Progress in the homesteading of public land

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Progress in the homesteading of public land
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 6 (Issue No.10) October 1926
Year: 1926
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Fulltext: October, 1926 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL Progress in the Homesteading of Public Land Validity of Patents: Question Before Supreme Court Homesteading of the United States public domain in the various provinces of the Philippines goes on at a pace little realized Rapid Settlement Manila unless . »«. , the records are in Mindoro checked up. Mindo ro, with more than 10,000 applicants, has become a mecca for homesteaders from Batangas and the Ilocos provinces. The public lands of northern Mindanao, parti cularly of Misamis, are being occupied by Visayan immigrant families who plant coconuts and abaca. The movement has broadened since last year. In August this year the number of homestead applications received by the bureau of lands was 1755, and last year during the same month only 316, an increase of nearly 500 per cent for the month, and the areas claimed are 28,375-77 and 5057.20 hectares respectively, again an increase of more than 500 per 'cent In the same month 245 applications for free patents were received, and in August last year only 120. About these free pa tents there will be more to say farther on. The expanding impulse to acquire public land is visible in the record of applications of all classes, 2307 in. August this year as compared with 499 in August last year, a proportion of nearly six to one. This high figure doesn’t hold true for the period from January 1 to August 31 inclusive. Nevertheless, an increase is noted; for this year during the first eight months the ap plications of all classes for public domain were 9469 covering 204,453 hectares, and last year during the same period they num bered 8384 covering 107,210 hectares. In actual land entailed the increase was ap proximately. double. A forthcoming article in the Journal on customary laws of the llocanos will pos sibly throw considerable light on that people’s participation in this homesteading movement. The change in the homestead law permitting the taking up of many dif ferent parcels by a single applicant may be a stimulus to legitimate homesteading, The Dotted but may someihe uottea thing e]sfi Swiss Homestead something to season a large potential plantation area by pep pering it with petty homestead claims, and thus cook the proverbial goose of companies organized for plantation enterprises. No Federal officer looks after the Unitea States public domain in the Philippines: administration is wholly left to the devices of the local government, which may not be entirely wise, but certainly is most generous confidence for Washington to repose in a distant and wayward territory. The net increase in applications for public land dur ing the first eight months of this year com pared to the same period of last year was 1085, as 2286 applications seem for one reason or another to have been rejected or cancelled. These rejected and cancelled ap plications covered 4872 hectares, leaving 97,242 as the net increase in hectarage covered by applications accepted. A table courteously furnished by the . bureau of lands enables a check to be made upon the partial and complete alienation of public domain in the Philippines from the date of organization of the bureau, July 26, 1904, to August 31 this year. During this period, applications of all clas ses numbered 178,387 and covered 2,984,247.5 hectares. But no less than 40,427 ap plications, covering 976,867.5 hectares, were rejected, and 7265 covering 109,808 aphectares were cancelled. The norm seems to be rejection or cancellation of one ap plication in five. There are 77,446 ap plications pending action. These 77,446 applications, of which 49,453 are homestead applications, and 19,901 are applications for free patents, cover an area of 1,262,802 hectares; and 100,000 Anxiety of families, it may be presumed, remain in Homesteaders anxiety about their claims, leases and purchases. During the 23 years the bureau has functioned, it has approved 32,165 applications for parcels of the public domain covering 474,565 hec tares, about one hectare in six of the area actually applied for. Among rejected and cancelled applications were 33,928 for homesteads and 7618 for free patents upon homesteads proved up—for which, under ordinary circumstances of security, patents should have automatically issued from the government, which is seen to be frequently unable to keep faith with the pioneers. The bureau and its pioneer patrons con stantly face the problem of the uncomple ted cadastral survey. The borders remain turbulent with disputes over possession or ownership of lands; the only wonder is that they are not more turbulent and the quar rels more sanguinary. Reverting to the question of free patents, a case now pending in the supreme court is up from Nueva Ecija and involves three lots in Cadastral Record No. 270, Case No. 10. The