to wax, the march became a hurry, the hurry grew to a rush, and the rush ended in a wild scramble for front seats. One little maid in particular was such an invariable holder of an advantageous position that my curiosity was aroused to see how she did it. I watched her, saw her glistening brown body–perfectly visible through the filmy material of her single garment–dive under the last row of seats and emerge triumphant at the front while the press was still blocking the aisles.
Disorder and excitement were, however, mere temporary conditions. Under repeated admonition and practice, the Filipino children moved about with more order and regularity, the habit of studying aloud was overcome, and the school began to show the organization and discipline to which Americans are accustomed.
The hardest thing to overcome was their desire to aid me in matters that I could manage better alone. If some one whispered and I tapped a pencil, instantly half the children in the room would turn around and utter the hiss with which they invoke silence, or else they would begin to scold the offender in the vernacular. Such acts led, of course, to unutterable confusion, and I had no little trouble in putting a stop to them.
CHAPTER VIII
An Analysis of Filipino Character
American Pupils and Filipino Pupils Contrasted–The Filipinos’ Belief That They Are Highly Developed Musicians–Their Morbid Sensitiveness to Criticism–Explanation of Their Desire for Education–Their Belief That They Could Achieve Great Success in Manufactures, Arts, and Literature If Left to Govern Themselves–Their Lack of Creative Ability–Dillettanteism of Leading Filipinos–Manual Jealousies of the People–Lack of Real Democratic Spirit in America–The Pride of Filipino Men Compared to That of American Women.
So long as they find firmness and justice in the teacher, Filipino children are far easier to discipline than are American children. At the first sign of weakness in the teacher or in the Government which is behind him, they are infinitely more unruly and arrogant than are the children of our own race. There is, in even the most truculent American child, a sense of the eternal fitness of things which the Filipino lacks. American children are restless and mischievous. They are on the alert for any sign of overstepping the limits of lawful authority on the part of the teacher, and they have no compunctions about forcing him to recognize that he rules by the consent of the governed, and that he must not mistake their complaisance for servility. On the other hand, they have, with rare exceptions, a respect for the value of a teacher’s opinion in the subjects which he teaches, and will seldom contradict or oppose him in matters that pertain wholly to learning. A class of American children which would support in every possible way one of their number in defying authority would not hesitate to make that same companion’s life a burden to him if he should set up his own opinion on abstract matters in contradiction to his teacher’s. Except when a teacher signally proves his incapacity, American children are willing to grant the broad premise that he knows more than they do, and that, if he does not, he at least ought to know more. Filipino children reverse this attitude. They are quite docile, seldom think of disputing authority as applied to discipline, but they will naively cling to a position and dispute both fact and philosophy in the face of quoted authority, or explanation, or even of sarcasm. The following anecdote illustrates this peculiarity. It happened in my own school and is at first hand.
One of the American teachers was training a Filipino boy to make a recitation. The boy had adopted a plan of lifting one hand in an impassioned gesture, holding it a moment, and of letting it drop, only to repeat the movement with the other hand. After he had prolonged this action, in spite of frequent criticism, till he looked like a fragment of the ballet of “La Poupee,” the teacher lost patience.
“Domingo,” she said, “I have told you again and again not to make those pointless, mechanical gestures. Why do you do it? They are inappropriate and artificial, and they make you look like a fool.”
Domingo paused and contemplated her with the pity which Filipinos often display for our artistic inappreciativeness.
“Madame,” he replied in a pained voice, “you surprise me. Those gestures are not foolishness. They are talent. I thought they would please you.”
In my own early days I was once criticised by one of the young ladies of Capiz for my pronunciation of the letter _c_ in the Spanish word _ciudad_. I replied that my giving the sound of _th_ to the letter was correct Spanish, whereupon she advised me to pay no attention to the Spanish pronunciation, as the Filipinos speak better Spanish than do the Spanish themselves. What she meant was that the avoidance of _th_ sounds in _c_ and _z_, which the Filipinos invariably pronounce like _s_, is an improvement to the Spanish language. I imagined some of that young lady’s kindred ten years later arguing to prove that the Filipino corruption of _th_ in English words–pronouncing “thirty” as “sirty,” and “thick” as “sick”–arguing that such English is superior to English as we speak it. Here are some typically mispronounced English sentences: “If Maria has seben fencils and see loses sree, see will hab four fencils left, and if her moser gibs her eight fencils, see will hab twel’ fencils in all.” Here is another: “Pedro has a new fair of voots.” Another: “If one fint ob binegar costs fi’ cents, sree fints will cost sree times fi’ cents, or fikteen cents.” It would, I think, be hard to convince us that the euphonic changes in these words are an improvement to our language.
Some four years ago, I was teaching a class in the Manila School of Arts and Trades, and was giving some directions about the word form of English sentences. I advised the class to stick to simple direct sentences, since they would never have any use for a literary style in English. Some six or eight young men instantly dissented from this proposition, and insisted that they were capable of acquiring the best literary style. Not one of them could have written a page of clear, grammatical, idiomatic English. I tried to make it clear to them that literary English and colloquial English are two different things, and that what they needed was plain, precise English as a medium of exchange in business, and I said, incidentally, that such was the English possessed by the major portion of the English-speaking race. I said that although the American nation numbered eighty millions, most of whom were educated and able to make an intelligent use of their language in conversation or in writing, the percentage of great writers and speakers always had been small and always would be so.
When I had finished, the son of a local editor, arose and replied as follows: “Yes, madame, what you say of Americans is true. But we are different. We are a literary people. We are only eight millions, but we have hundreds and thousands of orators. We have the literary sense for all languages.”
Nearly thirty years ago, when I was a pupil in the Kansas City, Missouri, High School, the stepson of a United States Circuit judge made a brutally rude and insubordinate reply to a woman teacher who said to him, in reference to an excuse which he had given for tardiness, “That is not a good excuse.” The young man turned an insolent eye upon the teacher–a gray-haired woman–and replied, “It’s good enough for me. What are you going to do about it?”
I cannot conceive that a Filipino child would be guilty of such insolence, such defiance of decency and order. But never have I met an American child who would have the artless indiscretion to put himself in the position of Domingo. The American child does not mind violating a rule. He is chary of criticising its propriety or its value. In other words, the American child does not mind doing wrong, but he is wary of making a fool of himself; and I have yet to meet the Filipino child who entertained the faintest suspicion that it was possible for him to make a fool of himself. Nor is the attitude of dissent among Filipinos limited to those who express themselves. It is sometimes very trying to feel that after long-winded eloquence, after citation and demonstration, you have made no more real impression upon the silent than upon the talkative, and that, indeed, the gentle reserve of some of your auditors is based upon the conviction that your own position is the result of indomitable ignorance. One of my friends has met this spirit in a class in the Manila High School. A certain boy insists that he has seen the iron head of a thunderbolt, and although he makes “passing grades” in physics, he does not believe in physics. He regards our explanations of the phenomena of lightning as a parcel of foolishness in no wise to stand the test of his own experience, and nothing can silence him. “But, ma’am,” he says, when electricity is under discussion, “I am see the head of a thunder under our house.” This young gentleman will graduate in a year or two, and the tourist from the States will look over the course of study of the Manila High School and go home telling his brethren that the Filipino children are able to compete successfully with American youth in the studies of a secondary education. I myself had a heart-breaking time with a sixth-grade class in one of the intermediate schools of Manila. The children had been studying animal life and plant life, and could talk most learnedly about anthropoid apes, and “habitats” and other things; but they undertook to convince me that Filipino divers can stay under water an hour without any diving apparatus, and that the reason for this power is that the diver is “brother to a snake”–that is, that when the mother gave birth to the child, she gave birth to a snake also, and that some mysterious power remains in persons so born.
Filipino children are not restless and have no tradition of enmity between teacher and pupil to urge them into petty wrong-doing. Their attitude toward the teacher is a very kindly one, and they are almost uniformly courteous. Their powers of concentration are not equal to those of American children, and they cannot be forced into a temporarily heavy grind, but neither do they suffer from the extremes of indolence and application which are the penalty of the nervous energy of our own race. They are attentive (which the American child is not) but not retentive, and they can keep up a steady, even pull at regular tasks, especially in routine work, at which American children usually rebel. In fact, they prefer routine work to variety, and grow discouraged quickly when they have to puzzle out things for themselves. They will faithfully memorize pages and pages of matter which they do not understand, a task at which our nervous American children would completely fail. They are exceedingly sensitive to criticism, and respond quickly to praise. Unfortunately the narrow experience of the race, and the isolation and the general ignorance of the country, make praise a dangerous weapon in the hands of a teacher; for a child is apt to educe a positive and not a relative meaning from the compliment. Filipino children have not attained the mental state of being able to qualify in innumerable degrees. If a teacher hands back a composition to an American boy with the words “Well done,” the child understands perfectly that his instructor means well as compared with the work of his classmates. The Filipino is inclined to think that she means positively well done–above the average for all the world. I once complimented a class in Capiz on the ease with which they sang four-part music, and said, what I truly feel, that the Filipinos are a people of unusual musical ability. They managed to extract from the compliment the idea that the musical development of the Filipinos is far in advance of that of the Americans.
Middle-class Filipinos have a very inadequate conception of the tremendous wealth of artistic, literary, and musical talent interwoven with the world’s development, and are especially inclined to pride themselves upon their racial excellence in these lines, where, in truth, they have achieved almost no development whatever in spite of the possession of undoubted talent. They do not understand the value of long training, and are inclined to assume that the mere possession of a creative instinct is final evidence of excellence in any art.
It will be some time before what real talent they have will make itself felt in any line, because it will take a great deal of tactful handling to make them reveal their natural artistic trend instead of falling into imitation of Europe and America. It is strange that a people so tenacious of its opinions with regard to matters of fact should be so willing to surrender its ideal with regard to the thing of which a nation has most reason to be tenacious, its natural expression. But the whole race is so morbidly sensitive to the sneer that everything Filipino is necessarily crude that the young art student or the young musical student feels that his only hope of winning commendation is in painting or playing or composing after European models; while as for the populace at large it has its own standards in which other motives than artistic excellence play the largest part.
