IN THE PHILIPPINES

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 42, 18 August 1908, Page 3

IN THE PHILIPPINES

AMERICA'S TASK. THE -MANAGEMENT OP TROPICAL POSSESSIONS. (Specially Written for The Post.) Continuing his article (published in (Saturday's Post) on the educational work in the Philippines, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, writing from Nagasaki, says: — There is also an Agricultural Review issued monthly in English and Spanish by the Bureau of Agriculture, giving the results of its experiments and investigations. And at the same time it issues bulletins in Spanish and English to the farmers on methods of cultivation, on new plants and their uses and culture, and on the improvement of the old crops. It introduced maguey culture from Central America into the Philippines, and most of its 1906 bulletins were connected with this new departure. The Filipinos are convinced of its utility, and are entering with epirit into its cultivation. It has experimental farms in various parts, and raises on them its seeds and plants for distribution and tests the new introductions. It lends out its steam plough for breaking up old land, and ita animals for breeding purposes, ita bulls, stallions, pigs, and goats from America, Australia, England, and Malta. It has a machinery expert, who adapts old machinery to new uses, and tries new inventions for expediting the agriculture and treating the products of the country. He has made a special study of machines for cleaning hemp, kapok, and maguey, for milling rice, >and for making brooms. The bureau has experimented with several fibre plants that are indigenous to the group, and finds some, of them promising. It has'taken the native velvet bean and found it more efficient in nitrifying and enriching the soil than the Florida velvet bean. The native white cassava it has developed for the manufacture of starch and tapioca. There are native tubers and fruits it has found to be equal to the exotic. And it has experimented with a native rubber plant, the Parameria vine, the bark of which has a considerable percentage of caoutchouc. The temperate zone fruits and tubers of the mountainous regions it has got in hand. It has a special division for animal industry, and this includes veterinary control work. It inspects the *.battoirs and all the animals introduced into the archipelago. It divides the gronp into eight districts and stations, at least one veterinarian , and one agricultural inspector in each. During 1906 the officials were kept busy by an outbreak of rinderpest. It raised the serum on a special farm, and inoculated about 17,000 buffaloes and cattle, with the result that there was only 1.6 per cent, of deaths. It investigated hog cholera and glanders in horses and surra and foot and mouth disease. I doubt if there is an agricultural department in any of our colonies that can be compared with this in thoroughness and efficiency. THE BUREAU OF HEALTH. But the bureau whose work makes quickest appeal to average human nature is that of healthy It seems to have achieved wonders in this nest of tropical epidemics. It has fought smallpox by inoculation till in provinces that used to have 6000 deaths in the year from, the scourge, there has not been a single death reported in 1906-7. Plague, which took root in Manila, as in most other towns of the East, has for the time at least vanished from this tropical city of a quarter of a million inhabitants. The bureau combated an outbreak of cholera in 1906, and reports that "cholera in recognisable form has disappeared entirely from tha archipelago." It has taught the people sanitary habits by means of sanitary inspectors and health officers, and even more by having its bulletins read and explained in the schools. It has got artesian wells sunk in many of the municipalities, with a resulting drop of 20 per 1000 in their death-rate. It has cleansed aud reconstructed the market places in a sanitary way, and it has made the prisons wholesome, instead of dens of disease. It has got Acts passed against the adulteration of foods and drugs, and the use of possible sources of typhoid fever and cholera by Chinese market gardeners as fertilisers. It had the watershed that is the source of the existing water supply for Manila guarded by soldiers during an outbreak of cholera. And when the new water supply from a watershed far from human habitations, and the new sewerage system have been inaugurated, as they will be at the end of this year, Manila will probably be the healthiest of tropical cities. THE PROBLEMS BEFORE THE AMERICANS. There never has been such a campaign of scientific enlightenment in any tropical country, and it deserves to succeed. Whsther it will succeed according to the original American ideal is a question. That the natives wil) not rise completely to the occasion, or bless the Americans for all that they have expended on them, is already doubtful. The Bureau of Health speaks out boldly, and refuses to believe in local boards of health instead of health inspectors. There is more than scepticism in the official mind about the benefit of even the limited share of local government already granted. Many of the Filipinos have taken j the bit in their teeth, as if what has been accorded them was a sign of weakness. And the anti-American nationalist movement grows by no means less. The Aglipayans, a secession from the Roman Catholic Church, has gained in strength as the years have gone on. They are over a million and a half strong out of a population of seven millions, a fourth of which are Moslems or pagans. And there have been gathering to this dissenting body the nationalist and anti-Ameri-can elements. It is dawning on the minds of many that the same problems of government lie before the Americans in this possession of theirs as exist in India. They are honestly doing their best for the native, and there is no trouble or expense spared to make him an efficient human oeing. But will he ever be fit for democracy ? Will he ever be capable of defending himself against internal war, or external attack? The candid answer of most who know is in the negative. It is even becoming a question whether it will be a profitable possession for the Americans. They have spent huge sums upon it. They have introduced the best of American methods and American legislation. There has been a steady increase of trade. Imports increased in 1906-7 by about £774,000, and exports by about £36,000, and this while the importation of rice, distilled spirits, and malt liquors decreased. The enormous increase of imports was largely due to the increase of cotton textiles by 25 per cent., and of this increase the United States had the lion's share. Yet it contributes less than an eighth of the cotton textile imports, and its increase was due to a change in the tariff enacted by Congress in February, 1906; it reduced the duty upon goods produced in the narrow American looms to a low rate, whilst leaving the double width goods at the old rata. England and the United States furnish more than a third of the imports taken together ; but England stands first, and both increased their auota by