land involved was adjudged to be public land. In 1916 patents were issued to three settlers; their interests have now passed to a.third party; their patents, is sued in 1916, presumably ripened into the equivalent of a Torrens title a year later, or in 1917, during which they appear to have remained in possession of the land, where they planted and harvested crops and made sundry improvements, without anyone’s contesting their possession or the patents granted by the government. But last year a neighbor did file contest, on the ground that she had an old Spanish pos sessory title. This was ten years after the patents had been issued and nine years af ter they had been accepted as unassailable. The contestant won, too; the court of first Patents instance in Nueva Ecija proA 11 nounced the patents void, so Annuli ecl case reaches the supreme court upon appeal. The director of lands, requesting the at torney general to appear in the case as amicus curiae, thinks this: “If within the period of one year after the patent is registered in the office of the register of deeds the adverse claimant does not seek to contest on the ground of fraud the right of the patentee, then he is forever barred from questioning the rights of the said patentee, as the title issued by virtue of the patent duly registered shall then have acquired all the characteristics that determine the finality and indefeasibility of a Torrens title.” He subscribes to a decision of the high court (De los Reyes vs. Razon, 39 Phil. Rep. 480) “that if the land to which the patent relates was not in fact public, but was the property of a third person, the rights of that person have not been divested or affected by the issuance of the title... provided that the one year period... has not yet elapsed,” but he dissents “if the said period has already expired,” and he thinks this rule applies even if the declara tion of the land to be public land has been by administrative decision of the executive branch of the government—upon which point he reasons thus: “It is granted that no government of ficial, no matter how high his political posi tion may be, has the authority to divest valid outstanding private title by holding in an administrative decision that the land embraced within the homestead application is public, but once title is issued after due consideration of the rights involved in the case, even if administrative, the title shall be- incontestable if the aggrieved party by his own laches allows to elapse the period of one year fixed in the statute tvithout asserting his rights in the proper courts of justice. This must be so, otherwise the primordial purpose of the Torrens system, namely to quiet title to land forever, would be set at naught and merely illusory." The director believes reasonable vigilance required from holders of private titles to land. This and the question as a whole are before the high court for decision. It The Title is evi(lent that the Assurance Fund may the court be, in construing the home stead and registration acts, without gravely . infringing upon the rights of private pro perty? The lamentable situation due to incompletion of the cadastral survey of the archipelago is at once apparent when one confronts this question. May the court sustain the director’s opinion, and leave the holder of private title (if it can be esta blished beyond doubt) the right to indem nity from the assurance fund in the insular treasury? The balance in this assurance fund Aug ust 31 was P237,721.99, and in all the his tory of the operation of the Land Registra tion Act, only one claim had been allowed by the court and paid by the treasurer. However, another claim has now been al lowed by the court, in a decision written by Associate Justice James A. Ostrand and not yet published in the Official Gar zette. Ostrand quotes Section 101 of the Land Registration Act in full, from which the following is taken: “Any person who is wrongfully deprived of any land or any interest therein, with out negligence on his part, through the bringing of the same under the provisions of this Act or by the registration of any other person as the owner of such land, ... who by the provisions of this Act is barred or in any way precluded from bringing an action for the recovery of such land or interest therein, or claim upon the same, may bring in any court of competent jurisdiction an action against the Treas urer of the Philippine Archipelago for the recovery of damages to be paid out of the assurance fund.” The assurance fund is created by Sec tion 99 of the Land Registration Act: "one tenth of one per centum of the assessed •value of the real estate on the basis of the last assessment for municipal taxation” payable at the time of registration of the land. In the case just decided by the high court, application had been made to have private land registered in the name of a woman and her minor daughter, and the certificate of title was erroneously issued in the name of the woman alone, who after ward alienated the land through mortgage and sale. After coming of age the girl sued the various parties liable, including