I had a friend, a young Filipino girl, who has been one of the most diligent among the pupils of the American schools. She was staying with me two or three years ago when my publisher sent me a copy of a primer intended for use in the Philippines, and which had just been gotten out in the United States. The publisher had spared no expense in his illustrations, and we were tremendously proud of the artistic side of the book. This Filipino girl had heard me use the expression “poor white trash,” and I had explained to her how the Southern negroes use the words as a term of derision of those who fail to live up to the traditions of race and family. When I took my book to her in the joy of an author in her first complete production, she looked at it a minute and burst into tears. “Poor Filipino trash!” was all she could say for a long time, and I finally pieced it out that she was enraged because the Filipino boys and girls in my book were sometimes barefooted, sometimes clad in _chinelas_, and wore native camisas instead of American suits and dresses. I pointed out to her that not one Filipino child in a hundred dresses otherwise, but my argument was of no avail. The children in the American readers wore natty jackets and hats and high-heeled shoes, and winter wraps, even at play, and she wanted the Filipino children to look the same.
A great deal has been said in the American press about the eagerness for education here. The desire for education, however, does not come from any real dissatisfaction which the Filipinos have with themselves, but from eagerness to confute the reproach which has been heaped upon them of being unprogressive and uneducated. It is an abnormal condition, the result of association of a people naturally proud and sensitive with a people proud and arrogant. At present the desire for progress in things educational and even in things material is more or less ineffective because it is fed from race sensitiveness rather than from genuine discontent with the existing order of things. The educated classes of Filipinos are not at all dissatisfied with the kind and quality of education which they possess; agriculturists are not dissatisfied with their agricultural implements; the artisans are not, as a class, dissatisfied with their tools or ashamed of their labor. If you talk to a Filipino carpenter about the carefully constructed houses of America, he does not sigh. He merely says, “That is very good for America, but here different custom,” Filipino cooks are not dissatisfied with the terrible _fugons_ which fill their eyes with smoke and blacken the cooking utensils, and have to be fanned and puffed at every few minutes and occasionally set the house on fire. The natural causes of growth are not widely existent, and it is still problematic if they will ever come into being. Meanwhile growth goes on stimulated by the eternal criticism, the sting of which the Filipinos would move heaven and earth to escape.
Our own national progress and that of the European nations from whom we are descended have been so differently conceived and developed that we can hardly realize the peculiar process through which Filipinos are passing. We cannot conceive of Robert Fulton tearing his hair and undertaking a course in mechanics with the ulterior view of inventing something to prove that the American race is an inventive one. We cannot imagine Eli Whitney buried in thought, wondering how he could make a cotton gin to disprove the statement that the Americans are an unprogressive people. Cyrus Hall McCormick did not go out and manufacture a reaper because he was infuriated by a German newspaper taunt that the Americans were backward in agriculture. Nor can we fancy that John Hay while dealing with the Chinese crisis in 1900 was continually distracting his mind from the tremendously grave points at issue by wondering if he could not do something a little cleverer than the other diplomats would do.
All the natural laws of development are turned around in the Philippines, and motives which should belong to the crowning years of a nation’s life seem to have become mixed in at the beginning–a condition, due, of course, to the fact that the Filipinos began the march of progress at a time when the telegraph and the cable and books and newspapers and globe-trotters submitted their early development to a harrowing comparison and observation. The Filipino is like an orphan baby, not allowed to have his cramps and colic and to cut his teeth in the decent retirement of the parental nursery, but dragged out instead into distressing publicity, told that his wails are louder, his digestive habits more uncertain, his milk teeth more unsatisfactory, than the wails or the digestive habits or the milk teeth of any other baby that ever went through the developing process. Naturally he is self-conscious, and–let us be truthful–not having been a very promising baby from the beginning, both he and his nurses have had a hard time.
However, turned around or not, we are not responsible for the condition. The Filipinos had arrived at the self-conscious stage before we came here, and we have had to accept the situation and make the best of it.
The American press of Manila, with the very best of intentions, has indulged itself in much editorial comment, and the more the condition of things is discussed, the more the native press strengthens in its quick sensitiveness. The present attitude of the upper, or governing, class of Filipinos is this: “We want the best of everything in the world–of education, of morals, of business methods, of social polish, of literature, art, and music, of roads and bridges, of agricultural machinery, and of local transportation, and we can attain these things.” They have laid down in the beginning a premise for which no inductive process can be found as justification,–that the Filipino people is capable of doing anything which any other nation has done; and that, given time and opportunity–especially the opportunity of managing their own process of development–they will demonstrate their capacity. The flat contradiction of this position which is not infrequently taken by Americans in discussing Filipinos is, of course, as extreme as the Filipino position itself, and, as an observer, I have little to do with either. But at the present time I do feel warranted in stating that the mass of intelligent Filipinos fail to distinguish between critical or appreciative ability and real creative ability, and that what they are acquiring in huge doses just now is the critical and not the creative. Moreover, of the great body of persons who make the demand for the best, only a very few have any idea of what is the best except in book learning and social polish. The prominent men among the Filipinos to-day are those who were educated in Europe or in Filipino schools modelled on European patterns. Their idea of education is a social one–an education which fits a man to be considered a gentleman and to be an adornment to the society of his peers. They have no conception of the American specialization idea in education which grants a doctor’s degree to a man who says “would have went” and “He come to my house yesterday.” The Filipino leaders have a perfectly clear idea of what they want educationally, of what they consider the best, and they are jealously watching the educational department to see that they get it. The American press urges more and more manual training, and the Filipino press, because manual training is in the list of things marked “best,” echoes the general call. But there is no small body of hobbyists in the Islands keeping a jealous eye on the manual-training department of education. It could be dropped out of the curriculum by simply allowing it to become less and less effectual, and so long as no formal announcement was made the Filipinos would not find out what was being done. But in Manila and in most provincial towns there are enough Filipinos who know what musical instruction is to watch that the musical training be not too badly administered.
There is plenty of complaint about the Sanitary System of Manila, there are plenty of people to complain about what _is_ being done, but there is no small organized body of Filipinos whose paramount interest in life is fixed upon sanitation and health, and who make it their thankless task to harry the department and to preach ceaselessly at the unthinking public till they get what they want. The legislators of the Philippines are gentlemen born, men educated in conformity to the ideals of education in aristocratic countries, but unfortunately they have not had, owing to the political conditions which have prevailed here, the practical experience of an aristocratic body in other lands. In Mrs. Ward’s “William Ashe” there is an analysis of a gouty and rather stupid old statesman, who is so exactly a summary of what a Filipino statesman is _not_ that I cannot forbear quoting it here:
“He possessed that narrow, but still most serviceable fund of human experience which the English land-owner, while our English tradition subsists, can hardly escape if he will. As guardsman, volunteer, magistrate, lord lieutenant, member (for the sake of his name and his acres) of various important commissions, as military _attache_ even for a short time to an important embassy, he had acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had often envied him–a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct both for men and affairs which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons.”
The only large practical experience which Filipino leaders have enjoyed has come through their being land-owners and agriculturists. But agriculture has not been competitive; and when the land-owning class travelled, it was chiefly in Spain, which can hardly be called a progressive agricultural country. Of men of the artisan class who have worked their way up by their own efforts from ignorance to education, from poverty to riches; of men who have had any large available experience in manual labor or in specialised industries, the present Assembly feels the lack. The Filipino leaders are a body of polished gentlemen, more versed in law than in anything else, with varying side lines of dilettante tastes in numerous directions.
Such as they are, the schoolboy desires to be. One of the periodic frenzies of the local American press is an appeal to teachers–why are they not remodelling character, why do not the aims and ideals which it is their business to instil make a greater showing after ten years of American occupation? American teachers have talked themselves hoarse, and as far as talking can go, they have influenced ideals. The child’s _conscious ideal_ about which he talks in public, and to which he devotes about one one-thousandth of his thinking time, is some such person as George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or James A. Garfield, who drove the canal boat and rose to be President of the United States. But the subconscious ideal which is always in his mind, upon which he patterns unthinkingly his speech and his manners and his dreams of success, is–and it would be unnatural if it were otherwise–some local potentate who will not carry home his own little bag of Conant currency when he receives his salary at the end of the month. What are a name and a few moral platitudes about a dead-and-gone hero? What can they mean to a shirtless urchin with a hungry stomach, against the patent object-lesson of his own countryman whom not only his fellow citizens, but the invader, must treat with consideration? It would be far easier to distract the attention of the children of the State of Ohio from their distinguished fellow-citizens, William H. Taft and John D. Rockefeller, to fix it upon the late Lord Cromer or that Earl of Halifax known as the “Trimmer,” than it is to tell a Filipino child that the way to distinction lies through toil and sweat. Children are very patient about listening to talk, but they are going to pattern themselves upon what is obvious. Twenty or thirty years from now, when the American school system will have aided certain sons of the people, men of elemental strength, to bully and fight their way to the front, and they will have become the evidence that we were telling the truth–then will the results be visible in more things than in annual school commencements and in an increase in the output of stenographers and bookkeepers.
The weakest point in a Filipino child’s character is his quick jealousy and his pride. His jealousy is of the sort constitutionally inimical to solidarity. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, the Filipinos are more aristocratic in their theories of life than we are, and more democratic in their individual constitution. Our democracy has always been tempered by common sense and practicality. We like to say at church that all men are brothers, and on the Fourth of July to declare that they are born free and equal; but we do not undertake to put these theories into practice. Every individual citizen of the United States is not walking about with a harrowing dread of doing something that admits a lesser self-esteem than his neighbor may possess. If a fire breaks out in his neighborhood, and a little action on his part can stop it before it gets a dangerous start, he does not hesitate to act for fear doing so will show him possessed of less personal pride than his neighbor up the street. If he is earning sixty dollars a month, and learns that some other employee in another house is getting more money for the same work, he does not take the chances of starvation because to submit to the condition is to admit that he is less important than another man. Yet the whole laboring element of the Filipino people is permeated by just such a spirit. It is practically impossible to fix a price for labor or for produce by any of the laws of supply and demand that regulate such things elsewhere. The personal jealousies, the personal assertions of individuals continually interfere with the normal conditions of trade. If in the market some American comes along in a hurry and pays a peso for a fish, the normal price of which is about thirty-five cents, the price of fish goes up all through the market–for Americans. You may offer eighty cents and be refused, and the owner will sell two minutes after to a Filipino for thirty-five. But in so doing he does not “lose his face.” The other man got a peso from an American, and a man who takes less–from an American–is owning himself less able than his companions.
We talk of democracy, but we never know how little democratic we are till we come in contact with the real article. Can you conceive what would be the commercial chaos of America to-morrow if the humblest laborer had the quick personal pride of the millionaire? With all our alleged democracy, we realize the impossibility of ringing Mrs. Vanderbilt’s doorbell and asking her to sell us a few flowers from her conservatory or to direct us to a good dressmaker, though we can take just such liberties with houses where the evidences that money would be welcome are patent.
