The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 Part 38

The utmost limit of achievement in the Philippine Government service, the only one of the higher positions not subject to political caprice, the only one regarded out there as a "life position"--and this excepts neither the Governors.h.i.+p of the Islands nor the Commissioners.h.i.+ps--is the position of Justice of the Supreme Court. The salary is $10,000 per annum, American money. But there is not an American judge on that bench who would not be glad at any moment to accept a $5000 position as a United States District Judge at home. All of them whom I know are most happily married. But I believe their wives would quit them if they refused such an offer from the President of the United States, or else get so unhappy about it that they would accept and come home.

While we have now considered the case from bottom to top, we did not originally figure on the young American going out to the Philippines otherwise than single. In this behalf Mr. Arnold himself says:

I do not think it can be fairly called other than risky for an American to attempt to practise love in a cottage in the Philippines.

Says the late Arthur W. Fergusson--who gave his life to the Philippine Civil Service--in his annual report for 1905, as Executive Secretary:

The one great stumbling-block, and which no legislative body can eradicate, is the fact that very few Americans intend to make the Philippines their permanent home, or even stay here for any extended period. This is doubtless due to the location of the islands, their isolation from centres of civilization and culture, the enervating climate, lack of entertainment and desirable companions.h.i.+p, and distance from the homeland. Every clerk, no matter what his ideals or aspirations, realizes after coming here that he must at some time in the future return to the United States and begin all over again. After spending a year or more in the islands, the realization that the sooner the change is made the better, becomes more acute. This condition causes, doubtless, the cla.s.s of men who are not adventurous or fond of visiting strange climes to think twice before accepting an appointment for service in these islands, and generally to remain away, and a great majority of those who do come here to leave the service again after a very short period of duty. [497]

Then Mr. Fergusson comes to the obvious but apparently unattainable remedy, which he says is

to make a Philippine appointment a permanent means of livelihood by providing an effective system of transfers to the Federal service after a reasonable period of service here. * * * Under the present regulations influence must be brought to bear at Was.h.i.+ngton in order that requisition may be made by the Chief of some bureau there for the services of a clerk desiring to transfer.

You see, if a Was.h.i.+ngton Bureau, say the Coast and Geodetic Survey, or the Geological Survey, sends a man out to the Islands, he is never for a moment separated from the Federal Civil Service or the Federal Government's pay-roll. The same is true of civilian employees of the army. But the man in the Insular Service, when he wants to get back home, is little better off than if he were in the employ of the Cuban Government, or the British Indian Government, or that of the Dutch East Indies. Mr. Fergusson also says:

It is believed to be useless to try to influence men to come out here unless there is something permanent offered to them at the expiration of a reasonable term of service. * * * The average European is content to live and die "east of Suez"; the average American is not. * * * I am firmly convinced that a permanent service under present conditions is entirely out of the question.

How can you have "a permanent service" unless you have a definite declared policy? Why not declare the purpose of our Government with the regard to the Islands?

In his annual report for 1906 [498] Mr. Fergusson says:

Our relations to the islands are such that the education and specialization of a distinct body of high cla.s.s men purposely for this service as is done in England for the Indian service, will probably be always a practical impossibility.

He then goes on to reiterate his annual plea for a law providing for transfer as a matter of right, not of influence, from the Philippine Civil Service to the Federal Civil Service in the United States, and tells of a very capable official of his bureau who got a chance during the year just closed to transfer from the Philippines to a $1400 government position in the United States, and was glad to get it, although $1400 was "considerably less than half what he received here." Mr. Fergusson quickly gives the key to all this in what he calls "the haunting fear of having to return to the States in debilitated health and out of touch with existent conditions, only to face the necessity of seeking a new position." He adds:

That this is not a mere theory is proven by the number of army (civilian) employees who contentedly remain year after year.

In 1907, Mr. Fergusson reports on the same subject [499]: "Matters do not seem to be improving," and that the Director of the Insular Civil Service informs him that "during the fiscal year there were five hundred voluntary separations from the service by Americans, of whom one hundred were college graduates." He adds: "When the expense of getting and bringing out new men, and of training them to their new work is considered, the wastefulness of the present system is evident."

