The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 40

Apparently, Messrs. Roosevelt and Taft thought, in 1907, that granting the Filipinos a little debating society solemnly called a legislative body, but wholly without any real power, was ample compensation for deserted tobacco and cane plantations and for the price of hemp being beat down below the cost of production by manipulation through an Act of Congress pa.s.sed for the benefit of American hemp manufacturers. If we had had a Cleveland in the White House about that time, he would have written an essay on taxation without representation, with the hemp infamy of this Philippine Tariff Act of 1902 as a text, and sent it to Congress as a message demanding the repeal of the Act. But the good-will of the Hemp Trust is an a.s.set for the policy of Benevolent a.s.similation. The Filipino cannot vote, and the cordage manufacturer in the United States can. No conceivable state of economic desolation to which we might reduce the people of the Philippine Islands being other than a blessing in disguise compared with permitting them to attend to their own affairs after their own quaint and mutually considerate fashion, the Hemp Trust's rope, tied into a slip-knot by the Act of 1902, must not be removed from their throats. By judicious manipulation of sufficient hemp rope, you can corral much support for Benevolent a.s.similation. Therefore, to this good hour, the substance of the hemp part of the Philippine Tariff Act of March 8, 1902, remains upon the statute books of the United States, to the shame of the nation.

At last, under the Payne tariff law of 1909, Mr. Taft's long and patient quiet work with Congressional committees prevailed upon Congress and the interests to admit Philippine sugar and tobacco to this country free of duty, up to amounts limited in the Act. [525]

Since then you find the reports of our American officials in the Philippines palpitating with grat.i.tude to Congress. As a matter of fact all Congress had said to the Filipinos by its action may be summed up about thus: "The sugar and tobacco interests of this country have at last realized that such little of the sugar and tobacco you raise as may stray over to this side of the world will not be in the least likely to hurt them. Therefore they have graciously decided, in their benignity, to permit you to live, provided you do not get too prosperous." But this very same Payne bill continued the export tax features of the Act of 1902. Section 13 of the Payne bill is as follows:

Section 13. That upon the exportation to any foreign country from the Philippine Islands, or the shipment thereof to the United States or any of its possessions, of the following articles there shall be levied, collected, and paid thereon the following export duties: Provided, however, that all articles the growth and product of the Philippine Islands coming directly from said islands, to the United States or any of its possessions for use and consumption therein shall be exempt from any export duties imposed in the Philippine Islands:

352. Abaca (hemp), gross weight, 100 kilos, 75 cents.

353. Sugar, gross weight, 100 kilos, 5 cents.

354. Copra, gross weight, 100 kilos, 10 cents.

355. Tobacco, gross weight:

(a) Manufactured or unmanufactured, except as otherwise provided, 100 kilos, $1.30.

(b) Stems, clippings, and other wastes of tobacco, 100 kilos, 50 cents.

Let us briefly glance at the net results of this law, and its predecessor, the Act of 1902, the export features of which it re-enacted. It is important that every fair-minded American who can possibly spare the time should take such a glance at what Congress has done to the Philippine hemp industry, because of the obvious bearing that such taxation without representation will probably have on the att.i.tude of the Philippine people whenever we get into a war with a foreign power. Certainly the legislation Congress has perpetrated upon them, at the behest of special interests in the United States, has not soothed the original desire of those people to be free and independent.

At page 27 of the report of the Philippine Collector of Customs for 1910, a table is given showing the export duties subject to refund collected under the Act of Congress of March 8, 1902, and deposited in the Philippine treasury to the credit of the Insular Government at the end of each fiscal year (June 30), as follows:

1902 $ 71,064.69 1903 527,228.10 1904 462,433.83 1905 486,475.56 1906 433,991.79 1907 433,458.58 1908 370,513.36 1909 598,917.69 ------------- $3,384,083.60

The following table, taken from this same annual report of the Collector of Customs of the Philippines for 1910 (p. 22) shows the size (weight in kilograms), and value, of the annual Philippine hemp crop from 1899 to 1910, both inclusive. It gives in one set of columns the total exported to all countries, and in the other the part which comes to the United States:

To All Countries. To United States.