The American laborer does not mind going to and from his work in laboring clothes, and he makes no attempt to seem anything but a laboring man. But you cannot tell in a Manila street car whether the white-clad man at your side is a government clerk at sixty pesos a month or a day laborer at fifteen. I once lost a servant because I commanded him to carry some clothes to my laundress. “Go on the street with a bundle of clothes, and get into the street car with them! I would rather die!” he said; and he quitted rather than do it.
Compare that with the average common-sense attitude of the American laboring man or even the professional man. Until he becomes really a great man and lives in the white light of publicity, the American citizen does not concern himself with his conduct at all as it relates to his personal importance. He is likely to argue that he cannot do certain things which violate his ideal of manhood, or other things which are inconsistent in a member of the church, or other things which are unworthy of a democrat, or of a member of the school board, or even of an “all-round sport.” Whatever the prohibitive walls which hedge the freedom of his conduct, each is a perfectly defined one, a standard of conduct definitely outlined in his mind, to which he has pledged his allegiance; but he has no large conception that most useful things are forbidden pleasures to him because of a sense of personal importance. He has no God of the “I,” no feeling that makes him stay his hand at helping a cochero to free a fallen and injured horse, while he looks to see that some other man of his class is helping also.
There is a perfectly defined class system in the Philippines, and, between class and class, feeling is not bitter; but within each class jealousy is rampant. The Filipino, though greatly influenced by personality, does not yet conceive of a leadership based upon personality to which loyalty must be unswervingly paid. He feels the charm of personality, he yields to it just so long as it falls in with his own ideas, but the moment it crosses his own assertiveness he is ready to revolt. Many Americans speak of this characteristic as if it were a twist in character. My own opinion is that it is a passing phase, due to the Filipino’s lack of the “narrow, but most serviceable fund of human experience.” But no matter to what cause the condition is due, it makes a great difference in the life of the individual and of the social body as a whole that each unit has fixed his ideal of conduct upon an illimitable consciousness of personal importance, instead of upon perfectly defined ideals in particular matters. It makes for femininity in the race.
If the reader will meditate a little upon the difference between masculine pride and feminine pride in America, he will probably agree with me that masculine pride centres largely in loyalty to well-defined ideals of what is manly, or honorable, or bold, or just, or religious–in short, it tries to live up to the requirements of a hundred separate standards. On the other hand, feminine pride, outside of its adherence to what is chaste and womanly, consists of pride in self, a kind of self-estimate, based frequently upon social position, sometimes on a consciousness of self-importance which comes through the admiration of men. In either case the pride is likely to show itself in a jealous exaction of consideration for the individual. Such is Filipino pride. It is almost wholly concerned in guarding its vested rights, in demanding and exacting the consideration due the importance of its possessor.
Filipinos are hard to enlist in any new undertaking until they are certain that success will bring “consideration.” They love newspaper notices and publicity, they love the centre of the stage, and every new advance in intelligence is bulwarked by a disproportional demand for “consideration.”
Filipino men are not lacking in manly qualities. They have the stronger courage, the relatively stronger will and passions which distinguish the men of our own race. But they are harder to get along with than are Filipino women, because their sense of sex importance is so much exaggerated, and because, as Mr. Kipling would put it, they “have too much ego in their cosmos.” The secret consciousness of power is not enough for them. They must flash it every minute in your eyes, that you may not forget to yield the adulation due to power. Like women, they get heady on a small allowance of power; and indeed in both sexes there are emphasized certain characteristics which we are accustomed to look upon as feminine. Their pride is feminine as I have analyzed it. They rely upon intuition to guide them more than upon analysis. In enlisting cooeperation, even in public matters, they are likely to appeal to a sentiment of friendship for themselves instead of demonstrating the abstract superiority of their cause. They will make a haughty public demand, but will not scruple to support it with secret petition and appeal. They are adepts at playing upon the weakness and petty vanity of others; and they deal gently with the strong, but boldly with the weak. Both men and women possess an abundance of sexual jealousy, and have, in addition, the quick sensitiveness about rank, worldly possessions, and precedence which with us has become the reproach of the feminine. Lastly, they have, in its highest development, the capacity to make a _volte-face_ with grace and equanimity. They are cunning, but not shrewd; their reasoning is wholly deductive, they are inclined to an enthusiastic assent to large statements, especially when these take the form of moral or political truisms; but they do not submit their convictions to practical working tests. They seem often inconsistent, but observation will show that, however inconsistent their practice is with their professions, it is always consistent with their pride, as I have analyzed it in these pages.
CHAPTER IX
My Early Experiences in Housekeeping
I Set Up Housekeeping–Romoldo’s Ideas of Arranging Furniture–My Cheerful Environment–Romoldo’s Success in Making “Hankeys”–He Introduces the Orphan Tikkia as His Assistant–The Romance of Romoldo and Tikkia.
At the period of my advent in Capiz there were but two other American women there, wives of military men. Later our numbers were increased by the wives of several civilian employees and two more women teachers. In those first days the hospitality of the military women made no small break in the routine of my daily life. At the time of our appointment we teachers had been assured by a circular from the War Department that we should enjoy the privileges of the military commissary; but this ruling had been changed in the several months that had elapsed, and I found myself stranded with practically no access to American tinned fruits and vegetables. I ate rice, fish, and bananas with the best grace I could; and when, after a month of boarding, I decided to set up housekeeping, and one of these ladies surreptitiously and with fear and trembling presented me with a can of concentrated lye, my gratitude knew no bounds. My Filipino servant, named Romoldo, whom I had dubbed “The Magnificent,” was set to work cleaning up my prospective dwelling; and I went out and secured the services of a trooper of the Tenth Cavalry to supplement the deficiencies in Romoldo’s housecleaning instincts by some American brawn and muscle.
The trooper, a coal-black African, had picked up a great deal of Spanish, which he spoke with the corruption of vowel sounds peculiar to his race and color. In addition to collecting the stipend agreed upon, he incidentally borrowed two dollars (U.S.) of me. Now, I was brought up in Missouri and knew enough of the colored race to be sure that I was bidding a fond adieu to the two dollars when I handed them to the trooper. But I was not prepared for my henchman’s persistence in having the extension of time made formal. I was willing to forget the two dollars and have done with them, but the African would not permit them to rest in peace. He presented himself regularly every two weeks to ask for another fortnight’s extension. Finally, when the regiment was about to leave the Islands, I insisted that he should accept the two dollars as an evidence of my good-will toward the United States Army and the defenders of the flag, and he was graciously pleased so to do.
The trooper’s muscles were strong as his habits of renewal, and he and Romoldo scoured the floors of my new establishment until the shiny black accretions of twenty-five years of petroleum and dirt had given way to unpolished roughness, and then I set to work to get a new polish. Then we took hold of the furniture–heavy, wooden, Viennese stuff–and scrubbed it with zeal. My landlord came to look in occasionally and was hurt. He said plaintively that they had had no contagious diseases, and he asked why this deluge of soap and water. I basely declined to admit the flat truth, which was that the floors and chairs were too greasy for my taste, but attributed our energy to a mad American zeal for scouring. He said, “Ah, _costumbre_!” and seemed to feel that the personal sting of my actions had been removed.
In due time the house was clean, and I moved in. The sala, or drawing-room, was at least forty by thirty feet, with two sides arcaded and filled with shell windows, which, when drawn back, gave the room almost the open-air effect of a gallery. It was furnished with two large gilt mirrors, a patriarchal cane-seated sofa, several wooden armchairs, eleven majolica pedestals for holding _jardinieres_, and two very small tables. These last-named articles “the Magnificent” placed at the head of the apartment in such a position as to divide its cross wall into thirds, and then arranged all the chairs in two rows leading from the two tables, beginning with the most patriarchal armchair and ending with the dining-room chair, the leg of which was tied on with a string. The effect was rigidly mathematical; and when my landlady came in and adorned each table with a potted rose geranium, stuck all over with the halves of empty egg-shells to give it the appearance of flowering, I felt that it was time to assert myself. The egg-shells went promptly into the garbage box, and the chairs and tables were pulled about to achieve the unpremeditated effect of our own rooms. Then I went out for a walk, and returning found that Romoldo had restored things to his own taste. Again I broke up his formation, so the next time he tried a new device. He put one table at the top of the room and one at the bottom, with the chairs arranged in a circle around each one. This gave the pleasing impression to one entering the room that a card game was ready to begin. Again Romoldo’s efforts were treated with contempt.
For at least two weeks a deadly combat went on between Romoldo and me, in which I finally came off victor. At the end of that time he seemed to have accustomed himself to our ideas of decoration. He had, in our week’s deluging, cleaned up the lamps of the chandeliers, brushed down the cobwebs, and removed some half-dozen baskets of faded and dust-laden paper flowers. He administered the ironical consolation meanwhile that their destruction did not matter, since my admiring pupils would see that the supply was renewed. To my eternal sorrow he was a true prophet, and I had to contemplate green chrysanthemums and blue roses, and a particularly offensive hand-painted basket made of plates of split shell. However, the potted palms and ferns with which I ornamented the eleven pedestals made atonement; and when I came in after a hard day’s work and saw the unreal, golden-tinted light of afternoon filling the dignified old room, I found it home-like and lovely in spite of the paper flowers and the shell basket.
My bedroom was half as large as the sala, with a small room adjoining it which I used for a dining-room, and at the back there were a kitchen, a bathroom, closets, and a bamboo porch. For this shelter, furnished as it was, I paid the munificent sum of twenty-five pesos Mexican currency, or twelve and one-half dollars gold per month.
As my house was located over the second saloon in town–one of the regular, innocent, grocery-looking Filipino breed–and as it commanded a fine view of the plaza, guard mount, retreat, and Sunday morning church procession, I had at least all the excitement that was going in Capiz. The American soldiers swore picturesquely over their domino and billiard games down stairs; the “ruffle of drums” (though why so called I know not, for it consists of a blare of trumpets) woke up the sultry stillness at nine A.M.; the great church-bells struck the hours and threw in a frenzy of noise on their own account at some six or eight regular periods during the day; at twelve, noon, the village band stationed itself on the plaza to run a lively opposition to the bells; and at sunset the charming ceremony of retreat brought us all out to see the flag drop down, and to hear the clear, long bugle notes; and there were sick call, mess call, and several other calls. Not the least beautiful of these was “taps.” I used to wait for it in the perfect stillness of starlit nights when the Filipinos had all gone to bed, and the houses were ever so faintly revealed by the lanterns burning dimly in front, and the faintest gleam told where the river was slipping by. There would be no sound save the step of the trumpeter picking his way up the street. Then the church clock would strike–not the ordinary bell, but a deep-throated one that could have been heard for miles–and as the vibrations of the last stroke died away, the first high-pitched, sweet notes would ring out, to fade away in the ineffable sadness of the closing strain.
