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up to this point is the apparent neglect of the government to regard Aguinaldo and his revolutionary programme from the only point of view which could promise any guidance in the circumstances. In dealing with Aguinaldo, after his arrival in the Islands had placed him in touch with his supporters, the question which should have presented itself to the American authorities was not whether his actions justified a belief that he was incapable of maintaining an independent government, not whether his political mistakes or inefficient administration would afford a good argument ex post facto for the American assumption of the government, but whether, in view of the determination arrived at on June 16, as set forth in Mr. Day's dispatch, that the insurrectionary movement was not to be recognized, Aguinaldo was or was not capable of offering substantial resistance to the American plans. But notwithstanding the frequent reports forwarded to Washington by the military commanders to the effect that Aguinaldo was actually in control of practically the whole of the Islands, and that he had not only placed himself in a strong military position, but had established a civil government which was in fact administering the affairs of the Islands, there is no evidence in the material thus far made public that any attempt was made to negotiate with the insurgents or to discover whether an arrangement could not be arrived at which would yield to each party so large a proportion of its extreme objects as to afford a basis for common action.

It is known now, and might easily have been known at the time, that there was a conservative element amongst Aguinaldo's advisers sufficiently powerful to have counteracted the influence of the war party if the United States had given it any sort of encouragement prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Nothing of the kind was done, and the policy which was pursued was to disregard the obvious facts in regard to Aguinaldo's ability to offer a serious resistance to the American as

sumption of the government, to take an entirely independent course of action, and to allow a similar privilege to the revolutionary government.

That the war in the Philippines could have been avoided by the exercise of the most ordinary prudence, that it could have been avoided if the advice of any British, French, or Dutch colonial governor in the Far East had been asked and acted upon, there can be no possible doubt; and it is not less certain that if the Philippine Commission which arrived in Manila shortly after the commencement of the war had been given the power to act, instead of only the power to talk, the war need not have lasted three months. Considerations of space prevent me from dealing with the conduct of the war; and I must dismiss the subject by saying that if in its political aspects it was little but a long succession of errors, in its practical operations it disclosed a devotion and heroism on the part of the American officers and troops which place the campaign on a level with the most striking achievements of the white races in tropical warfare.

III

The American government in the Philippine Islands was wholly military until September 1, 1900, when the military Governor was relieved of the legislative power, which was transferred to the Philippine Commission of which the Hon. William H. Taft was president. On September 1, 1901, the civil executive power was also transferred to the Commission, and that body was enlarged by the addition to it of three Filipino members.

As it is obviously impossible in the present article to go over the whole field of the administrative policy of the Philippine Commission, I select for treatment two of the more important questions which have arisen in regard to the control and development of the Islands,the structure and working of the government, and the economic condition of the Islands.

But before passing to a consideration of these questions I wish to make clear a point which is of some importance in relation to any adverse criticism of the American Philippine administration.

During the time I was in the Islands in the early part of this year I met a great number of American officials, and in my intercourse with them, an intercourse which was marked throughout by the greatest courtesy and frankness on their part, I was constantly brought face to face with two facts, one, that with very few exceptions the members of the civil service were animated by an honest and sincere desire to do the best thing for the general welfare of the Islands; the other, that side by side with this excellent intention there existed an ignorance of the broad established facts in relation to tropical administration, and an absence of information as to the work of the European nations in the neighboring colonies, which could scarcely fail to impair most seriously the usefulness of the most conscientious and hard-working official.

The effect of this mental condition of practically a whole government has been twofold. On the one hand it has involved a groping about for satisfactory solutions of the most elementary problems of administration, which have finally been solved, after great waste of time and energy, along lines already laid down by other nations; and on the other hand, and this is a far more serious matter, it has deprived the government of any standard of comparison for its work. To give a single example: I was shown in the Philippines some of the most wretched roads I have seen in fifteen years of colonial travel, and was asked with pride whether the English had ever done anything like that for the benefit of their colonial subjects; and when I replied that you could travel a thousand miles in an automobile in the Federated Malay States on roads as good as the Massachusetts state roads, my statement was met, if not with absolute incredulity, at least with the last degree of surprise. It was the same thing in a hundred

matters. Had any nation except the United States ever given the natives of a colony any voice in their own government, or given them an honest judiciary, or a good water-supply, or an efficient police force, or ever governed a colony with any other object than deriving revenue from it? And so on through the whole range of colonial administration! It is obvious that if a body of men, from lack of comparative knowledge, honestly believe that the work they are doing is better than that of all others in the same field, the prospect of improvement originating within the administrative hierarchy is reduced to a minimum.

