America to blame
Media
Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal
- Title
- America to blame
- Language
- English
- Source
- The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 6 (Issue No.10) October 1926
- Year
- 1926
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- 10 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1926 EDITORIAL OFFICERS American Chamber of Commerce 14 CALLE PINPIN P. O. Box 1638 Telephone 1156 SLAYING THE BANK BILL The Journal commends Senator Villanueva and his committee for reporting unfavorably the bill attacking banks not incorporated in the Philippines, but only licensed and doing business here as world banking institutions. The bill would have prohibited such banks from doing a deposit business, but the committee’s report showed this to be unfair: the international banks, it seems, have, among the five of them, a capital investment in the islands- of nearly P70,000,000; and they keep up their legal reserves; and they go in times of stress to the aid of local banks, for the selfish benefit of banking as a whole and the financial reputation of Ma nila. They are well managed, affiliated throughout the world, and are eminently secure repositories for money; so the committee is in favor of encouraging them, and getting more capital to work in the islands instead of less. This is commendable. The bill was, of course, a sterile pullet destined for the axe anyway, but it is gratifying for the coup de grace to be given in the Legislature and immediately, inste’ad of letting the forlorn creature batten upon oratory, to die finally at Malacanang. It is a notable instance of not passing the buck. AMERICA TO BLAME We are among those believing that most of the difficulties America encounters in the Philippines are of her own making. Among these must be reckoned the difficulties with the Legis lature. Critics often lose sight of the fact that this body is compelled, by law of Congress, to meet each year for 100 working days, which is more than one working day in three; and that the members’ salaries of $6,000 annually bear the approval of an American chief executive and the tacit approval of Congress it self. Now the Legislature has a most difficult struggle with this absurdity. There can be no possible excuse for daily meetings during more than a third of the working year, for there is n’t a thing to be done. If much were done, some of it would be odious and harmful. The leaders (as the record of comparatively few laws passed will show) try their best to do nothing—to loaf the time away harmlessly. They can’t quite succeed, so they divert the bubbling energies of the restless members into the stream of executive criticism and contention. Of course, *no little bitterness gets into all this, and we censure and deplore it; but the fact remains that while it goes on, new and perhaps obnoxious legislation is not going on the statute books. Yet it happens that'every now and then, when the Legislature has apparently settled into innocuous desuetude, one Manila editor or another begins checking up and comes out with -a glaring an nouncement that hardly any bills have reached the governor g?neral. Though nothing could be more desirable, the paucity of bills passed is cited as a legislative dereliction; and just the op posite is usually the actual case. The real fault is having the Legislature meet so often and for such prolonged sessions. Another fault is that of the ex orbitant salaries. Let us compare with the States. Take Okla homa fox* example, the Journal editor’s State. While it was a territory it had a small legislature meeting every second year for thirty days, the members receiving three dollars a day. Now that it is a wealthy State, the Legislature meets every second year1 for sixty days, the members receiving eight dollars a day. The maximum session they are allowed is one hundred days, but after sixty days they go on half pay, four dollars per. In other words, the public remains in power over them; and here in the Philippines, by America’s own contriving, the Legislature is noto riously in power over the public. But when it comes to placing the blame, whose fault is it? No one’s but our own. GREATER CONFIDENCE APPARENT There seems to be an increased feeling of confidence that better times are ahead for the Philippines, and that money will flow this way. This confidence we believe well founded, for this reason: the news incident to the Thompson investigation has made the resources of the United States public domain in these islands familiar knowledge at home, the opportunities are known. Add to this the fact that America is burdened with idle money, the dollar cheaper than a good gold dollar ever was before. This money, for the good of that employed at home, must be employed abroad. Foreign government bonds no longer attract, at least they do not attract sufficiently, and the alternative is overseas— industrials, either domestic, such as Philippine industrials, or foreign, or both. The domestic industrial security is preferable, of course; the Philippines are the only large domestic territory left; they are ample, so the means will be found of putting money to work here. So long as development, the employment of new capital in new or expanded ventures, merely concerned the Phil ippines, there was not much hope; but now that it concerns Amer ica herself more than the islands, confidence and hope are war ranted and worthwhile. WORK VERSUS SCHOOL Agripino Padilla, a tenant on Percy A. Hill’s plantation at Munoz, Nueva Ecija, harvested from his fields last yeai’ 571 cavans of palay. Seed palay was deducted and returned to Hill. The remainder of the crop was then equally divided between Hill and Padilla; and Padilla, selling his share, received P1285 for it. His rice fields brought him more than P100 a month for the whole year, but he had much time after threshing and when the next, crop had been stuck in the paddies, to earn money on the s’deOr if he preferred to loaf—hunt, fish, or what not—he could well afford the luxury of this personal freedom. Hunting is good in his vicinity. For good fishing he might have to go farther. One year with another he should have at least two carabaos to sell, unless he kept them so as to take on more land, in which case he would be risking the additional capital in expectation of more gain than the worth of the animals on the market. Either way, his income was not confined last year to the returns from the rice alone. A garden, some pigs and fowls minimized his living expense. He lives near the primary schcol. Padilla produced rice valued at P2570, a fact to be borne in mind and compared with the view of the schoolmen (just expres sed again in the yearly report of the director of education), that the schools fit youth for life—fit, that is, our peasant youth for solving their abiding problem, the getting of a livelihood. They . in no way fit boys and girls for this when they take them beyond reading, writing and ciphering in other than the specialized rural school or the industrial urban school. They in fact unfit them. Padilla’s crop, value P2570, was new wealth won from the soil by dignified and dignifying toil. But economically its measure is not P2570; this is what society gives for it as a matter of con- . venience, Its true worth is the labor for which it may be ex changed : production of it made employment of that much more labor possible. And unless this labor is forthcoming, Padilla’s rice is not forthcoming. Compare, then, to ascertain whether the islands are profiting from the intermediate and high schools, the yearly earnings of their graduates with the yearly earnings of Padilla. Houseboys, messengers, petty clerks, lowly dependents lowly paid—how many years of menial indignity must each ex change for Padilla’s one season’s rice crop?
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