But if there was much that was novel and more that was noisy in those first experiences, there was also plenty of irritation. As I stated before, I had brought Romoldo from Iloilo to Capiz with the idea of using him for a cook. In the days when I was still boarding, he had confirmed me in this intention by stating that he had had experience in that line with an American army officer. He was particularly enthusiastic over his achievements with “hankeys.” For a long while, I could make nothing of this word, but at last I discovered that it was his corruption of “pancakes.” I found out this fact by asking Romoldo to explain how he made “hankeys,” and by recognizing among his ingredients milk, eggs, and flour.
As the Filipina with whom I boarded professed to be eager to learn American cookery, I told Romoldo to make some “hankeys.” In the language of Virgil, I “shudder to relate” what those “hankeys” were. There were three, nicely piled on top of one another, after our time-honored custom. No words could fitly describe them. They resembled unleavened bread, soaked in a clarifying liquid, heated, pressed down, and polished on both sides. The Filipina tried to conceal her disgust, and pretended to accept my explanation that they were only a caricature of our loved breakfast delicacy; but I could see that she thought I was trying to cover up my newly acquired sense of national deficiency.
However, when I set up housekeeping, Romoldo was promoted to the office of chief cook and only bottle washer. He conveyed to me a delicate intimation that it was not proper for me to live without a female attendant, and said that he had a friend–a young woman lately orphaned–who needed work and would be glad to have the position. I was sufficiently unsophisticated in Filipino ways to take this statement at its face value. As the orphan was willing to labor for a consideration of one dollar gold per month and room, the experiment could not be an expensive one.
The orphan duly arrived, escorted by Romoldo. He carried her trunk also, consisting of several garments tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
Her name, as Romoldo pronounced it, was Tikkia (probably Eustaquia), and I could have wished she had been handsomer and younger. She was a heavy-browed, pock-marked female, with a mass of cocoanut-oiled tresses streaming down her back, and one leg, bare from the knee down, rather obtrusively displaying its skinny shin where her dress skirt was looped up and tucked in at the waist. She had no petticoat, and her white chemisette ended two inches below the waist line. As it was not belted down, it crept out and lent a comical suggestion of zouave jacket to the camisa, or waist, of _sinamay_ (a kind of native cloth made of hemp fibres). She understood not one word of Spanish or English.
When I occupied my new home for the first night, I “ordered” fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and then went out in the kitchen and cooked them. The army quartermaster had loaned me a range. Romoldo displayed an intelligent interest in the cooking lesson, but Tikkia seemed bored. When the potatoes were done, I gave them to Tikkia to mash. Romoldo was in the dining-room, setting the table. I told her in my best mixed Spanish and Visayan to mash them, and then to put them on the stove a few minutes in order to dry out any water in them. She understood just that one word “water”; and when I returned, after being out of the kitchen a minute, the potatoes were swimming in a quart of liquid. So I dined on fried chicken.
For the first two or three weeks there were many ludicrous accidents in my kitchen and some irritating ones. But on the whole Romoldo took hold of things very well; and though my _menu_ broadened gradually, it was not long before he had learned a few simple dishes, and my labor of supervision was much lighter. I said that I was pleased with Romoldo to the enlisted man who was in charge of the officers’ mess and who incidentally made some market purchases for me. He said, “You ain’t particular,” with a finality that left me no defence. He was mistaken, however. I am particular, but at that time I was still in the somnambulance of philanthropy which brought us pedagogues to the Philippines.
I am willing to admit to-day that I vastly overrated Romoldo’s services, and yet, considering the untutored state of his mind and the extent of his salary, they were a good investment. There has been among some Americans here a carping and antagonistic spirit displayed toward Filipinos, which reflects little credit upon our national consistency or charity. We have a habit of uttering generalities about one race on the authority of a single instance; whereas, with our own, the tendency is to throw out of consideration those single instances in which the actual, undeniable practice of the American is a direct confutation of what his countrymen declare is the race standard. My kitchen under Romoldo’s touches was not perfect, but I have seen worse in my native land.
Romoldo being a young and rather attractive man, and Tikkia such a female pirate, I insist that my failure to suspect a romance is at least partially justified; and certainly never by word or glance did they betray the least interest in each other. But some days after my establishment had begun to run smoothly, one of the military ladies asked me to dinner. The punkah string was pulled by a murderous-looking ex-_insurrecto_, who fixed me with a basilisk glance, half entreaty, half reproach. It became so painful that toward the end of dinner I asked my hostess if his expression was due to his general frame of mind or to a special aversion toward pedagogues. She replied that he was probably bracing himself to approach me on a topic consuming his very vitals, or as much of them, at least, as may be expressed in absent-mindedness. Tikkia was his _matrimonio_, and I, the _maestra_ had taken her and given her to Romoldo, and the twain lived in my house! The lady added that Tikkia was not _matrimonio en iglesia_–that is, married in church–but only _matrimonio pro tem_.
Pedro came into the sala after dinner and made his petition with humility. He extolled his kindness to the ungrateful Tikkia, and denounced Romoldo as a fiend and liar. He tried hard to weep, but did not succeed.
_0 tempora! O mores!_ Such are the broadening effects of travel and two short months in the Orient. Conceive of the old maid schoolteacher in America assuming the position of judge in a matrimonial–or extra-matrimonial–scandal of this sort.
I promised justice to the sniffling Pedro, and told him to call for it next day at ten A.M. Like me, he supposed it would take the form of Tikkia. But when I reached home and summoned the culprits before the bar of a “moral middle class,” they were not disconcerted in the least. Romoldo stood upon high moral ground. Tikkia might or might not be married. It was nothing to him, and he did not know. She was an orphan of his acquaintance to whom he wished to do a kindness. Tikkia promptly drew up her skirt over the unexposed knee and showed a filthy sore which she said was caused by Pedro’s playful habit of dragging her about on stony ground by the hair. Moreover she stood upon her legal rights. She was not _matrimonio en iglesia_, and she had a right to leave Pedro when she chose.
Pedro came next day at ten A.M., but he did not get justice. On the contrary, justice, as embodied in Tikkia, stood at the head of the stairs and said, “No quiero” as often as I (and Pedro) turned our imploring eyes upon her.
Things went on in this way for some time, and my perplexities offered amusement to my friends. I felt sure that Romoldo and Tikkia were lying, and at one time I resolved to discharge them both. The young American teacher who had been in the Islands since the beginning of our occupation gave me some sound advice. He said: “What on earth are these people’s morals to you? Romoldo is a good servant. He speaks Spanish, and if you let him go for one who speaks only Visayan, your own housekeeping difficulties will be greatly increased.” Then I pleaded the old-fash-ioned rural American fear that people might think the worse of me for keeping such a pair in my employ; and Mr. S—- simply collapsed. He sat and laughed in my face till I laughed too. “We are not in America now,” was his parting remark; and I am still learning what a variety of moral degeneration that sentence was created to excuse.
I have already given more space than is warranted by good taste to the romance of Tikkia and Romoldo. The affair went on till I began to fear lest Pedro, in one of the attacks of jealousy to which Filipinos are subject, should take vengeance and a _bolo_ in his own hands. Fortunately, at the critical moment, Romoldo and Tikkia fell out. She kicked his guitar off the back porch and he complained that she neglected her work. Then she asked leave to return to her own town for a few days, and the request was joyfully granted. Pedro also obtained a vacation. Their town was round the corner one block away, and there they retired. They greeted me pleasantly whenever I passed by, and Tikkia seemed in no wise embarrassed by her change of front.
If I have described this incident in full, it is because it illustrates so perfectly the attitude of a large portion of the Filipino people on marriage. The common people seldom marry except, as we would term it, by the common-law marriage. When they do marry in church, it is quite as much for the _eclat_ of the function as for conscientious reasons. Marriage in the church costs usually eight pesos (four dollars gold), though cheaper on Sundays, and to achieve it is quite a mark of financial prosperity.
Of course, among the educated classes our own view of marriage prevails, though I have heard of instances where the common-law form was still observed. In some towns it is customary for marriages to take place but once a year; an American told me of descending on a mountain town where the annual wedding festival was due, and of finding fifty-two happy couples in their gala attire wending a decorous procession toward the church.
CHAPTER X
Filipino Youths and Maidens
Manners and Social Condition of Filipino Girls–Sentimental Boy Lovers–Love-making by Proxy–How Courtship is Usually Performed–Premature Adolescence of Filipino Youth–The _Boda Americana_–Filipino Girls Are Coquettes, But Not Flirts–Exposure of Filipino Girls to Unchaste Conversation–Unceasing Watchfulness over Girls–Progressive Changes in All the Above Matters.
With regard to their women the Filipinos are an Occidental people rather than an Oriental one. Marriage is frequently entered upon at the will of the parent, but few parents will insist upon a marriage where the girl objects. While the social liberty accorded a young girl is much less than what is permitted in our own country, there is no Oriental seclusion of women. Children accompany their parents to balls and fiestas, and maidens are permitted to mingle freely in society from their baby-hood. At fourteen or fifteen they enter formally into society and begin to receive attentions from men. In the upper classes seventeen or eighteen is the usual time for marriage. By the time a girl is twenty-two or twenty-three she is counted _passee_, and, if unmarried, must retire into the background in favor of her younger sisters.
The young girls are exceedingly attractive. They are slender, and their heads sit beautifully above long swan-like necks. They dress their hair in a rather tightly drawn pompadour, and ornament it with filigree combs set with seed pearls, or, if they are able, with jewelled butterflies and tiaras. Jewellery is not only a fashion here, but an investment. Outside of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, banks are practically unknown. The provincial man who is well to do puts his money into houses and lands or into jewellery for his womankind. The poor emulate the rich, and wear in imitation what their wealthy neighbors can afford in the real.
