During the spring of 1902, just before this volume goes to the publishers, the U. S. Senate Philippine Commission has been summoning before it a number of persons competent to give expert testimony as to existing conditions in those Islands. Among these were Judge W. H. Taft, who for the past year has been Governor of the Philippines and speaks with high authority; and Archbishop Nozaleda, who has been connected with the Catholic church in the Islands for twenty-six years, and Archbishop since 1889, and who has the fullest understanding of the natives. Governor Taft said in answer to the committee:
The fact is that, not only among the Tagalogs but also among the Christian Filipinos, the woman is the active manager of the family, so if you expect to confer political power on the Filipinos it ought to be given to the women.
Archbishop Nozaleda testified as follows: (Senate Document 190, p. 109.)
The woman is better than the man in every way—in intelligence, in virtue and in labor—and a great deal more economical. She is very much given to trade and trafficking. If any rights and privileges are to be granted to the natives, do not give them to the men but to the women.
Q. Then you think it would be much better to give the women the right to vote than the men?
A. O, much better. Why, even in the fields it is the women who do the work; the men who go to the cock fights and gamble. The woman is the one who supports the man there; so every law of justice demands that even in political life they should have the privilege over the men.
The action which our Government will eventually take in conferring the suffrage on the Filipinos can not be recorded in this volume, but the prophecy is here made that, in spite of the above testimony, and much more of the same nature which has been given by correspondents in the Philippines and by many who have returned from there, the Government of the United States will enfranchise the inferior male inhabitants and hold as political subjects the superior women of these Islands. And again the world will be called upon to greet another republic!
FOOTNOTES:
[117] Miss Anthony spoke to a crowded house in the Fountain Street Baptist Church on The Moral Influence of Women, and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw to another great audience in the Park Congregational Church from the text, "Only be thou strong and very courageous." Calvary Baptist Church was filled to overflowing to hear Miss Laura Clay on The Bible for Equal Rights. Interested congregations listened to the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who preached at the Division Street Methodist Church from the text, "Knowledge shall increase"; Miss Laura Gregg, who spoke at the Second Baptist Church on My Country, 'Tis of Thee; Mrs. Colby, at the Plainfield Avenue Methodist Church, on The Legend of Lilith; Miss Lena Morrow at Memorial Church, Miss Lucy E. Textor at All Souls, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton and various members of the convention in other pulpits.
[118] The following resolutions were adopted:
That we reaffirm our devotion to the immortal principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and we call for its application in the case of women citizens.
We protest against the introduction of the word "male" in the suffrage clause of the proposed Constitution of Hawaii, and declare that upon whatever terms the franchise may be granted to men, it should be granted also to women.