the insular treasurer. The lower court ab solved the treasurer (and another party) from the complaint and allowed judgment against the mother and the girl’s step father. The high court reversed this deci sion in so far as it absolved the treasurer: whatever portioi? of the damages, P25,000 (Continued on page 11) October, 192G THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 PROGRESS IN THE HOMESTEADING (Continued from page 9) with interest, cannot be collected from the stepfather and the mother’s estate, must, upon determination of this fact to the satisfaction of the court of first instance of the province, be paid by the treasurer from the assurance fund upon the court’s order. Edward Price Bell Unbosoms To England ******* Dean of London Correspondents Talks of Pacific Problems Editor’s Note.—Ordinarily, as all readers have observed, the Journal publishes no thing but original matter; and when it di gresses from this rule there is a paramount reason, for its main objective is to print in formatively and intelligently respecting the Philippines. In this instance, the reprint ing from the London Observer of that paper’s interview with Mr. Edward Price Bell, London man for more than twenty yeais of the Chicago Daily News, the paramount reason is obvious in the text: Mr. Bell has returned to London after his trip to Manila and other points in the Far East with ideas upon oriental and world problems bound to have the utmost weight tvhen he ex presses them, as he does fearlessly and fre quently. His oriental trip was in behalf of world peace; and in Manila his interviews were with Wood, Quezon and Osmcna, in Japan with Kato, Shidehara and Bancroft. The same problem still engrosses his atten tion. He writes “I’m enroute to France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany... world eco nomics’’. Through his pen and his public speaking, Mr. Bell is a national and interna tional power whose leadership guides many editors and widely influences American opinion. “I am very fond of the Japanese, and have every confidence that politically, so cially, economically, and ethically they are moving ■ in the right direction, I cannot escape the conclusion that if the Occident loses the friendship of those volcanically cradled islanders it will be the Occident’s fault. China, to my mind, is the most mov ing and appealing potentiality on this earth—a great country and a great people staggering towards the path of a great destiny. There, too, the Occident can build friendship or enmity as it likes. “The paramount interests of the Filipi nos, as well as those of the Americans:— those of the Orientals as well as those of the Occidentals—seem to me to require that the Stars and Stripes shall fly in the Phil ippines for a long time yet—how long, only the evolution of history can determine. The greatest word in the Pacific — indeed, in civilization—is the word equilibrium. In any form of listing there is danger. There is safety only in equilibrium; and America in the Philippines is a force for the equili brium of the Pacific and of the world”. Mr. Bell then went on to discuss domes tic concerns. He said:— “To say the least of prohibition, its suctl. cess is unproven. Our ‘Drys’ a j and ‘Wets’ are continually at And Drys each otheri and their «statis. tics’ are fearful and wonderful. When they come together with their alleged facts and figures, one is reminded of two heavy freight trains meeting head-on at top speed. There is debris all over the adjacent coun tryside. My opinion is that prohibition, if not eternally repugnant to normal, self-re liant, freedom-loving humanity, is hopeless ly premature. The point may not have direct bearing upon the Nueva Ecija case, and yet it may; for, the high court tampers in no way with the certificate of title issued, which, if the year of grace has elapsed, is the point the Director of Lands wishes fixed in respect to title by homestead patent. The case is R. G. No. 24597. The court sat in banc. “That some of the effects of alcohol are hideous no one will deny. But in America to-day it is not a question of alcohol or no alcohol; it is a question of abortive prohi bition or temperance. Although prohibi tion doubtless has done great good in some ways, it also has worked disastrously in the spheres of morals, health and politics. “As to war-debts, as I never have been able to believe that inter-allied war debts should be paid, so I never have been able to War believe they could be paid. They n kf strike me as a deplorable if not Debts dangerous world nuisance. I think they coHld be wiped out with nothing but advantage to all concerned, and it is an abiding faith with me that advancing economic intelligence finally will liquidate them. Who can imagine that in perhaps five or ten years from now anyone in a po sition of authority still will be so much in the dark as not to see that profitable international markets are to be preferred to the continuous passing of heavy credjts across frontiers? “As to Europe’s cry of Shylock at America, I think it were better hushed. “It has been said we got rich out of the Great