15 per cent. The French East Indies used to hold the first place, but it has fallen to the third because of the marked decrease in the importation of rice. The chief importing countries follow in this order — China, Spain, Australia, Germany, British East Indies, Japan. Australia has risen to the sixth place chiefly owing to its inroads in the flour trade. Its percentage in this has gone up from 1 per cent, in 1904 to 58 per cent, in 1906-7. The reasons given are the shorter haul and lower freights, the less fine milling of the Australian flour making it cheaper and more comparable to rice, and the unfriendliness of the Chinese, the principal local retailers, an echo of the American boycott. It is the Filipinos that are using it more, and this indicates a rise in their standard of living. Australia has also a practical monopoly of the fresh meat trade, and furnishes a great quantity of vegetables and fruits. In exports the United States stands easily first, having more than a third of the trade, chiefly through its use of hemp. England stands second, and France third. But when we turn to the shipping that carried these imports and exports, Britain takes the lead by a long way. Ninety per cent, of -the foreign steamers in the harbour when our ship lay in it were British. Of the import trade they ; carried 56 per cent., both showing an increase on 1906. The trade carried in American bottoms decreased by nearly 100 per cent., largely owing to the loss of two of the largest American -vessels on Pacific waters. Germany and Japan have greatly increased their trade, the former chiefly in imports. American ships carried only 16.6 per cent, of the importations from the United States ; '■ «nd when her coastal navigation laws are applied to the Philippines in April, 1909, things will be worse instead of better. Either American shipping interests will have to make arrangements for handling the trade between the United States and the Philippines, or the trade will be diverted to foreign countries. And it is significant that the chief American steamship company on the Pacific made a loss last year instead of being able to pay a dividend. It is clear which the i authorities in Manila would prefer, for [ they have abolished tonnage dues and i made it a free port, whilst they are doing everything in their power to make j iit an efficient harbour. If American j shippers put on steamers for the trade I they will claim some of the profits in increased freight rates. And it is not I unlikely that in lessening the profits of both importer and exporter this will drive the trade elsewhere. An effort was evidently made to get Congress to ■ reconsider the position. For in April of this year the House of Representatives tried to cancel this extension of the coastal navigation laws to the Philippines. And American immigration is steadily I decreasing instead of increasing. Fewer and fewer are coming, and still fewer remaining. Since 1902 Americans have j shown less and less tendency to favour the possession. There was only one ] small rise in immigration from the United States in 1904. But last year there was a great decrease. In 1906 there were 7647 came in, but only 3058 in 1907, whilst the departures increased from 1833 to 2028. Whether America manages bo make the possession useful to her industry and commerce or not, she can never get rid of it. Nor will she ever be willing to do so as long as she remains facing the world-arena of the future, the Pacific Ocean. And as population, industry, and finance continue their westward movement as much within her borders as before they reached them, her destiny is manifest and inevitable. She must face as much to the Pacific as to the Atlantic. And this will become still more apparent when the Panama Canal is opened. On the shoulders of America and of the Eastward facing British Empire must lie the burden of the future. Whether the Orient will fight with the West or make peace and ultimate friendship and amalgamation with it, it is these two countries that will head the battle or lead the movement. But -"t will be centuries, if not thousands of years, before the issue becomes clear.