A Revelation of the Filipinos 



149 



the Philippines, and when its products 

 are systematically harvested it is a 

 source of unfailing revenue and profit, 

 supplying several by-products of com- 

 mercial value. 



The demand for rice throughout the 

 archipelago far exceeds the domestic 

 supply, and it will probably be neces- 

 sary to continue to import it indefinitely, 

 as the cultivation of hemp and other 

 products is much more profitable. It is 

 probable that the cultivation of cacao, 

 from which the chocolate is derived, is 

 likely to greatly increase and become 

 one of the principal producing products 

 of the islands, as the cacao of the Phil- 

 ippine Islands is superior to that grown 

 anywhere else in the world. 



THE POPULATION 



The total population of the Philippine 

 archipelago on March 2, 1903, was 

 7,635,426. Of this number 6,987,686 

 enjoyed a considerable degree of civil- 

 ization, while the remainder, 647,740, 

 consisted of wild people. There were 

 14,271 white, 8,135 being Americans 

 and 42,097 yellow, of whom 921 were 

 Japanese and 41,035 Chinese. 



Of the eight civilized tribes the largest 

 is that of the Visayans, who occupy most 

 of the Islands lying between Luzon and 

 Mindanao, and form nearly one-half of 

 the entire civilized population. Taga- 

 logs occupy the provinces in the vicinity 

 of Manila. They rank second, with a 

 little more than one-fifth of the civilized 

 people, and the Ilocanos rank third, with 

 approximately one-eighth. 



The civilized people, with the excep 

 tionof those of foreign birth, were prac- 

 tically all adherents of the Catholic 

 church, while of the peoples here classi- 

 fied as wild a large proportion, probably 

 more than two-fifths, were Mohamme- 

 dans in religion and were well known in 

 the islands as Moros. The remaining 

 three-fifths belonged to various tribes, 

 differing from one another in degrees 

 of barbarism. With the exception of 



the Negritos and the people of foreign 

 birth, all the inhabitants of these islands 

 are believed to be Malays. 



The people of the Malay race consti- 

 tute most of the inhabitants of the Malay 

 peninsula, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Cel- 

 ebes, and other associated islands, to- 

 gether with the Philippines. The total 

 number of Malays is somewhere in the 

 neighborhood of 40,000,000, of which 

 over 28,000,000, or three-fourths, are 

 found in Java, most of the remainder 

 being in the Philippine Islands. 



INCREASE IN POPULATION RAPID 



At the beginning of the century Java 

 had a little more than double the popula- 

 tion of the Philippine archipelago. At 

 the end of the century it had four times 

 as many people. 



The cause of this is not easy to deter- 

 mine So far as known, the people of 

 Java have been quite as subject to epi- 

 demics and diseases as the people of the 

 Philippines, and there is no apparent 

 reason for the more rapid growth. 



The average annual rate of increase 

 of the Philippines in the last half cen- 

 tury has exceeded that of all the coun- 

 tries of the world, with the exception of 

 the United States, Russia, and Japan, 

 and has equaled that of Denmark. It 

 was nearly three times as large as that 

 of British India and Spain, nearly six 

 times as large as that of France, and yet 

 it was less than half as great as that of 

 the United States. 



SURPRISING ABILITY TO READ AND 

 WRITE 



Literacy among the people of the Phil- 

 ippines means the ability to read and 

 write in any language — English, Span- 

 ish, or a Malay tongue. Since, in all 

 probability, less than 10 per cent of the 

 people of the islands can speak Spanish 

 or English, the fact is unquestionable 

 that the majority of the people reported 

 as literate can read and write only the 

 native tongues. This is a result of the 