Filipino women never affect the dominating attitude assumed by young American coquettes. They have an infinite capacity for what we call small talk and repartee; and, as they never aim for brilliancy and are quite natural and unaffected, their pretty ways have all the charm that an unconscious child’s have. They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are full of magnetism and can advance with outstretched hand and greet you in such a way as to make you believe that your coming has put sunshine in their lives. Their chief talk is of lovers in the two stages of _pretendiente_ and _novio_, and they are full of hints and imputations to one another of love affairs. Among young people, in spite of the restrictions put about them to keep the opposite sexes from meeting _tete-a-tete_ or the remotest chances of “spooning,” the air is surcharged with romance. Apparently the Filipino boy has no period in his development in which he hates girls. At twelve or fourteen he waxes sentimental, and his love notes are the most reeking examples of puppy love and high tragedy ever confiscated by an outraged teacher. When written in the vernacular they are not infrequently obscene, for one of the saddest phases of early sentiment here is that it is never innocent; but in English they run to pathos. One ludicrous phase of love-making is the amount of third-person intervention–an outsider thrusting himself into the matter to plead for his lovelorn chum. For some years I made a collection of confiscated _billet-doux_, but they were destroyed in one of the frequent fires which visit Manila. I can, however, produce a fair imitation of one of these kindly first aids to the wounded. This is the prevailing style:
Miss—-,
_Lovely and Most Respectable Lady_:
I am do me the honor to write to you these few unworthy lines to tell you why you are breaking the heart and destroying a good health of my friend Pedro. Always I am going to his house every night, and I am find him weeping for you. He is not eating for love of you. He cannot sleep because he is think about your eyes which are like the stars, and your hairs which are the most beautiful of all the girls in this town. Alas! my friend must die if you do not give him a hope. Every day he is walking in front of your house, but you do not give to him one little word of love. Even you do not love him, you can stop his weep if you like to send him one letter, telling to him that you are not angry to him or to me, his friend.
I have been informed by several persons that there is an official etiquette about this sort of correspondence. When a boy decides that he has fallen in love with a schoolmate or with any other young girl, no matter whether he knows her or not, he writes her a letter in the first person similar to the above. If she ignores the letter utterly, he understands that he does not please her–in brief, that “No Irish need apply.” But if she answers in a highly moral strain, professing to be deeply shocked at his presumption, and informing him that she sees no way to continue the acquaintance, he knows that all is well. He sends her another letter, breathing undying love, and takes steps to be introduced at her home. Once having obtained a calling acquaintance, he calls at intervals, accompanied by seven or eight other young men, and, in the general hilarity of a large gathering, endeavors to snatch a moment in which to gaze into the star-like eyes of his _innamorata_, or to gloat over her “hairs which are the most beautiful.”
The lover’s habit of fortifying himself with the society of his fellow men would be the last which an American boy could understand. But a Filipino swain rarely presents himself alone at a house to call. He feels, perhaps, that it makes him conspicuous. The whole race, for that matter, is given to the habit of calling in droves. If a Filipino girl goes to an office on business, her mother and father do not constitute a sufficient escort. Her brothers, cousins, a few admirers, and possibly a female friend or two are added to the parental guardians, till the bodyguard assumes the appearance of a delegation large enough to negotiate a treaty. One of the division superintendents tells a story which shows the humorous American recognition of the inconveniences of this habit. The Superintendent had recommended two young girls as _pensionadas_, or government students, in the Manila Normal School. It was their duty, on arriving in Manila, to report to the Director of Education; and they must have done so in the usual force, for the Director’s official telegram, announcing their arrival, began in this pleasing strain: “Miss—- and Miss—-, with relatives and friends, called this morning.”
The premature adolescence of the Filipino youth makes him very repellent to the American. One of the most frightful things which I ever saw was a play given in Spanish by children. The play itself was one which Americans would never have permitted children to read or to see, much less to present. The principal character was a debauched and feeble old man of the “Parisian Romance” type; it was played by a nine-year-old boy, who made the hit of the evening, and who reminded me, in his interpretation of the part, of Richard Mansfield. His family and friends were proud of his acting, which was masterly, and laughingly declared that his conception of the role was wholly his own. If so, there was no need of laughter and there was much cause for tears.
Here is a short essay written by a twelve-year-old boy, in response to an order to write a composition about what he had done the previous day.
“Yesterday I called upon all my young lady friends. None but the fathers appeared. We must all be judged according to our works.”
The child wrote this by constructing the first sentence himself, and by picking the other two out of phrase-books, which from some source or other are scattered all over the Philippine Islands. What he meant to convey in the carefully pieced mosaic was that he was a dangerous fellow, and that when he came around the fathers kept a close eye on their daughters. That is dubious wit in a man of thirty. In a child of twelve it is loathsome.
Engagements are usually announced at once and are seldom long–from three weeks to three or four months. If the marriage is really for love, as is not infrequently the case, the lovers must have a hard time of it; for they never see each other alone, and “spooning” before others would seem to them in the last degree scandalous. They have marvellous self-control. I have watched many a pair of Filipino lovers for the stolen glances, the shyness, the ever-present consciousness of each other which are characteristic of our lovers, and I have never beheld the faintest evidence of interest in any engaged or newly married couple. They manage to preserve an absolutely wooden appearance at a time when one would expect a race so volatile to display its emotions freely.
Elopements sometimes take place and are called the _boda Americana_, or American marriage. However, they have the advantage of us in one kind of elopement–that of the widow. Runaway marriages between widows and old bachelors are not a common feature of American life, but they seem to constitute the most frequent form of elopement here. Forced marriages occur in spite of the restrictions put around young girls. They cause a ten days’ hubbub, winks, nods, and much giggling behind fans. But no social punishment and ostracism of the girl follows as in our own country. So long as the marriage is accomplished, the Filipinos seem to feel that the fact of its being a little late need disturb no one. But if, as sometimes happens, a girl is led astray by a married man, then disgrace and punishment are her lot. I recall a circumstance where a young girl under a cloud left her native town, never to appear there again. But less than three months after her banishment, her seducer was an honored guest, sitting at the right hand of her brother, in the brother’s own house. Apparently the best of feeling prevailed over a matter that with us could never have been forgiven, though bloodshed might perhaps have been averted.
In my eight years in those Islands I have met among the upper classes but one young girl whose conduct offered reason to men to take her lightly. In a pretty, childish way, Filipino girls are coquettes, but they are not flirts. Their conception of marriage and of their duty to their own husbands and their children is a high and noble one. Nevertheless, with innately good and pure instincts, they cannot take half as good care of themselves as can the American girl who is more indiscreet, who knows much less of the matters pertaining to love and sex. The latter has an infinite advantage over her dusky sister in the prudery of speech which is the outwork in a line of fortifications in which a girl’s tenacity to her own ideal of chastity must be the final bulwark, A frankness of speech prevails in the Philippines with regard to matters about which we are frank under necessity, but which, as far as possible, we slide into the background. Stories are told in the presence of young girls, and jokes are interchanged, of more than questionable nature according to our standards. Our prudery of speech is the natural result of the liberty permitted to women. When the protection of an older woman or of a male relative is done away with, and a girl is permitted to go about quite unattended, the best and the surest protection that she can have is the kind of modesty that takes fright at even a bare mention, a bare allusion, to certain ordinarily ignored facts of life.
The result of general freedom of speech and the process of safeguarding a girl from its results is to make a Filipino girl regard her virtue as something foreign to herself, a property to be guarded by her relatives. If, through negligence or ignorance on the part of her proper guardians, she is exposed to temptation, she feels herself free from responsibility in succumbing. Such a view of life puts a young girl at a great disadvantage with men, especially with men so generally unscrupulous as Filipinos,
Among the lower classes there is no idea that a young girl can respect herself or take care of herself. Girls are watched like prisoners, and are never allowed to stray out of the sight of some old woman. It is almost impossible for an American woman to obtain a young girl to train as a servant, because, as they say, we do not watch them properly. This jealous watching of a child’s virtue is not, however, always inspired by the love of purity. Too frequently the motive is that the girl may bring a higher price when she reaches a marriageable age, or when she enters into one of those unsanctified alliances with some one who will support her. Filipino men are merciless in their attitude toward young lower-class girls, not hesitating to insult or annoy them in the most shameless way. I once forced a little maid of mine to wear the regular maid’s dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor’s on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of your men servants–and justly so.
However, in respect to such matters, things are changing fast. The Filipinos who love us least, high or low, rich or poor, admit that the American idea of treating every self-respecting woman with respect is a good thing. They remark frequently the difference between now and former times, and say, with admiration, that a woman can go past the _cuartels_ or the fire stations, without encountering insult in the form of _galanteria_; and the electric street-car line, suspected at first, has gained the confidence of nearly all. Many Filipino families of the upper class permit their daughters to go to and from the American schools on the trolley car, and it is no uncommon thing to see three or four youngsters, all under ten, climbing on and off with their books, asking for transfers, and enjoying their liberty, who ten years ago would have been huddled into a quilez and guarded by an elderly woman servant.
Lastly, a bill for female suffrage was introduced into the Philippine Assembly a few weeks ago. It is one of those “best” things which Filipinos all want for their land. The young man who introduced it had probably been reading about the female suffragist movement in England, and he said to himself that it would be a fine idea to show this dull old world how progressive and modern are the Philippine Islands; and so he drafted his bill. Nothing seems to have been heard of it, and it was probably tabled, with much other progressive legislation, in the hurry of the last days of the session. Another bill was one to put an annual license of one thousand pesos (five hundred gold dollars) on every minister of the gospel, Protestant or Catholic. I suspect its parent of having been coached up on modern French thought. However, that is not pertinent to the woman question. What I desire to do is to give a correct impression of a country where _real_ conditions are such as I have described them, and _ideal_ conditions have advanced to the point of a bill for female suffrage.
CHAPTER XI
Social and Industrial Condition of the Filipinos
American and Tagalog Invaders of Visaya Compared–Doubt As to the Aptitude of Filipinos for Self-Government–Their Civilization Not Achieved by Themselves But Inherited from Spain–Their Present Personal Liberty–Belief of the Poor That Alien Occupation is the Root of Their Misery–How the Filipinos View Labor–Their Apathy Toward Machinery–Their Interest Centred Not in Industry But in Themselves–Their Hazy Conceptions of Government–Their Need of a Remodelled Social System–Their Jealousy Lest Others Make Large Profits in Dealing with Them–Zeal of the Aristocrats to Preserve Their Prerogatives–A New Aristocracy Likely to Be Raised by the American Public Schools.