War. We did not. Like most other countries, we had the wild night of inflation —despite the rigorous taxation policy of our Treasury—and the bad morning of defla tion. Our entire national machinery of production was thrown out of gear, and our industries passed through difficulties un precedented in their history. Our farm ers—50 per cent, of our people—are shaken to this day. “Referring to American prosperity, it is true, if we except the agriculturists, whose condition is only beginning to respond to the industrial boom, America is at the moment extraordinarily prosperous. But this is not war prosperity. It is not history-born. It is science-born. It is prosperity achieved by energy and intellect, advantaged by readily accessible raw materials and a wide, protected, high-consumption home market. “Up-to-date American business directors will not look at the idea of low wages, for low wages spell business decline and threaten social instability. Capitalism in America is justifying itself by the only way possible—by universalising itself. So cialism fails. Why? Because it will not produce wealth. Of what avail is it to preach wealth diffusion while producing no wealth to diffuse?” Discussing Senator Borah and British opinion, Mr. Bell said: “This favorite son of Idaho, a north-western State with a poSenator Potion about one-seventh that Borah’s t’le c’ty Chicago, appears p. to get more for his money when rlace he steps on a foreign weighing machine than when he steps on one at home. Whatever his merits in American politics—and he is supposed to have some— Senator Borah is not addicted to felicitous international manners. If I might do so, with full respect, I should call him-a rug ged, alert, ambitious patriotic, obstinate, parochial, who always goes down with his colours nailed to the mast, but who always goes down. “He may have in him the raw stuff of greatness. His compatriots are sympathe tically expectant, if not excessively op timistic. Borah is a considerable figure, but scarcely United States, and I should venture to counsel Britons and .other distant observers not to magnify him, even when he knows just what he is driving at, as he does not seem to have known in his recent initiative relative to certain supposed claims of America against Britain arising out of the war. “From old British friends I have had many letters revealing painful emotions due to Borah. These letters are not surpris ing, but really nothing has happened to show that Borah is unfriendly to Britain, and if he were he would have small promise of getting far with his animosity”. “He is Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate?”. “Yes, by seniority”. “He is much in the news.” “Decidedly. But neither power nor wis dom is invariably conspicuous in the news”. “He is out for the Presidency?” “I believe so. Most Americans are. But Borah as President, to entertain a more or less remote possibility, doubtless would be a very different man from Borah as vote hunting politician. “In one of my .recent letters from Eng land occurs this question: ‘What is wrong with England from the American point of view to-day?’ I would reply, having re Love Of eard to t*ie sense of the writer, ‘Nothing.’ Three years’ ex perience over the length and breadth of the land on and off the platform convinces me that the American people never before admired and loved England as they admire and love her to-day. To speak on any representative American platform since the General Strike of that magnifi cent fight of that magnificent people for sanity in Government has been to bring the audience cheering to its feet. “Some of us have grown grey fighting for British-American solidarity—and we have not fought in vain. Great Britain has her enemies in the United States, and she doubtless long will have them, for na tionalistic resentments die hard, but the great body of American citizens is for the British peoples and their institutions up to the hilt. We want British-American solidarity in the Atlantic and in the Pacific and we want this solidarity to mean friend ship and a square deal to every other people. “There is one thing in the world greater than British-American solidarity, and just one, what the late Viscount Kato, of Japan, described in a talk with myself as a single human sodality. We want no so-called Nordic bloc nor a Latin bloc, nor opposing and potentially warlike blocs of colour. We want justice for all humanity, and the set tled peace which can come only through such justice. “That the Americans are against en tanglements which entangle, there is no shadow of doubt. They are against any form of super-State. They are against all tut inevitable encroachment upon the rights of the American States by their own Fede ral Government. What does this mean? It means that the American people intend to preserve their Home Rule, to preserve it not only against international centrali sation, but just as far as practicable against domestic centralisation. “International co-operation, so far as America is to have a part in it, must hold Solidarity For
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