Kilos Value Kilos Value

1899 59,840,368 $ 6,185,293 23,066,248 $ 2,436,169 1900 76,708,936 11,393,883 25,763,728 3,446,141 1901 112,215,168 14,453,110 18,157,952 2,402,867 1902 109,968,792 15,841,316 45,526,960 7,261,459 1903 132,241,594 21,701,575 71,654,416 12,314,312 1904 131,817,872 21,794,960 61,886,592 10,631,591 1905 130,621,024 22,146,241 73,351,136 12,954,515 1906 112,165,384 19,446,769 62,045,088 11,168,226 1907 114,701,320 21,085,081 58,388,504 11,326,864 1908 115,829,080 17,311,808 48,813,720 7,684,000 1909 149,991,866 15,883,577 79,210,362 8,534,288 1910 170,788,629 17,404,922 99,305,102 10,399,397

If you have the time and inclination, you can easily figure out the annual "rake-off" of the American hemp importers from the above table. For instance, take the last year, 1910: 99,305,102 kilos at 75 cents per 100 kilos is $744,788.26, which is more than 4% of $17,404,922, the total value of the hemp crop of the archipelago for that year. Add this $744,788.26 to the $3,384,183.60 shown by the above table of refundable duties collected from 1902 to 1909 inclusive, and you have over $4,000,000 rebates accruing to American importers of Manila hemp from 1902 to 1910 inclusive.

In his remarks on Section 13 of the Payne Law of 1909 (above set forth), in the House of Representatives, May 13, 1909, [526] Hon. Oscar W. Underwood said, in part:

When you put a tax on your people for engaging in export trade, to that extent you lessen their ability to successfully meet their foreign compet.i.tor and reduce the territory in which they can successfully dispose of their surplus products abroad. Our forefathers in writing the Const.i.tution of the United States, recognizing the false principle on which an export tax was based, put it in the fundamental law of our land that the United States Government should not lay export taxes. If we enact this law, we write into the statute book for the Philippine Islands, legislation which is little short of barbarous, legislation that no government in the civilized world except Turkey, and Persia, and other second-cla.s.s nations countenance to-day.

But the hemp interests won out and the section was adopted. In an argument for the repeal of the export tax, delivered in the House of Representatives August 19, 1911, the Philippine delegate, Hon. Manuel L. Quezon, said:

There is one section in the Philippine tariff law, approved August 5, 1909, which is seriously injuring the proper commercial development of the islands.

Of course the earnestness with which Mr. Quezon pleaded his cause may be imagined from the circ.u.mstance that, as he says, he is continually advised by letters from his people, and verily believes that if the export tax is not taken off soon the Philippine hemp industry will be entirely destroyed, and the hemp farmers will have to take to raising something else in lieu of hemp, because the present prices hardly permit them to live. In the course of his speech Mr. Quezon offered the following truly eloquent and absolutely unanswerable argument:

Although it has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that the provisions of the Const.i.tution are not in force in the Philippines, I have serious doubts as to whether said decision also meant that this Government has the power to enact laws for the islands which are expressly prohibited by the Const.i.tution in the United States.

It is through the courtesy of Mr. Quezon that such light as I may have been able to throw on the subject has been obtained. He has shown me letters from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce at Manila and other commercial organizations prophesying ruin to the Manila hemp industry in the event the export tax should continue. One of these letters is addressed to the two Philippine Commissioners in Congress, Mr. Legarda and Mr. Quezon. It informs them of the hopes of the Filipinos at Manila that they, Messrs. Legarda and Quezon, may be successful in their campaign to get the law repealed and that many of them (the Filipinos at Manila) feel hopeful of results in that regard. Speaking for their fellow countrymen at Manila, they say, "The optimists are of the opinion that the matter being in such good hands as yours will be carried to a successful conclusion." Then they give the darker side of the picture thus:

But the representatives at this capital of the famous syndicate, the International Harvester Company, are of the opinion that we will be able to accomplish nothing, and theirs is an opinion to which great weight should be attached, because the vast interests which that concern represents can set in motion powerful influences to keep the present law as it is, since it concerns their interest to do so.

Mr. Quezon has also shown me a letter written to him, March 30, 1911, by his and my warm personal friend, Hon. James F. Smith, formerly Governor-General of the Philippines, now (1912) Judge of the Court of Customs Appeals at Washington, D. C., in which letter General Smith says, concerning the operation of that part of the export tax act of March 8, 1902 (continued by the Payne Tariff Law of 1909) by which American manufacturers are relieved from the payment of the export tax on Manila hemp:

In effect this really and truly amounts to the payment by the Philippine Government and the Filipino people of a large subsidy to American manufacturers of hemp. More than that, this concession to the American manufacturer, by enabling him to undersell his British compet.i.tor, gives him an undue control of the situation and has put him in a position, to some extent, to control prices for the raw product.