Capiz was occupied by a company of the Tenth Cavalry and one of the Sixth Infantry. The relations between Americans and Filipinos seemed most cordial. There had never been any fighting in the immediate neighborhood of the town. The Visayans are a peaceful race; even in the insurrection against Spain the Capizenos felt a decided pro-Spanish sentiment. Early in the rebellion a few boat-loads of Tagalog soldiers came down from Luzon, and landed on the open north coast two miles from the town. The valiant Capizenos had dug some trenches on the beach and had thrown up a breastwork there, and they went out to fight for Spain and Visaya. They fired two rounds without disconcerting the Tagalogs very much, and then, having no more ammunition, they “all ran home again,” as my informant naively described it. The Tagalogs took possession of the town, and the Visayans lived in fear and trembling. Nearly all women, both wives and young girls, carried daggers in fear of assault from Tagalog soldiers. Some declared to me that they would have used the daggers upon an assailant, others told me that the weapons were intended as a last resort for themselves. The Spanish wife of our Governor said that during the time of Tagalog occupation she seldom ventured out of her home; that she discarded her European dress, affected the native costume, wore her hair hanging down her back, and tried in every way to keep from attracting the attention of the invaders. Nevertheless, several young girls were seized in spite of their parents’ efforts to protect them. Many families fled from the town and took refuge in the mountain villages inland. Others lived in boats, lurking about the rivers and the innumerable waterways which criss-cross the swampy coast plain. When the Tagalogs withdrew, the wanderers returned to their homes, only to make a fresh exodus when the Americans came.
The Americans did not land on the north coast, but entered the town from the south, having marched and fought their way up the full length of the island from Iloilo. Horrid rumors preceded them concerning their gigantic size and their bloodthirsty habits. It was reported that they had burned hundreds of women and children alive at Iloilo. The timid Capizenos had no idea of resistance, but, for the most part, closed their houses, leaving some old servant in charge, and took once more to the hills and the swamps. A few sage heads had their own reasons for doubting the alleged American ferocity, and decided to stay at home and risk it.
One of my pupils, a very intelligent young girl, described to me the American entry. She said that the houses of the rich were closed, shell windows were drawn to, and the iron-sheathed outer doors were locked and barred. But most shell windows have in the centre a little pane of glass to permit the occupants of the house to look out without being seen. My young friend told me how her family were all “peeking,” breathless, at their window pane, and how the first view of the marching columns struck fear to their hearts, so tall and powerful seemed the well-clad, well-armed men. A halt was called, and after the proper formalities at the _provoste_, or town hall, the municipality was handed over to American rule, and the Stars and Stripes floated from the local flagstaff. The soldiers were permitted to break ranks, and they began buying fruits and bottles of beer and of native wine in the _tiendas_, or shops. The soldiers overpaid, of course, joked, picked up the single-shirted pickaninnies, tossed them, kissed them, and otherwise displayed their content. Then, said my informant, her father (who is an astute old fellow) decided that the story of American ferocity was a lie. He ordered his house opened, and the shell windows slid back, revealing his pretty daughters in their best raiment, smiling and bowing. The officers raised their caps and gave back smiles and bows; a few natives cried, “Viva los Americanos,” and behold, the terrible event was all over.
Acquaintance was at once struck up. The officers came to pay their respects, drank beer and muscatel, consumed sweets, and paid florid compliments in Spanish. They began to take possession of those houses whose owners were out of town, and the news went out. Then there was as great a scramble to get back as there had been to get away. In a few days everything was running smoothly, and, as my interlocutor remarked, all the American officers were much in love with the charming Filipino girls.
Almost the first act of the military was to open the schools. The schoolhouses had been used as barracks by the Tagalogs. The chaplain of the Eighteenth Infantry, the children told me, was their first teacher. The opening of the schools was a great surprise to the Filipinos, who were clever enough to appreciate the national standards which the act implied.
At the time of my arrival the foregoing facts were, in the rush of events, almost ancient history. Two years had passed. American women, wives of officers, had come and gone. Peace had been declared and the machinery of civil government had been put in action.
It would be foolish for me to spend time discussing the Filipino’s aptitude for self-government. Wiser heads than mine have already arrived at a hopeless _impasse_ of opinion on that point. There are peculiarities of temperament in the Filipino people which are seldom discussed in detail, but which offer premises for statements and denials, not infrequently acrimonious, and rarely approached in a desire to make those judging from a distance take into consideration all that makes opinions reliable. Such peculiarities of character seem to me pertinent to a book which deals with impressions.
Whatever their capacity for achieving the Anglo-Saxon ideal of self-government, it ought to be recognized that the Filipinos are both aided and handicapped by receiving not only their government but their civilization ready made. Their newly aroused sense of nationality is asserting itself at a period in the world’s development when the mechanical aids to industry and the conscience of a humane and civilized world relieve Filipino development from the birth throes by which other nations have struggled to the place at which the Filipinos begin. Thus, at the same time that individuals are spared the painful experiences which have moulded and hardened the individual units of other races, the Filipinos have, as a race, received an artificial impetus which tends to deceive them as to their own capacity, and to increase their aggregate self-confidence, while the results of personal ineptitude are continually overlooked or excused.
Both civilization, as acquired in the three hundred years of Spanish occupation, and self-government have descended upon the Filipino very much as the telephone and the music box have done–as complete mechanisms which certain superficial touches will set in motion, the benefits of which are to certain classes and individuals quite obvious, and the basic principles of which they have memorized but have not _felt_. At present there are not, in the emotional being of the Filipinos, the convictions about liberty and government which are the heritage of a people whose ancestors have achieved liberty and enlightenment by centuries of unaided effort, and who are willing to die–die one and all–rather than lose them; and yet there is a sincere, a passionate desire for political independence. The Filipino leaders, however, have no intention of dying for political independence, nor do they desire to sacrifice even their personal pleasures or their effects. They talk a great deal about independence, they write editorials about it, it fills a great part of their thoughts; and no reasonable person can doubt their sincerity. But most of the political talk in the Philippines is on a par with certain socialistic thought in the United States–the socialistic talk of modern writers and speakers, of idealists and dreamers. It seems as great a perversion of abstract justice, to a Filipino, that an alien nation should administer his Government, as it seems to a hard-working American woman that she should toil all her life, contributing her utmost to the world’s progress and the common burden of humanity, while her more fortunate sisters, by the mere accident of birth, spend their lives in idleness and frivolity, enriched by the toil of a really useful element in society. But to most Filipinos, as to most American women, the contemplation of the elemental injustice of life does not bring pangs sufficient to drive them into overt action to right the injustice. There are a few Filipinos upon whom the American administration in the Philippines presses with a sense of personal obstruction and weight heavy enough to make them desire overt action; but upon the majority of the race the fact of an alien occupation sits very lightly. No man, American or Filipino, wants to risk his life for the abstract principles of human justice until the circumstances of life growing out of the violation of those principles are well-nigh unendurable to him. The actual condition of the Philippines is such that the violation of abstract justice–that is, alien occupation–does not bear heavily upon the mass of the people. For the entire race alien occupation is, for the time being, an actual material benefit. Personal liberty in the Philippines is as absolute as personal liberty in the United States or England. Far from making any attempt to keep the native in a condition of ignorance, the alien occupiers are trying to coax or prod him, by all the short cuts known to humanity, into the semblance of a modern educated progressive man. There is no prescription which they have tried and found good for themselves which they are not importing for the Philippines, to be distributed like tracts. And to the quick criticism which Filipinos of the restless kind are prone to make, that what is good for an American is not necessarily good for a Filipino, the alien occupiers may reply that, until the body of the Filipino people shows more interest in developing itself, any prescription, whether it originate with Americans or with those who look upon themselves as the natural guides and rulers of this people, is an experiment to be tried at the ordinary experimental risk.
The common people of the Philippine Islands enjoy a personal liberty never previously obtained by a class so rudimentary in its education and in its industrial development. They would fight blindly, at the command of their betters, but not because they are more patriotic than the educated classes. The aristocrats, who would certainly hesitate to fight for their convictions, really think a great deal more about their country and love it a great deal more than do the common people, who would, under very little urging, cheerfully risk their lives. But the poorer people live under conditions that seem hard and unjust to them. The country is economically in a wretched state, and the working-classes have neither the knowledge nor the ambition to apply themselves to its development. Unable to discover the real cause of their misery (which is simply their own sloth), they have heard just enough political talk to make them fancy that the form of government is responsible for their unhappy condition. With them the causes which drive men into dying for an abstract idea do exist; and it is easy for a demagogue to convince them that the alien occupation is the root of all evil, and that a political change would make them all rich.
Among the extremely poor of the Filipinos there exists a certain amount of bitterness against Americans, because they think that our strong bodies, our undoubtedly superior health and vitality, our manner of life, which seems to them luxurious past human dreams, and our personal courage are attributes which we enjoy at their expense. The slow centuries which have gone to our building up, mental and physical, are causes too remote for their limited thinking powers to take into consideration. Moreover, though we say that we have come to teach them to work and to make their country great, we ourselves do not work; at least, they do not call what we do _work_. A poor Filipino’s conception of work is of something that takes him into the sun or that soils his clothing. Filipinos hate and fear the sun just as they hate the visible tokens of toil on their persons. Where they know the genteel trades such as hat weaving, dressmaking, embroidering, tailoring, and silversmithing, there is relatively a fair industrial willingness. Men are willing to be cooks and house servants, but they do not want to learn carpentry or blacksmithing or gardening, all of which mean soiled clothes and hot work; and women are unwilling to work in the kitchen. From the poor Filipinos’ standpoint, the Americans do not work–they rule. It would be difficult to make a Filipino of the laboring class believe that a teacher or a provincial treasurer had done a day’s work. Loving, as all Filipinos do, to give orders to others, ignorant as they are of the responsibilities which press upon those who direct, they see merely that we do not soil our hands, and they envy us without giving us credit for the really hard work that we do.
Meanwhile there pours in upon the country a stream of modern mechanism and of modern formulated thought, and the laborer has just as little real interest in knowing what is inside the machine as his slightly more intelligent neighbor has in examining the thought and in accepting or rejecting it on its merits. Some accept all that we offer them, doing so in a spirit of real loyalty, on the assumption that we know more than they do, and that our advice is to be accepted. Others reject everything with a blind resentment because it comes from our hands. They feel that, in accepting or rejecting, they are demonstrating their capacity to do their own thinking, when in reality they are only asserting their right to do their own _feeling_. A sense of discrimination in what they accept or reject in our thought has not yet appeared, to any great extent, in those classes of Filipinos with whom I have come in contact; nor as yet have I ever beheld in the laboring classes a desire to understand the mechanisms to which they are constantly introduced, which will be the first symptoms of growth.
