A Woman's Impression Of The Philippines Part 6

CHAPTER XI

Social and Industrial Condition of the Filipinos

American and Tagalog Invaders of Visaya Compared--Doubt As to the Apt.i.tude 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 navely 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 a.s.sault from Tagalog soldiers. Some declared to me that they would have used the daggers upon an a.s.sailant, 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, sh.e.l.l windows were drawn to, and the iron-sheathed outer doors were locked and barred. But most sh.e.l.l windows have in the centre a little pane of gla.s.s 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 munic.i.p.ality 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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed. 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 apt.i.tude for self-government. Wiser heads than mine have already arrived at a hopeless _impa.s.se_ 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 a.s.serting 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 inept.i.tude 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sionate 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.s 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 p.r.o.ne 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses. 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-cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.serting 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 cla.s.ses of Filipinos with whom I have come in contact; nor as yet have I ever beheld in the laboring cla.s.ses 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 att.i.tude was not uncharacteristic of much wiser men than he. I discovered one morning, in talking to the most advanced cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses, 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 b.u.t.ton, and to let the system do the rest. And they are, with few exceptions, making the mistake of a.s.suming that their apt.i.tude in learning to press the b.u.t.ton 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-b.u.t.ton"

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 cla.s.ses of Manila and the provinces, not of the really eminent Filipinos who are a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sume that America is going to protect them against China, j.a.pan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.

Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-cla.s.s Filipino--a cla.s.s holding the ballot by the grace of G.o.d and the a.s.sistance 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 sh.o.r.es 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 gla.s.s-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 c.o.c.k-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 ill.u.s.trates 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 cla.s.ses 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 att.i.tude 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 cla.s.s nature rather than of a racial. In the insurrection against Spain it allied itself with its lower-cla.s.s brethren simply because Spain forced it to do so. Had the friars made concessions to the aristocracy as a cla.s.s, and permitted them a voice in Filipino affairs, there would have been no insurrection against Spain, nor would the entrance of a Filipino governing cla.s.s have made large changes in the conditions of the great ma.s.s 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 cla.s.ses, 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.semble 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 circ.u.mstance of the charge against D----, our Governor, who professed a smiling ignorance of all the circ.u.mstances 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 princ.i.p.al. One of our school-rooms was connected by an uncurtained gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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, l.u.s.ty, 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 a.s.surance 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 cla.s.s 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.