The evil is one which could easily be removed in the case of men as intelligent and quick-witted as the average American in the Philippines. If, instead of going straight from San Francisco to Manila, the higher officials were ordered to go out by way of Suez, taking a trip through Egypt, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula on the way, they would arrive in the Philippines better equipped for useful work than they now are even after some years of residence in the Islands. The experience would not only help toward that breadth of view which is so essential in approaching questions of administration in the tropics, but would give them a sufficient knowledge of the conditions of other colonies to serve as a standard of comparison for their own work. Nearly all the faults of administration in the Philippines are due to one of two causes, - either the pernicious influence of American home politics on Philippine legislation, or the narrow vision of the local officials. It is perhaps too much to hope that the former can be removed, but with the elimination of the latter element the evil effects of the former would be greatly lessened.

IV

The present structure of the Philippine government differs in some material respects from that of any other tropical dependency of either of the great Powers.

Although at first sight it appears to afford a larger measure of participation to the people of the Islands than can be found elsewhere, the local conditions under which the government operates, which are inflexible to a degree that can scarcely be appreciated by any one who has not visited the Islands, give the practical working of the administration a fairly close resemblance to that of a British crown colony government shorn of some of its most important advantages.

The Philippines belong to a clearly defined type of tropical countries. They have a high mean annual temperature and a low social and economic development; their internal trade is insignificant; they depend for their economic welfare on an export trade resting on agricultural industries; nearly all the manufactured articles used in the Islands are imported; the native labor is entirely inadequate for the development of the natural resources of the country; the great majority of the people are of the usual lazy, indolent, and thriftless character which distinguishes the native of the tropics; there is a small educated class, but ninety per cent of the population can neither read nor write.

As the industry of a people bears a very close relation to their political condition -effective political institutions of an advanced type being found only in countries of advanced industrial development: a low economic condition being invariably accompanied by a low political statusthe following figures supply a rough standard by which to measure directly the economic position and indirectly the present political capacity of the Philippines in relation to countries possessing a climate, commerce, and population sufficiently similar in a general way to afford a fair basis for comparison.

It must be borne in mind that in tropical countries, where the internal trade is always insignificant, the value of exports gives a very accurate index to the industry of the people. Basing my calculations on the latest available statistics, the following figures are approximately cor

rect: Value of exports per annum per capita of population in the Philippines $5, in Ceylon $8.50, in Porto Rico $12, in Sierra Leone $19, in the British West Indies $20, in Mauritius $24, in Java $25, in British Guiana $30, in the Federated Malay States $44.

It is seen from the above figures, which disclose the economic efficiency of nine tropical areas dependent on one or another of the great Powers, that the Philippines are in a very low stage of economic development. The inference might naturally be drawn that the Philippine people are less able to direct their political and administrative affairs than are the inhabitants of any of the colonies included in the comparison; and such an inference would, in fact, be correct. But this view has not commended itself to the United States; and in a country which is poorer, chiefly from lack of industry in the people, than almost any other tropical country not under purely native rule, inhabited by people certainly not more intelligent than those of the other tropical dependencies referred to above, there has been established a government more expensive than any other colonial government in the tropics, and much more dependent for its efficiency on the coöperation of the natives.

Broadly speaking, the American policy in regard to the control and development of the Philippines is the exact opposite of that adopted by every other nation, in that political development has been taken as the standard of attainment instead of industrial development, in opposition to the universal experience of mankind, that the latter has always preceded the former.

It may be true that it has been advisable from the standpoint of American home politics to place the cart before the horse in this manner, but the consequences will be disastrous to the welfare of the Islands. Lord Curzon, in a recent speech on Indian affairs, has put the matter in a nutshell: "I do not think," he said, "that the salvation of India is to be sought on the field of politics at the pre

sent stage of her development; and it is not my conception of statesmanship to earn a cheap applause by offering socalled boons for which the country is not ready, and for which my successors, and not I, would have to pay the price."

I propose now to compare the structure of the Philippine government with that of some of the British colonies and dependencies in the Far East. The government of the Philippine Islands rests with the following bodies, the Munici

pal Councils, the Provincial Governments, the Philippine Commission, and the Congress of the United States. The Philippine Municipality corresponds to the New England township, and there are in the Islands 623 municipalities, and in connection with them about 3600 presidents, secretaries, treasurers, and clerks, and about 8000 councilors. All the municipal officials are elected by the people; and any male person of twentythree years or over, having six months' residence in the municipality, may vote, provided he held prior to August 13, 1898, any one of certain offices under the Spaniards, or owns five hundred pesos' worth of real estate, or pays thirty pesos or more in taxes, or speaks, reads, and writes English or Spanish.