A few weeks ago a Filipino workman was making an electric light installation in my house. He handled the wires very carelessly, and I asked him if he was not afraid of a shock. On his replying that the current was very light, I put the inevitable American query, How did the company manage to get a light current on one street, and at the same time to keep up the current in other parts of the city? His reply was, “There is a box on Calle San Andres, and the current goes in strong on one side and comes out light on the other,” On my asking if he knew how the box was able to produce such a result, he replied blithely that he did not know; and to a third question, why he did not try to find out, he asked me why he should _want_ to know. He was a very ignorant man, but his attitude was not uncharacteristic of much wiser men than he. I discovered one morning, in talking to the most advanced class in the Manila School of Arts and Trades, that not one of them knew what steam is, or had any idea of how it is applied to manufacture; and yet they were working every day, and had been working, most of them for two or three years, in the machine-shops and the wood-working shops where a petroleum engine was in constant operation. The boys had shown such a courteous interest in what was pointed out to them, and had so little real interest and curiosity in what they were working with, that their shop teachers had never guessed that they did not know the elementary principles of mechanics.
If a flying machine should suddenly descend in an American village with no sign of steam gear, electric motor, compressed air, or any other motive power with which we are familiar, can you imagine that eighty per cent of the population of the village would stand around, begging the inventor to make it fly and alight again, exhibiting all the delight of children in a strange toy, but giving it not one close glance, one touch to determine how it is made, and not even wondering anything about it? Can you imagine all those people placidly accepting the fact that there are other nations interested in making strange machines, and receiving the strange toy as an example of foreign energy with which, at that or at any other time, they had no concern? Yet such is the actual condition of affairs in the Philippine Islands, and I am not sure that my estimate of eighty per cent is not too low. Filipinos of the educated classes, gentlemen who can talk about
“The grandeur that was Greece,
And the glory that was Rome,”
or who can quote Tom Paine or Voltaire or Rousseau, or discuss the fisherman’s ring of the Pope, or the possibilities of an Oriental race alliance, would give a glance at such a machine and dismiss it with such a remark as this: “Ah! a new flying machine. Very interesting. If it proves practical, it should be a great benefit to the Philippines. The Government should buy two or three and put them in operation to show the people how they can be used.”
The great majority of the Filipino people are simply apathetic toward the material and spiritual appliances of their present status. (Please do not infer, however, that they are apathetic toward the status itself.) Fortune is continually thrusting upon them a ready-made article, be it of transportation, of furniture, of education, or even of creed. With no factories of its own, their land is deluged with cheap manufactured goods. With almost no authors, they have been inundated with literature and texts. With no experience in government, they have a complicated system presented to them, and are told to go ahead, to fulfil the requirements, to press the button, and to let the system do the rest. And they are, with few exceptions, making the mistake of assuming that their aptitude in learning to press the button is equivalent to the power of creating the system. They are like some daring young chauffeur who finds that he can run an automobile, and can turn it and twist it and guide it and control it with the same ease that its inventor does, and who feels that he is as fully its master–as indeed he is, till something goes wrong.
The intelligent Filipinos who are pressing for immediate self-government have no intentions of changing the “press-the-button” system if they get what they want. Nor can the American Government, if it remain here, do any more than it is now doing to urge the Filipino into real industrial and mental activity. Until the Filipino takes more interest in _things_ than he takes in himself; until he learns to approach life from some other standpoint than the social one, and with some other object than seeing how large a figure he can cut in it, it makes no difference what flag flies over his head, his national existence is an artificial one, a semblance of living nourished by the selfishness of those with whom he has commercial relations.
The intelligent Filipinos (I speak of the ordinary middle classes of Manila and the provinces, not of the really eminent Filipinos who are associated with the Government, for with them I have little acquaintance) have had so little practical contact with the great world, so little conception of what a strong commercial and manufacturing nation is, that it is impossible to make them understand that no nation of the present day can achieve greatness except by industry. If you can get them to talk freely, you find them absorbed in a glorious dream of the Filipino people dazzling the world with pure intellectuality–a Philippines full of poets, artists, orators, authors, musicians, and, above all, of eloquent statesmen and generals. They do not reflect that a statesman is wasted who has nothing but a handful of underfed people to govern, and that it is commerce and agriculture which furnish the propelling power to the ship of state on which the statesman is a pilot. They want to be progressive, and their idea of progress is a constant stream of mechanical appliances flowing like water into the Philippines from other lands; but they do not even consider where the money is to come from to pay for all the things they want. They howl like victims over taxation, but they have a hazy idea that it is the duty of their Government to seek out every labor-saving machine in the world and to buy it and to put it in operation in the Philippines till the inhabitants have accustomed themselves to its use, and have obtained through its benefits the wherewithal to indulge in more of the same sort. They do not concern themselves with the problem of the Government’s getting the money to do all this, other than they think that if we Americans were out of the way, and the six or eight million pesos of revenue which go annually into our pockets were going to Filipinos instead, there would be money in plenty for battleships, deep-water harbors, railroads, irrigation, agricultural banks, standing armies, extended primary and secondary education; and that the resources of the Government would even permit of the repeal of the land tax, of the abolition of internal revenue taxes, and of the lowering of the tariff. One of their favorite dreams of raising money is to put a tremendously high license upon all foreigners doing business in the Islands; and so high an opinion have they both of their value to the world at large and of their prowess, that they do not take into consideration the probability of the foreigner’s either getting out of the country or appealing to his own Government to protect his invested capital. When they speak of independence, they invariably assume that America is going to protect them against China, Japan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.
Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-class Filipino–a class holding the ballot by the grace of God and the assistance of the American Government. Their inverted ideas come from real inexperience in highly organized industrial society, and from perfectly natural deductions from books. When they study Roman and Greek history, they learn there the names of generals, poets, artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians. Books do not dwell upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules. The Filipinos learn that Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war, but they do not reflect that the predatory age–at least in the Roman sense–is past. Their imaginations seize upon the part played by the little island republic of Venice, and they gloat over the magnificence of the Venetian aristocracy, but they hardly give a thought to the thousands of glass-blowers, to the weavers of silken stuffs, to the shipbuilders and the artisans, and to the army of merchants that piled up the riches to make Venice a power on the Mediterranean.
Filipinos have come in contact, not with _life_ but with _books_, and their immediate ambition is to produce the things which are talked of in books. Situated as these Islands are, remote from any great modern civilization, there is no criterion by which the inhabitants can arrive at a correct estimate of their condition. If here and there a single Filipino educated in Europe should dazzle society with novels or plays or happy speeches, most of his countrymen would be satisfied with his vindication of Filipino capacity.
There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the future development of the Philippines, whether they remain under our flag or become independent. One is a new aristocracy to be a new type of incentive to the laborer; the other is an increase in the laborer’s wants which will keep him toiling long after he has discovered the futility of the hopes which urged him in the beginning. At present, the American Government is trying to remodel a social system which consists of a land-holding aristocracy and an ignorant peasantry, the latter not exactly willing to work for a pittance, but utterly helpless to extricate themselves from the necessity of doing so. To the aristocrat the Government says, “Come and aid us to help thy brother, that he may some day rob thee of thy prerogatives”; and to the peasant, “O thou cock-fighting, fiesta-harboring son of idleness and good-nature, wake up, struggle, toil, take thy share of what lies buried in thy soil and waves upon thy mountainsides, and be as thy brother, yonder.” Nor is my picture complete if I do not add that, under his breath, both peasant and aristocrat reply, “Fool I for what? That I may pick _thy_ chestnuts out of the fire.”
There is a story which illustrates the Filipino’s sensitiveness to picking somebody else’s chestnuts out of the fire, not inappropriate to be told here. The agent of the Kelly Road Roller Company had made an agreement with a number of Filipinos in the Maraquina Valley to take up a rice thresher and to thresh their crops for one-twelfth of the output. As this was cheaper than the usual cost of rice-threshing, they accepted the offer, but they were anxious to compare the new machine with their own system. One way of threshing rice is to have a kind of stone table like an armchair, in which the seat is a bowl for the grain which drops down as the thresher strikes the laden stalks against the stone back. On the appointed day the American appeared with his thresher, and the Filipinos were on hand with their stone table and a confident expert who was reputed the best rice-thresher in the district. The American began to feed his machine, and the Filipino made his bundles cut the air. In a few seconds the Filipino had quite a little handful of grain collected in his stone bowl, but not a grain of rice had appeared from the thresher. The workman cast supercilious glances at the machine, when suddenly a stream of rice as thick as his wrist began to pour out, and continued to pour in startling disproportion to his tiny pile. He stood it half a minute and then laid down his bundle of stalks and strode away. The onlooking land-holders were at first amazed and delighted. Then suddenly a horrible thought struck them! They got out their pocket pads and pencils and began to figure. Then they held a consultation and declared that the deal was off–that for one-twelfth the amount of rice streaming out of the thresher, the American’s profits would be highway robbery of the poor Filipino. In vain the agent pointed out to them that the one-twelfth was a ratio in which their gain would always be proportionate to his. They could see nothing except that he was going to make a large sum of money at their expense. The economy of the thresher over their own wasteful system made no impression against the fact that his commission would be a bulk sum which they were unwilling to see him gain. They could not afford to buy the machine, but they stopped the threshing then and there; and the agent learned that what is good advertising in America is not necessarily good in the Philippines.
The reader may fancy that he perceives in this chapter a direct contradiction of what I said in a preceding chapter about the Filipino aristocrat’s desiring the best of everything for his country. But the Filipino is like the sinner who says with all sincerity that he desires to be saved, but who, when confronted with the necessity of giving up certain of his pleasures as the price of salvation, feels that salvation comes rather high, and begins to figure on how he can accomplish the desired result without personal inconvenience. The present land-holding aristocracy is jealous to the last degree of its prerogatives, and it has fought every attempt to equalize taxation and to make the rich bear their fair share in the national expense account. The land tax and the _rentas internes_, or internal revenue tax, are two governmental measures which the rich classes fought to the extreme of bitterness, and which they would revoke to-morrow if it lay in their power to do so.
An aristocracy represents a survival of the fittest–not necessarily the ideally fit, but the fittest to meet the conditions under which it must prove a survivor. The conditions which Spain created here to mould Filipino character were mediaeval, monarchical, and reactionary. The aristocracy is a land-holding one, untrained in the responsibilities of land-holders who grow up a legitimate part of the body politic of their country. Previous to American occupation the aristocracy was excluded from any share in the government, and the Spaniards were exceedingly jealous of any pretensions to knowledge or culture on its part. The aristocracy which could survive such conditions had to do so by indirectness and courtier-like flattery, by blandishment and deceit. The aristocrats learned to despise the poor and the weak; for the more extravagant the alms-giving, the more arrogant the secret attitude of the giver. They trusted less to their own strength than to others’ weakness. They relied less on their own knowledge than on others’ ignorance. Whatever solidarity the aristocracy had and has to-day is of a class nature rather than of a racial. In the insurrection against Spain it allied itself with its lower-class brethren simply because Spain forced it to do so. Had the friars made concessions to the aristocracy as a class, and permitted them a voice in Filipino affairs, there would have been no insurrection against Spain, nor would the entrance of a Filipino governing class have made large changes in the conditions of the great mass of the Filipino people.