It seems to me that the American people had better look to their own liberties, when they remember that in the campaign for the Republican nomination in 1912, the Roosevelt Headquarters gave out that pending the Roosevelt dictation of Mr. Taft's nomination in 1908, the International Harvester Company furnished a floor of its Chicago building to the Taft people, this interesting fact being part of the leakage from the Roosevelt-Taft quarrel caused by the Roosevelt charge that Mr. Taft was unfit for re-election because he "meant well feebly"; and when it is recalled, on the other hand, that in the Roosevelt campaign of 1912 for the presidential nomination for a third term, Mr. George W. Perkins, [527] the very personification of undue corporation influence with the Government, a.s.sumed the role of Warwick for an ex-President who, when President, had repudiated the advice of his counsel, Governor Harmon, that a railroad company [528] be prosecuted for taking rebates because the vice-president of the company was his personal friend. [529] But let us return to the Philippine rebates, and their corner-stone, the export tax, Section 13 of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff.

In the case of Fairbanks vs. United States, 181 U. S. Supreme Court Reports, page 290, a case in which the court was asked to declare a certain Act of Congress unconst.i.tutional and void, because it imposed what was virtually an export tax, the opinion of the court cites the absolute inhibition against such a tax imposed by our Federal Const.i.tution, and says concerning the wise theory on which this fundamental tenet of our government rests:

The requirement of the Const.i.tution is that exports should be free from any governmental burden.

The decision then goes on to elaborate on what it terms "that freedom from governmental burden in the matter of exports which it was the intention of our Const.i.tution to protect and preserve." Finally, the court uses an expression which is certainly a stinging rebuke to any law-making power that permits the selfish greed of a little set of importers to get a law pa.s.sed imposing for their special benefit a paralyzing export tax on the chief staple of a helpless colony:

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

But Mr. Quezon has no vote in Congress and his voice was not heard, at least not heeded.

The summation of the whole matter is this: Both the Philippine people and the American people are, and long have been, suffering from unjust taxation through laws for which special selfish financial interests in the United States, exercising grossly undue influence on governmental action, are responsible. Neither will ever get relief until the government of this nation is wrested from the control of the money-hogs and restored to the people. Until that is done, selfish greed will continue to sow sedition in the Philippines, and socialism in the United States.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE RIGHTS OF MAN

The rights of man cannot be changed. It is the government which attempts to change them that must change.--Webster.

It was the homely common sense of Mr. Lincoln that first reminded us most vividly how like to the sins of an individual are those of a nation. To the Southern man who admires Mr. Lincoln as one of the great figures of all time, he seems like a great physician, who, with malice toward none and with charity for all, kept vigil for four years at the bedside of a sick nation through all the long agony of its efforts to throw off from its system the inherited curse of slavery. Of course, human slavery was a relic of barbarism. But in fixing the Rights of Man, the founders of the Republic actually overlooked the fact that a negro was a human being. So that, vast property rights having accrued pursuant to that mistake, the march of progress had to wipe them out, no matter whom it hurt financially. The enormity of the iniquity of human slavery did not dawn suddenly and exclusively upon William Lloyd Garrison. He is not the sole, original inventor and patentee of the idea. Lord Macaulay's father was doing the same sort of agitating in England about the same time. Westminster Abbey has its monument to the elder Macaulay, just as Commonwealth Avenue has its monument to the elder Garrison. Simultaneous like stirrings occurred elsewhere throughout Christendom. But, of course, in America, arguments for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slave first took root most readily in a thrifty section of our liberty-loving country which had nothing to lose by abolition.

John Quincy Adams once said that our government was "an experiment upon the heart of man." It is because this government of the people by the people for the people was a deliberate and thoughtful attempt upon the part of its founders to apply the Golden Rule as a doctrine of international and inter-individual law, that we believe our form of government is the last hope of mankind. It is, as we conceive it, the voice of humanity raised in protest against the proposition that might makes right. It is, as we conceive it, a government which entered the lists of the nations as the champion of the human mind, in the great struggle of Mind for the mastery over Matter, the world-old struggle between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. Our government, like everything else, must follow the law of its being, or die. Its first great sin in violation of the Rights of Man was due to heredity. We inherited the inst.i.tution of slavery, the governmental exception to the rule that all men are created with equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was a sin against human liberty, one of the "unalienable" Rights of Man, upon which the Republic purported to be builded. The consequences of that sin are still with us; but, except for the occasional b.l.o.o.d.y-shirt waver, whose intellectual resources are not sufficient to provide him with a live issue, we are meeting those consequences, as a nation, bravely, and with the mutual forbearance born of the fact that none are wholly free from responsibility for present difficulties.