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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



cance if transferred to Demerara or Martinique, 

 Australia, or Ceylon. 



Large proprietors, in the accepted significa- 

 tion of the phrase, are rare in the Philippines, 

 where " every rood of ground maintains its man ; " 

 and little room accordingly is left for the expan- 

 sion of single estates. Little room, and, luckily, 

 as we shall see, for the prosperity no less than 

 for the happiness of the " natives," little agglom- 

 erated capital. Spanish capitalists here are none; 

 and other European proprietors of land and field, 

 from a variety of causes useless here to discuss, 

 none worth mentioning also. Mestizos, that is, 

 half-breeds, generally of Chino-Malay origin, are 

 the most bulky estate-owners; and the lands and 

 fortunes they not rarely amass into one seldom 

 hold together beyond a lifetime, but soon obey 

 the Eastern law of subdivision between heirs, and 

 fall asunder. The while far the greater part of 

 the soil is in the hands of the Malays themselves, 

 who, easily contented, and not much given to 

 anxieties about fortune-making and the future, 

 till each his little plot, and make their bargains 

 for disposing of the produce with the Chinese or 

 semi-Chinese middle-men; by whom, again, it is 

 transferred wholesale to European, chiefly Brit- 

 ish, merchants, and so reaches the coast and the 

 cargo-ships. 



Votaries, if such yet there be, of the "Manila 

 cheroots," so sadly deteriorated of late years, 

 may wonder here that no tobacco-growing district 

 has been brought under our retrospective view. 

 But these districts are almost wholly restricted 

 to the northernmost region of the archipelago, 

 and are, besides, so exceptional in every respect 

 that they ought to be treated of, if at all, apart 

 from any others. Their landscape is, I regret to 

 say, a gloomy one, and I willingly refrain from 

 the contrast of its sombre tints with the bright 

 and cheerful hues around us to-day ; they are 

 proper to nine-tenths, at least, of Philippine ter- 

 ritory, and peculiar to it. 



In most, if not all other intertropical colonies 

 — the West Indies, for example — the administra- 

 tion and enterprise alike are both of them essen- 

 tially European, the labor alone native. In these 

 "Eastern Isles," on the contrary, the Spaniards, 

 content with administration, have left enterprise 

 no less than labor to the natives themselves. The 

 result is a very remarkable one ; we have already 

 to a certain extent seen it exemplified in detail) 

 and shall see more ; let us now pause a moment 

 to gather it up in one comprehensive view. 



Eight million natives, more or less, inhabit 

 the Philippines; and of this vast aggregate the 



principal, almost the only sustenance, morning, 

 noon, and eve, is rice. And what famine is, 

 how frequent, how disastrous, how overwhelming, 

 among a rice-subsisting population, the annals of 

 Madras, Orissa, Ceylon, Bengal, have too often 

 taught us. A calamity that, it would seem, no 

 foresight can avert, to which no remedy can suf- 

 fice. And yet, in the Philippine Archipelago, 

 scarcity even is of rare occurrence, famine un- 

 known ; in the worst of years hardly a sack of 

 grain has to be imported ; in average seasons the 

 land has enough for her children, all swarming 

 as they are, and to spare. More still, after de- 

 ducting the entire vast extent of soil and amount 

 of labor devoted exclusively to this one staff of 

 local life, enough remains of both to supply the 

 export trade with an equivalent of four to six 

 millions sterling in sugar, coffee, hemp, tobacco, 

 and all the other varied products of tropical agri- 

 culture. "Enough and over; enough for our- 

 selves, and over and above for our neighbors," is 

 the fact-spoken motto of the colony ; and of how 

 many other European colonies can this be said ? 

 — of any ? 



Whence, then, this abiding sufficiency ? what 

 is the want-repelling charm ? Is it a better cli- 

 mate ? a richer soil ? a more regular and abun- 

 dant rainfall than other island-groups can boast ? 

 To some extent, perhaps ; but such advantages, 

 though they may contribute toward well-being, 

 cannot of themselves effect it. Or is it greater 

 skill, greater energy, greater aptitude for labor in 

 tho natives themselves ? The Malay, like other 

 children of the tropics, limits his labor by the 

 measure of his requirements, and that measure is 

 narrow indeed. Not so much what they have, 

 but rather what they have not, makes the good 

 fortune of the Philippines — the absence of Euro- 

 pean enterprise, the absence of European capital. 

 A few European capitalist settlers, a few giant 

 estates, a few central factories, a few colossal 

 money-making combinations of organized labor 

 and gainful produce, and all the equable balance of 

 property and production, of ownership and labor, 

 that now leaves to the poorest cottager enough, 

 and yet to the total colony abundance to spare, 

 would be disorganized, displaced, upset, to be 

 succeeded by day-labor, pauperism, government 

 relief, subscriptions, starvation. Europe, gainful, 

 insatiate Europe, would reap the harvest ; but to 

 the now happy, contented, satiate Philippine Ar- 

 chipelago, what would remain but the stubble, 

 but leanness, want, unrest, misery ? The garden 

 was tire garden of Eden ; its indwellers must 

 needs hearken to the serpent counsel, develop its 