The Philippine Municipality is simply an advanced type of the village government in Burma, Indo-China, and other Eastern countries, and represents an adjustment to the new conditions of the old Spanish municipal organization. These municipalities would be admirably suited to the needs of the country if the people possessed any political capacity, for, in theory, they raise and disburse money locally for local purposes connected with the daily life of the natives. But the account given of their work in the Philippine Commission's Report for 1903 is most discouraging. The Hon. William H. Taft, writing as Civil Governor, says: "By law the council of a municipality is obliged to devote a certain part of the income of the towns to schools, but in too many instances it has developed that, in

the anxiety to secure his own salary, the president has induced the council and the municipal treasurer to appropriate from what are properly school funds to pay the salaries of municipal officials. The truth is that the municipal governments have not been as satisfactory in their operations as could be wished. By the misuse of the school funds, already referred to, the native school teachers have been compelled to go without their salaries. The municipal police have also gone unpaid, and in many instances had not been made efficient because they were used as the personal servants of the municipal presidents."

It is when we turn to the provincial governments in the Philippines that we find the first radical and important difference between American methods and those of other countries. Under the Provincial Government Act provision is made for the formation of provincial boards consisting of a provincial governor, elected for a two years' term by the municipal councilors of the province in joint convention, and the provincial supervisor, and the provincial treasurer, appointed by the Philippine Commission. At the present time there are forty provincial governments in the Islands. The principal duties of these governments are to levy taxes within certain limitations, to collect all taxes due in the province, whether on account of municipal, provincial, or insular levy, to direct the provincial public works, and to supervise the municipal administration.

It is clear that the provincial government affords no real representation of the people, since two out of the three members of the provincial board are appointed by the Commission; and in this respect the provincial government embodies the central principle of crown colony government, namely, that the control of affairs rests with appointed, and not with elected officials. But while the system, owing to its non-representative character, does nothing toward educating the people in self-government, it sacrifices the

two great advantages of crown colony government, for the element of personal influence is lost where a biennial election regulates the office of governor, and the administrative authority is weakened when it resides in an official trinity instead of in the person of one man. There is thus change where permanence is most needed, and division of power where efficiency is best promoted by its concentration.

The existence of the provincial governments cannot be defended on political grounds, for they possess no political attributes; and in so far as they are administrative machines they perform functions which could be more efficiently and more economically discharged by a single government official with powers similar to those of a deputy - commissioner in Burma. The difference between the duties performed by that official and those of the provincial boards in the Philippines lies in two points only. The deputycommissioner is vested with judicial and magisterial powers, neither of which pertain to the provincial boards; and in regard to public works, he is relieved by the Public Works Department of the general government of such duties as fall in that matter to the provincial boards. In each respect the advantage lies with the Burmese system.

In a country in a stage of development as low as that of the Philippines or Burma, where the political and administrative capacity of the people, if it can ever reach a useful proportion, must take many generations to develop, the addition of magisterial and judicial powers to the authority of the administrator facilitates the work of government by simplifying the settlement of small civil disputes and the punishment of lesser crime, and serves a most useful purpose by bringing the chief official in charge of each district into close touch with the daily affairs of the people. As all the judicial and magisterial acts of the deputy-commissioner are subject to the review of his administrative superiors, and may be made the subject of appeal to

the higher courts, there is little danger of an abuse of power. In the matter of public works it is obvious that the central government, from its wider knowledge of the general plans for the opening up of the country and from the greater resources at its command, is better able than a provincial board to control and direct public works in conformity with some scheme of development laid down by a body of experts which the provincial governments could not afford to employ.

But it is in the higher branches of the administration that the structure of the Philippine Government exhibits its greatest weakness and its sharpest contrast to other dependent tropical governments. It is a universally recognized trait of tropical peoples that they yield their truest loyalty and their best aid in governmental matters when there is at the head of affairs one man in supreme power, whether he be King, Sultan, or Governor. This characteristic, so far from being due to the growth of white domination, is the product of uncounted centuries of native development, before white men ever came into contact with the native governments; and in attempting to build a tropical government on the theory that socalled "popular" institutions can ever recommend themselves as an ideal to the natives of a tropical country, the fact is overlooked or ignored that, in the thousands of years during which the natives of the tropics were left to themselves, to develop whatever political institutions appeared best suited to them, there was never established a single government which was not purely autocratic in char

acter.

When we attempt to force democratic institutions or corporate government upon tropical peoples we simply assume, without any warrant whatever, that we know better than they do what form of government is best for them. Now not only does the government of the Philippines by a Commission violate the very first principle of successful administration in the tropics by dividing into seven

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