bill in accordance therewith. When the appropriation bill is approved by the house, it is sent to the Senate and practically the same procedure is followed.
The Emergency Board To make the budgetary system sufficiently elastic to meet changing conditions, there has been created the so-called Emergency Board composed of the Secretary of Finance as Chairman, two members of the Legislature, the Insular Auditor and the Attorney-General as members. In the general Appropriation Act, this board is given a substantial amount with which to supply the additional funds that the various units of the government may need for the purpose authorized by the appropriation law. As an additional safe-guard, the actions of the Emergency Board do not become operative until after approval by the Governor-General and the presidents of both houses.
III. PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.—In public improvements, the following was the record of the Filipinos within the last nine years. The mileage of first-class roads was more than doubled increasing from 2,172 kilometers in 1913 to 4,782 in 1922, not to speak of the second and third class; 7,562 permanent bridges and culverts are now in existence; 725 permanent government buildings were built, including schools, public markets, hospitals, provincial capitols, and large and beautiful edifices for the university and the Insular government; a network of wireless stations was erected throughout the provinces; a vast program of improvements in port works was launched, and a bond issue of ten million pesos was sold in the United States for harbor improvements in Manila alone; irrigation works estimated to cost about ten million pesos, and designed to benefit 150,000 acres of land in sixteen different localities, were initiated; 949 artesian wells in the different provinces, an average of one to each municipality, were drilled at a total cost of nearly two and one-half million pesos, and 55 new water-works systems were installed with 36 more under active construction, to cost more than three million pesos.
IV. AGRICULTURE AND TAXATION.—The progress in agriculture was remarkable. The chief point of interest here is that the placing of Filipinos in control of the agricultural departments greatly enlarged the power of the Government to influence the people to increased production. Of rice alone, 1,285,385 acres more were planted during the last nine years (1913–1922); 544 rural-credit societies were established with a membership of 75,114 and coöperation in agriculture, a new spirit among the farmers, encouraged and explained.
Taxation was revised and increased, and the government revenue from this source which in 1913 had been only ₱39,236,007, rose to ₱62,900,403 in 1919 and ₱64,259,776 in 1922; there are twelve banking institutions in the Islands, now, instead of only six, and the money in circulation has risen from ₱50,000,000 in 1914 to three times that figure.