You do not find any quotations from any of the Fergusson disclosures in Mr. Arnold's North American Review article. He would probably have lost his job, if he had quoted them. Yet the evils pointed out by Mr. Fergusson come from one permanent source, the uncertainty of the future of every American out there, due to the failure of Congress to declare the purpose of the Government.

On January 30, 1908, Arthur W. Fergusson died in the service of the Philippine Government. No general law putting that service on the basis he pleaded for to the day of his death has ever yet been pa.s.sed. Since his death, his tactful successor appears to have abandoned further pleading, and concluded to worry along with the permanently lame conditions inherent in the uncertainty as to whether we are to keep the Islands permanently or not, rather than embarra.s.s President Taft by discouraging young Americans from going to the Islands.

The report of the Governor-General of the Philippines for 1907, Governor Smith, says [500]:

American officials and employees have rarely made up their minds to cast their fortunes definitely with the Philippines or to make governmental service in the tropics a career. Many of those who in the beginning were so minded, due to ill health or the longing to return to friends or relatives, changed front and preferred to return to the home land, there to enjoy life at half the salary in the environment to which they were accustomed. * * * That which operates probably more than anything else to induce good men drawing good salaries to abandon the service * * * is the knowledge that they have nothing to look forward to when broken health or old age shall have rendered them valueless to the government.

If Congress should ever care to do anything to improve the Philippine Civil Service and the status of Americans entering the same, certainly the one supremely obvious thing to do is to make transfer back to the civil service in the United States after a term of duty in the Islands a matter of right.

CHAPTER XXV

COST OF THE PHILIPPINES

If 't were well to do right, 't were better still if 't were more profitable.

Cynic Maxims.

General Otis's annual report for 1899, [501] dated August 31st, gives the number of Americans killed in battle in the Philippines, from the beginning of the American occupation to that date, as 380. This includes those wounded who afterwards died of such wounds. His report for 1900, [502] covering the period from his 1899 report to May 5, 1900, gives the number of Americans killed in battle from August 31, 1899, to May 1, 1900, as 258. General MacArthur succeeded General Otis in command of the American forces in the Philippines on May 5, 1900. General MacArthur's annual report for 1901, [503] gives the number of Americans killed in battle between May 5, 1900, and June 30, 1901, as 245. Thus the total number of Americans killed in battle up to the time the Civil Government was set up in 1901, was 883. The military reports do not always give the insurgents killed during the periods they cover. But on June 4, 1900, as we saw in a previous chapter, General MacArthur reported the number of Filipinos killed up to that time, so far as our records showed, to be something over 10,000. General MacArthur's report, above quoted, giving our killed for the period it covers (May 5, 1900, to June 30, 1901), at 245, gives the insurgent killed for the same period as 3854. If we add this 3854 to the 10,000 killed up to about where May merged into June in 1900, we have 13,854 Filipinos killed up to the time Judge Taft was inaugurated as Governor, in 1901. There was no record, of course, obtainable or attempted, by the Eighth Army Corps, of Filipinos who were wounded and not captured and who subsequently died. It is quite safe to a.s.sume that such fatalities must have swelled the enemy's list up to the time of the setting up of the Civil Government far above 16,000 killed. Thus, as has heretofore been stated, the ratio of the enemy's loss to our loss was, literally, at least 16 to 1, up to the time the civil government was set up. General MacArthur's report for 1900 [504] would seem to bear out the above ratio. He there gives the number of our killed, from November 1, 1899, to September 1, 1900, including the wounded who afterwards died of such wounds, at 268, and the Filipinos killed, "as far as of record," 3227. While these last figures make our killed for the period they relate to, considerably over 200, and the enemy's killed but a very small figure over 3200, still, making allowances for the enemy's wounded that died afterwards, of which of course we have no record, the 16 to 1 ratio would seem to give a fairly accurate probable estimate of the relative loss of life.

These figures are explained by the facts, already noticed hereinbefore, that most of our people knew how to shoot and the Filipinos did not. The great part of their army were raw recruits who did not understand the use of two sights on a rifle, and frequently relied solely on the one at the muzzle, not even lifting up the sight near the lock which when not in use lies flat along the gun-barrel, with the result that they almost invariably got the range too high and shot over our heads.

