National Altruism 



435 



be expended for the purpose of relieving 

 suffering. 



As soon as the Americans reached the 

 islands, even while war was flagrant, 

 schools were established, and now there 

 are reading, writing, and reciting in Eng- 

 lish in the Philippine Islands one-half 

 million of children daily. The unfor- 

 tunate conditions under which the use of 

 some seven or eight different languages 

 in different islands and different parts of 

 the same island prevented a common 

 medium of communication is gradually 

 to be remedied. More people speak Eng- 

 lish than Spanish now, and in a genera- 

 tion the langtiage of the islands will be 

 English, unless the present policy is 

 changed. Industrial and secondary 

 schools are being established in every 

 province, and the Philippine child by 

 manual training is being taught the dig- 

 nity of labor, though in his father's time 

 it had always been regarded as a badge 

 of humiliation. 



We have secured the construction of a 

 street-car system in the city of Manila 

 thirty-five miles in length, which greatly 

 relieves the expense of living in that city, 

 arising from the necessary use of cabs 

 in the absence of a street railway. We 

 are constructing great waterworks and 

 a comprehensive sewer system for 

 Manila. We have constructed costly har- 

 bor works at three great ports of the 

 islands — Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu. We 

 have added many hundred miles to the 

 road mileage of the islands, and have 

 now contracts for the construction of 

 railways, so that within a few years, un- 

 der contracts now in force, the mileage of 

 the railways will have been increased to 

 near a thousand miles, though it was but 

 124 when we entered the islands. We 

 have carried the islands through epi- 

 demics of plague and of cholera and have 

 stamped them out. Just as we entered 

 the islands, 75 per cent of the cattle were 

 destroyed by rinderpest. We have dis- 

 covered a method for suppressing the 

 rinderpest which we have an efficient 

 force of civil servants to apply, so that 

 hereafter there is no danger that the 



islands will be again denuded of cattle 

 from this cause. 



We have introduced a judiciary system 

 which commands the confidence of all ; 

 it is partly American, partly native. We 

 have abolished the Spanish code of civil 

 procedure, which was adapted to keep 

 litigants in the vestibule of the court- 

 house forever, and have substituted a 

 plain, practical American code. 



We have purchased from the religious 

 orders 400,000 acres of the best land in 

 the islands, the ownership of which by 

 them put them in a relation of hostility 

 to 60,000 tenants, who refused to recog- 

 nize their title or pay rent. Had they 

 gone into court and sought evictions, .an- 

 other insurrection would have followed. 

 The government has now purchased 

 these lands for $7,000,000 and is engaged 

 successfully in selling them out to the 

 tenants on easy terms, so that in less than 

 a decade they will become the owners 

 of the lands. 



A currency of a Philippine silyer peso, 

 maintained by law at 50 cents gold, has 

 been substituted for the old, varying 

 Mexican dollar. In other words, we have 

 established there the gold standard. 



We have suppressed ladronism and dis- 

 order throughout the islands, so that 

 agriculture is now being pursued in a 

 greater degree than ever before since the 

 insurrection of 1896. 



Business has been depressed, but is 

 gradually recovering. The total of im- 

 ports and exports has increased from 

 $36,000,000, annual average from 1890- 

 1894, to an annual average of $60,000,000 

 during the last four years. 



The Congress of the United States has 

 discriminated in favor of the islands to 

 the extent of permitting its products to 

 be introduced into the United States at 

 25 per cent reduction on theDingley rates. 

 It has been proposed to increase this re- 

 duction, so as to make it 75 per cent on 

 the Dingley rates, and ultimately, in 1909, 

 to take off the duty altogether on the 

 products of the Philippine Islands. Such 

 a bill passed the House of Representa- 

 tives, was not voted on in the Senate, but 



