KECENT FOREST PROPAGANDA IN THE PHILIPPINES 741 



pinos attained moral perfection — but their percentage is lower in the 

 Philippines than in any other country of which I have knowledge. He 

 is accustomed to authority, and does not resent it in the same degree 

 that holds in the case of people who have inherited a stronger sense of 

 individual freedom, as in the Anglo-Saxon or republican countries. If 

 he is given clearly to understand what he may do and what he may not 

 do; if he realizes the punishment that will result from his misdeeds; 

 if he can be made to appreciate that the laws imposed upon him are 

 primarily for his own benefit and for that of his relatives and neigh- 

 bors, and not merely for some distant and vaguely understood class or 

 government, the chances of a fair observance on his part are very 

 good indeed. I am convinced that a large percentage of the infrac- 

 tions of the forest law in the Philippines are committed not with a con- 

 scious intent to break the law or to cheat the government, but from the 

 lack of a clear realization of just what the law permits, and what it pro- 

 hibits, and why. 



When a forest station is first established in a region which hitherto 

 had been left wholly or practically alone, there is, as might be ex- 

 pected, more or less opposition on the part of the forest users to the 

 restrictions to which henceforth they must submit — restrictions which, 

 for the most part, consist in requiring the payment of small fees for the 

 cutting of public timber for commercial (not personal or domestic) 

 use and the observance of simple cutting rules, easily understood. 

 They and their fathers before them had been accustomed to do pretty 

 much as they pleased in the public forests, cutting and destroying them 

 at will. There had been no effective agency to restrict their depreda- 

 tions, or even to insist upon the payment of the legal charges for the 

 timber cut and sold. In fact, it is not stretching the truth to say that 

 many of those who cut the timber did not realize that any charges were 

 due. They, not unnaturally, regarded the public forests as much their 

 own as the water which flowed by in the creeks and rivers. When they 

 are first told by forest officers that the timber on the neighboring hills 

 and mountains belongs not to them, but to the government (an institu- 

 tion vaguely known and connected in their minds more or less directly 

 with police and fines), and that they must obtain a license and pay for 

 all timber designed for commercial as distinguished from personal or 

 domestic use, that caingin-making- is prohibited, and will be rigidly pun- 

 ished, they naturally at first feel that an inherent right is being taken 

 away from them, and complaints and violations are to be expected.- 



" Caingin = a Tasfalog word meaning a clearing in the forest for purposes of 

 temporary cultivation. 