Because the military reports overlap each other in many instances, it is not possible to state accurately how many men the Eighth Army Corps lost by disease, but our loss chargeable to this account was not far from our fatalities on the battlefield. [505]

It is not possible to even approximate the enemy's loss other than on the battlefield. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Philippine Atlas gives the table estimating the population of the various provinces of the Philippine archipelago prior to the American occupation. This estimate gives the population of Batangas province at 312,192. The American Census of the Philippines of 1903 gives the population of Batangas province at 257,715. [506] This would present a difference in the population of Batangas prior to 1898 and its population after the war of 54,477. The provincial secretary of Batangas province made a report to Governor Taft on December 18, 1901 [507] on the condition of the province generally. This report, as it appears in the Senate Doc.u.ment, is a translation from the Spanish. The portion which relates to the reduction of the population of Batangas province reads as follows:

The mortality, caused no longer by the war, but by disease, such as malaria and dysentery, has reduced to a little over 200,000 the more than 300,000 inhabitants which in former years the province had.

Of course these appalling figures [508] must be taken with a grain of salt. In the first place, the man who furnished them was merely reproducing the general impression of his neighbors as to the diminution of the population of the province. He does not pretend to be dealing with official statistics. On the other hand, all of the yearly reports of the various native provincial officers are, as a general rule, pathetically optimistic. They all seem to think it their duty to present a hopeful view of the situation. In fact if you read these reports one after the other, the various signers seem to vie with one another in optimism as if their tenure of office depended upon it. So that, balancing probabilities, it would seem unlikely that the provincial secretary of Batangas would have stated more than what he at least believed to represent actual conditions, and the results of the war. A comparison of the Atlas population tables above mentioned with the census tables of 1903 shows no very startling difference in the population of any of the other provinces of the archipelago before and after the war except Batangas. It is also notorious that Batangas suffered by the war more than any other province in the Philippine Islands. However, a glance at the table of population of the various provinces of the Census of 1903 [509]

shows you fifty provinces with a total of 7,635,426 people. While we will never know whether Batangas did or did not lose one hundred thousand as a result of the war and its consequences, still, if it did, the other forty-nine provinces above mentioned must have lost as many more, that is to say, must have lost another hundred thousand. So that while it is all a matter of surmise, with nothing more certain to go on than the foregoing, it would really seem by no means absurd to a.s.sume the Filipino loss of life, other than on the battlefield, caused by the war, and the famine, pestilence, and other disease consequent thereon, at not far from 200,000 people. In more than one province, the people died like flies, especially the women and children, as a result of conditions incident to and consequent upon the war. This will not seem an over-statement to men who have lived much among people that do not know much about how to take care of themselves in the midst of great calamities, people who will eat meat of animals carried off by disease, in time of famine; who will drink water contaminated by what may for euphony be called sewage; and who are unprovided with any save traditional home remedies against cholera, small-pox, etc.

As to the cost of the Philippines in money, it used to be said in the early days that we paid $20,000,000 for a $200,000,000 insurrection. Just what the Islands have cost us up to date in money it is utterly impossible to figure out with any degree of certainty, except that a safe minimum may be arrived at. Said the distinguished Congressman from Texas, Honorable James L. Slayden, in a speech which appears in the Congressional Record of February 25, 1908 (pp. 2532 et seq.):

On this point, and in reply to a resolution of the Senate in 1902, the Secretary of War reported that the cost of the army in the Philippines from June 30, 1898, to July 1, 1902, had been $169,853,512.00. To this let us add $114,515,643.00, the admitted cost of the army in the Philippines from May 1, 1902, to June 30, 1907, and we will have a grand total of $284,369,155.00. That does not take into account the additional cost of the navy.

Nor, be it noted, does it count the $20,000,000 we paid Spain for the Islands, which item, is, however included in another part of Mr. Slayden's speech.