Under a democratic Government the present aristocracy cannot retain its present place and prestige, and a portion of its eagerness for independence comes from a recognition of that fact. The American Government has practically opened the way for the creation of a new aristocracy in establishing the public schools. In the provinces the primary schools are patronized by rich and poor alike, though it has required considerable effort to make the poor people understand that their children have as much right to the enjoyment of school privileges as have the children of the rich. The secondary schools of the provinces are patronized chiefly by the middle and upper classes, and in the city of Manila the children of the really wealthy hardly ever attend the public schools. The wealthy citizens of Manila prefer to send their sons to the religious schools, and their daughters to the _colegios_, or sisterhood schools, of which there are many. While English is taught in all these schools, general instruction is in Spanish; the courses of study include the usual amount of catechism, expurgated history, and the question-and-answer method of “philosophy” of the old Spanish system. If the American Government remain here, a new aristocracy, the result of her public school system, is inevitable. If it should not remain here, the Spanish-reared product will continue to hold its present place.
CHAPTER XII
Progress in Politics and Improvement of the Currency
Our First Election of a Governor–More Feeling in Our Next Election–We Organize a Self-Governing Society in the School–Improvement in Parliamentary Procedure–The Boys Imitate the Oratory of a Real Politician–A Much-mixed Currency in the Philippines–Losses to the Teachers Through Fluctuations in Exchange–The Conant System Brings Stability–The New Copper Coins Astonish the Natives.
We had been in Capiz but a short time when talk of the coming election began to occupy both Americans and Filipinos. The Governor of the province at that time held his position by appointment from Mr. Taft, but provisions had been made by the Commission for an election at a specified time, which was then at hand. In view of the fact that it was the first election ever held in the province, we Americans expected to encounter much rejoicing over the newly acquired right, and a general outbreak of gratification. It made a barely perceptible ripple. The Filipinos had not gathered momentum enough under the new system to approach an election by the well-recognized channels. There were no speeches, no public gatherings, no processions, and, so far as the mass of the population were concerned, no interest whatsoever. There is not universal suffrage in the Philippines. The electors for the occasion were the _concejales_, or town councillors, of the towns in the province. On a given day they would assemble to cast their votes.
Our appointed Governor was a candidate to succeed himself, and the only opponent of any importance was a local lawyer, named D—-. D—- was on very good terms with most of the Americans, who regarded him as something of an Americanista, but he was greatly hated by the prominent Filipino families in town, not only on the score of his suspected pro-American sentiment, but on account of certain meddlings of his in past time with _cacique_ power.
A short time before the election the American community were thunderstruck on hearing that D—- had been arrested on a charge of murder. Our Supervisor–and, I believe, the Treasurer–offered to go on his bail. Then came a telegram from Judge Bates at Iloilo, denying bail. For a day or two telegrams flew back and forth, the Americans trying to secure the temporary release of the unfortunate lawyer but accomplishing nothing. D—- was kept practically _incomunicado_ in the local calabozo. He insisted that there was a plot on foot to destroy him, and either he was much distressed or he pretended to be so. Then came an order to take him out to a small town in the interior whence the charge came. D—- declared that he should be killed on the way. The Americans finally prevailed upon an American inspector of constabulary to accompany the prisoner’s escort. The rainy season was in full force, and prisoner and escort had a bad time getting out to Maayon, the town aforementioned. Once there the charge broke down at once. It was based upon a statement made by an old woman that a spirit had appeared to her in a dream, and had accused D—- of being the cause of its immaterial existence. The prisoner was almost immediately set at liberty. For reasons best known to himself, he found it inconvenient to return to Capiz and to renew his campaign for the governorship.
By the fortuitous circumstance of the charge against D—-, our Governor, who professed a smiling ignorance of all the circumstances of the case, had been relieved of his only formidable rival, and he prepared to do the honors of Capiz to the _concejales_. He lived in the old palace of the Spanish governors, which had since come to serve as provincial capitol and gubernatorial residence. There was plenty of room in the fine old place, and the _concejales_ found everything to their satisfaction. They had but to step out of their bedrooms to find themselves at the polls. Our Governor was elected almost unanimously, to succeed himself for two years.
That was doing pretty well for a set of tyros at politics; but by the time the next election swung round, political feeling had awakened, there were wheels within wheels, and feeling was running explosively high. Political parties had crystallized into two bodies, known as _Progresistas_ and _Federalistas_. The Progresistas were the anti-American party, pledged to every effort for immediate independence. The Federalistas were those who stood by the Taft administration, and talked of compromise in the present, and of independence at some distant day. Our Governor, who was again a candidate to succeed himself, was the Federalista head. The Federalistas accused the Progresistas of being “Aglipianos”–that is, schismatics from the Roman Church–and they hinted that Aglipianoism was more a political movement than it was a religious one.
Each party professed itself sceptical of the good intentions of the other. Each was certain that the other would come to the polls with firearms and bolos. I began to worry about my desks, having promised to loan twenty-five nice new oak ones of the latest American pattern for the use of the _concejales_ in making out their votes.
The officer commanding the constabulary at that time was a huge, black-browed, black-whiskered Irish-man, who, among the American men, went by the name of “Paddy” L—-. Both parties ran to Captain L—-, clamoring for a military guard at the election. Captain L—- pooh-poohed the notion that any serious trouble could grow out of the election, declined to consider a guard, except the two soldiers to guard the ballot box, who were more for function than for protection, and smilingly added that his trust in the Filipino sense of law and order was so great that he intended to go to the election and see it all himself.
By this time the Governor’s family had removed from the government building, and a suite of apartments at the rear which had served for kitchen, dining-room, store-rooms and servants’ quarters, had been cleaned up, painted, and handed over to the Provincial Intermediate School, of which I was principal. One of our school-rooms was connected by an uncurtained glass door with the great central hall of the building, which was usually given over to the Court of the First Instance, but which was, that day, a sort of anteroom to the voting precinct located in the former sala of the palace. My school-room would, therefore, command a full view of the polls. For several days I lived in dread of hearing that election day would be declared a school holiday, but no order came to that effect, and on election day I went to school with my mind bent on taking notes of all that went on, also wondering a little if in case the non-expected riot came off, I should not have to vacate a little hurriedly.
By nine o’clock the court-room was packed with electors and lobbyists, or whatever the interested outsiders may be called. Through the glass doors we could see them in groups, some laughing and chatting in ordinary social converse, others dark and gloomy, others gathered in whispering knots with fingers on lips, much mysterious nodding and shrugging of shoulders, and all the innocent evidences of conspiracy. Beyond, through double doors, the voting precinct was in full view, my twenty-five desks occupied by meditative _concejales_, sucking the ends of their pencils. There were the judges and the ballot boxes, symbols of progress and modernity, and there, too, as a concession to dignity which fills the Filipino with joy, were two dear little constabulary soldiers with guns about as long as themselves. Their khaki suits were spick and span from the laundry, their red shoulder straps blazed, their gilt braid glittered, and their white gloves were as snowy as pipe clay could make them. Their little brown faces were stolid enough to delight the most ambitious commander. The whole was a sight to cheer the heart of rampant democracy.
In the midst of the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at the same time something very significant. But nothing could have been more blandly unconscious than the Captain’s manner. He had what is commonly described as “a kind word and a sweet smile for everybody.” There were constabulary reserves a block away, but the Captain’s appearance was an assurance that there would be no need for the reserves. He loafed about, chatting first with one group and then with another. The conspirator looks gave way to laughter and clappings on the back, but when he turned away, more than one eye followed the time-worn holster and its bulky contents.
That election went off as calmly as a county fair–much more calmly, indeed, though there was a _reclama_ afterwards, and a long struggle about it which had to be decided by the Court of First Instance. The quarrel over the election was not related, however, to the Captain’s presence there.
Apparently the Church was interested in the election, for every shovel-hatted _padre_ in the district seemed to have come in for it. They and the provincial dignitaries from towns which had not then risen to the dignity of an American public school, wandered into the school in groups of three and sometimes of twenty. It was their first contact with coeducation, and they were highly amused at the sight of a class of boys and girls working together in the reduction of compound fractions. They were also delighted with the choral music, especially with “The Watch on the Rhine” which the pupils sang with great enthusiasm.
Not very long after that election we began our first work with self-governing societies. The school had been long enough established to have an advanced class capable of speaking English, and our Division Superintendent suggested that I give them a little practical experience in the “machinery of politics.” I assented with outward respect, and then retired to smile, for the “machinery of politics” is the last thing in which the Filipino has need of instruction from us. He is a born politician, and we compare to him in that respect as babes to a philosopher. But I recognized that my pupils did need the experience of a self-governing society, and practice in parliamentary usages, and so we organized our society from the three most advanced classes in the school.
In the beginning I organized the society, acting as temporary chairman. I called for an election by informal ballot of short-term officers to serve until a time of regular elections could be set. Our first ballot polled seventy-three votes, although there were only fifty-five persons in the room. I threw that out and called for a roll call vote. In due time a regular election took place, and officers for three months were elected. As the vote was open, the aristocratic element came off best, as was to be expected. The children of one prominent family, together with some of their friends, held every office. Practically the result was not bad. The officers, four out of five of whom were girls, represented considerable ability. The girls were elected chiefly out of the _galanteria_ of certain of the boy aristocrats, who had very little conception of what a self-governing society means, but who wished to pay their fair innamoratas a compliment.
Our society was a pronounced success. The pupils took to parliamentary practice very much as they would to a new game. Visitors thronged our Friday afternoon meetings. We teachers had to put in six or eight hours every week, drilling the pupils on duty, helping to get up music, and meeting with committees. A teacher was parliamentary “coach,” and sat at the side of Madame President, giving her directions in an undertone. All the teachers were elected honorary members, and one was critic. Peace reigned and Joy flapped her wings.
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 “Do-minus 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.
There was a tremendous protest against the fluctuating currency and the extortion which grew out of it, and we were all relieved when we learned that Congress had adopted the so-called “Conant” system of currency for the Islands. Mr. Conant was the expert who investigated conditions for the Government and devised the system.
The Conant system followed the old Spanish values for coins, the new coins being pesos, medio-pesos, pesetas, media-pesetas, nickels, and copper cents. There was also a copped half-cent, but neither Congress nor Mr. Conant read the Filipino aright. In two years we had taught him to sniff at any value less than a cent. The new system is held at a ratio of two to one by the Government’s redeeming it in