The Bureau of Insular Affairs 



247 



as fast as it possibly could. Nothing 

 could have been more fortunate than 

 that, during the period of dual admin- 

 istration by the military and by the civil 

 commission, or rather the gradual transi- 

 tion from the former to the latter, the 

 lines of control of each reached the 

 hands of one man in the War Depart- 

 ment. Secretary Root possessed the 

 power and authority and a definite ob- 

 ject in view which we can justly say is 

 today an accomplished fact in the Phil- 

 ippines. 



The act of July 1, 1902, providing 

 for the civil government in the Philip- 

 pines, ratifies and confirms what we call 

 the constitution of the Philippines — the 

 Magna Charta given to the Philippine 

 people by President McKinley, drafted 

 by Secretary Root ; in other words, the 

 instructions of the President of April 7, 

 1900, to the Secretary of War for the 

 Taft Commission. This act further- 

 more gives the necessary congressional 

 authority to all- functions of civil gov- 

 ernment in the Philippine Islands, and 

 allows the Philippine Government in 

 the Philippines the widest latitude. 

 It gives them legislative, judicial, and 

 executive powers. They collect and 

 disburse all revenues accruing in the 

 Philippine Islands. This act authorizes 

 the Secretary of War to disapprove any 

 act of the Philippine Commission — a 

 power in the thousands of acts passed 

 by the Commission which has not yet 

 in a single case been exercised. 



The collection of information for the 

 President, the Secretary of War, and 

 Congress, which has resulted in United 

 States laws relating to the Philippines, 

 has put a vast amount of work on the 

 Bureau of Insular Affairs. 



On May 1, 1900, civil government 

 was given to Porto Rico, and the War 

 Department lost jurisdiction over the 

 same. This law provided that once a 

 year the civil governor was to report to 

 the President. Today she is an orphan 

 in her daily relations with this country. 



Full information about her and her 

 affairs, outside of these annual reports 

 of the civil governor, can only be gained 

 by writing to the governor. 



Cuba, on May 20, 1902, became a for- 

 eign government. The work by the 

 intervening military government that 

 made that possible is of vivid recollec- 

 tion in the Bureau. The information 

 that was necessary for Congress to pos- 

 sess in order to enact the necessary 

 legislation relative to the turning over 

 of that government was furnished by 

 the Bureau, and it believes it played 

 quite a part in the treaties which have 

 just been ratified by the Cuban Gov- 

 ernment. 



The records of the United States mil- 

 itary government of Cuba have been 

 brought to Washington and arenowthor- 

 oughly arranged in a separate building, 

 as an annex of this Bureau, under a 

 force of clerks, for constant reference 

 and the furnishing of information to 

 both Cuba and the United States. I 

 will therefore thus hastily pass over the 

 work done in connection with Porto 

 Rico and Cuba and direct your atten- 

 tion to what has been and is being done 

 in the far-away Philippines, where the 

 civil government has so developed as to 

 more than make up for the time and 

 labor gained when we were relieved of 

 the charge of Porto Rican and Cuban 

 affairs. 



First, however, let me speak of the 

 important branch of the Bureau under 

 the direction of its law officer, Charles E. 

 Magoon. 



It will incidentally show the scope of 

 the work of the Insular Bureau, for 

 law questions were not examined ex- 

 cepting when raised in actual cases pend- 

 ing in the War Department, and after 

 those questions had been investigated 

 and the course to be pursued ascertained 

 it devolved upon the Bureau to do the 

 work. The questions thus presented to 

 the War Department developed a broad 

 field for investigation, including the law 