The only other estimate of what the Islands have cost, made in the last few years, which seems to be specially worthy of consideration, is one which appeared in the New York Evening Post of March 6, 1907. This estimate was prepared by one of the best trained and most conservative newspaper men in the United States, Mr. Edward G. Lowry, then Was.h.i.+ngton correspondent of the Evening Post, and since 1911, its managing editor. The total which Mr. Lowry arrives at is $308,369,155, up to that time. There have been various absurd estimates made recklessly without knowledge, but Mr. Lowry's estimate is very carefully studied out, and presented in detail in the newspaper referred to. From the testimony of Mr. Slayden and Mr. Lowry, given as a result of their inquiries into the matter, it would thus seem that the Islands must have cost us by the end of 1907 something like $300,000,000. The Insular Government is now self-sustaining, except as to military affairs.

The cost per annum of the Philippine (native) scouts, of which there are 4000, is paid out of the United States Treasury, and amounts to $2,000,000 per annum. [510] The number of American troops in the islands for the last few years has been about 12,000. Those who are wedded to the present Philippine policy of indefinite retention with undeclared intention, insist that our military expenses in the Philippines, in respect to the regular army out there, are not fairly chargeable as a part of the current expenses of the Philippine occupation. This argument must be admitted to have some force as far as the navy is concerned, but as to the army it is clearly without merit. Under the Act of Congress reorganizing the army of the United States after the Spanish War, provision was made for a skeleton army of about 60,000 men capable of expansion to something like 100,000 in time of war. The method of expansion thus contemplated was to have companies of, say, for ill.u.s.tration, sixty men, in time of peace, which companies could be recruited up to a war footing of one hundred men, in time of war. The suggestion that the cost of the part of the regular army which we have to keep in the Philippines is not chargeable to the Philippines because those same troops would have to be somewhere in the United States if they were not where they are, is not well taken. If we did not need 12,000 men continually in the Philippines, the army could be at once reduced by that much without affecting its present organization. If we had no troops in the Philippines this would not mean the absolute elimination from the army of enough regiments to represent twelve thousand men. It would not eliminate any existing organization. It would simply mean contraction of the number of men in the several companies of the several regiments of the army toward a peace basis to the extent of a total of twelve thousand men, more or less. The War Department has long figured on the cost of an American soldier in the Philippines per annum including his pay, allowances, and transportation out and back, at $1000 per annum. The cost of 12,000 soldiers at $1000 per annum is $12,000,000, per annum. The conclusion would, therefore, seem inevitable that the extra military current expense chargeable to our occupation of the Philippines is $12,000,000, per annum, outside the Philippine scouts, or, a total of $14,000,000. Even if the Philippines have cost us $300,000,000, that is no reason why we should continue to run a kindergarten for adults out there, and let the Monroe Doctrine run to seed. "Something"

is not "bound to turn up." The Philippine Islands will not prove a blessing in disguise. In every war with a nation having discontented colonial subjects, the enemy will always strike the colony first, and hope for aid from the inhabitants thereof.

Even if the Philippines have cost us $300,000,000, we are a nation of nearly 100,000,000 people. So they have cost us, all told, in the neighborhood of only about $3 a piece. And we subjugated them by mistake, after freeing a less capable people, the Cubans.

The Panama Ca.n.a.l is to be finished in 1913. This means a splendid, but free-for-all contest, for the trade of South America. In South America we will meet a tremendous pro-German sentiment, and a by no means inconsiderable anti-"Yankee" sentiment. The bigger Germany's army and navy grows, the more she will loom up as the one great menace to the peace of the world, and the one avowed enemy of the Monroe Doctrine. We need to build up a Pan-American esprit de corps, based on the instinct of self-defence. We must win the good will of South America, and we cannot do it so long as we insist, in another part of the world, upon the righteousness of the principle of one Christian people policing a weaker Christian people, ostensibly to keep them from having revolutions, and really in the hope of ultimate profit. To free the Filipinos should be the first step we take after the Panama Ca.n.a.l is completed toward getting ourselves foot-loose entirely, with a view of getting everything from the Canadian border to the Argentine wheat fields and beyond, solidly and sincerely for the Monroe Doctrine. In that direction lies our only sensible and reasonable hope that the ca.n.a.l will get for us the trade and friends.h.i.+p of South America. With such tremendous issues at stake, what does it matter to the richest nation on earth what the Philippines cost? What does it matter, anyhow, how much it costs to do right?