The extent of the work which the Commission has done in organizing civil governments in towns and provinces is considerable, but its scope and effect may easily be exaggerated by those not fully acquainted with the situation. Twenty-seven provinces have been organized under the general provincial act; but it has not been possible to fill the important office of supervisor in eight or nine of them because a supervisor must be a civil engineer. We have sent to America for competent persons, whose arrival we look for this month. As the supervisor is one of the three members of the governing provincial board, his absence necessarily cripples the administration. Of the 27 provinces organized, four, possibly five and small parts of two others in which armed insurrection continues, will remain under the executive jurisdiction of the military governor and commanding general. There are 16 provinces or districts in which there is entire freedom from insurrection which the Commission has not had time to organize. Of the unorganized provinces and districts, including Mindoro and Paragua, the latter just occupied by the army, there are four that are not ready for civil government. In the organized provinces nearly all the towns have been organized under the municipal code; and some towns have been similarly organized in unorganized provinces. It was not supposed that either the municipal code or the provincial government act would form perfect governments, though it was possible to make the former much more complete than the latter, for there had been two experiments in municipal government under the administration of General Otis and General MacArthur before the Commission began its legislative work. The provincial government act was tentative. The result of the southern trip of the Commission was a substantial amendment and there will doubtless be others. Government is a practical, not a theoretical, problem; and the successful application of a new system to a people like this must be brought about by observing closely the operation of simple laws and making changes or additions as experience shows their necessity. The enactment of the law in its first form and appointments under it are but one of several steps in a successful organization.

The conditions under which the municipal and provincial governments of the Islands are to have their first real test are trying. The four years' war has pauperized many, and its indirect effect in destroying the habits of industry of those who have been prevented from working in the fields, or who have been leading the irresponsible life of guerrillas is even more disastrous. Not only war, but also the death from disease of a large percentage of the carabaos which are indispensable to the cultivation of rice and are greatly needed in all agriculture, has largely reduced the acreage of rice and other staple products. Then the pest of locusts has been very severe. In one province, and perhaps more, gaunt famine may have to be reckoned with. Poverty and suffering in a country where ladronism has always existed are sure to make ladrones.

With the change made to-day, the civil governments must prepare to stand alone and not depend on the army to police the provinces and towns. The concentration of the army in larger garrisons where, in cases of emergency only, they can be called on to assist the local police may be expected; but the people must be enabled by organization of native police under proper and reliable commanders to defend themselves against the turbulent and vicious of their own communities.

The withdrawal of the army from the discharge of quasi civil duties of police will be accompanied also by the ceasing of the jurisdiction of military commissions to try ordinary criminal cases. They have been most useful in punishing and repressing crime. We have enacted a judiciary law and appointed judges under it who will succeed to this work. But the adoption of a new civil code of procedure, a new criminal code and code of procedure, all of which are ready, may be delayed somewhat by the needed public discussion of them. Until they are all adopted, we shall not feel that the chief step has been taken toward securing the blessings of civil liberty to the people of the pacified provinces, the protection of life, liberty and property.

The difficulties of official communication between provinces on the sea and between towns of the same province similarly situated must be met by a properly organized fleet of small steamers or launches which shall, at the same time, assist in the revenue or postal service. Provincial governments, in many cases without such means of communicating with their numerous towns, are greatly impeded in their functions.

Congress, in its wisdom, has delayed until its next session provision for the sale of public lands, of mining rights and the granting of franchises. All are necessary to give the country the benefit of American and foreign enterprise and the opportunity of lucrative labor to the people. Commercial railroads, street railroads, mortgage-loan companies or land banks and steamship companies only await Government sanction to spring into being. These may remedy the poverty and suffering that a patient people have now to bear.

The school system is hardly begun as an organized machine. One thousand American teachers will arrive in the next three months. They must not only teach English in the schools, but they must teach the Filipino teachers. Schoolhouses are yet to be built; schoolrooms are yet to be equipped. Our most satisfactory ground for hope of success in our whole work is in the eagerness with which the Philippine people, even the humblest, seek for education.

Then there is another kind of education of adults to which we look with confidence. It is that which comes from observation of the methods by which Americans in office discharge their duties. Upon Americans who accept office under the civil government is imposed the responsibility of reaching the highest American standard of official duty. Whenever an American fails; whenever he allows himself to use his official position for private ends, even though it does not involve actual defalcation or the stealing of public property or money, he is recreant to his trust in a far higher degree than he would be were he to commit the same offense in a similar office at home. Here he is the representative of the great Republic among a people untutored in the methods of free and honest government, and in so far as he fails in his duty, he vindicates the objection of those who have forcibly resisted our taking control of these Islands and weakens the claim we make that we are here to secure good government for the Philippines.

The operation of the civil-service Act and the rules adopted for its enforcement have been the subject of some criticism; but I think that when they are fully understood, and when the Filipino, in seeking a position in executive offices where English is the only language spoken, fits himself, as he will with his aptness for learning languages, in English, he will have nothing to complain of either in the justice of the

examination and its marking or in the equality of salaries between him and Americans doing the same work. The civil-service Act is the bulwark of honesty and efficiency in the government. It avoids the most marked evil of American politics, the spoils system. Without it success in solving our problem would be entirely impossible. Complaints of its severity and its unfortunate operation in individual instances may give plausibility to attack upon it, but those who are responsible for appointments can not be blinded to the fact that its preservation is absolutely essential to the welfare of these Islands.

If I have understood the decision of the Supreme Court in the recent so-called Porto Rico cases, the question of what duties shall be levied on imports into these Islands from the United States and on exports from these Islands into the United States is committed to the discretion of Congress. Without assuming to express an opinion on the muchmooted issue of constitutional law involved, I venture to say that the result is most beneficial to the people of these Islands. It seems to me that a decision that the same tariff was in force in these Islands as in the United States, and must always be so, would have been detrimental to the interests of the Islands. They are 7,000 miles from the coast of the United States. The conditions prevailing in them are as different as possible from those in the United States. The application to them of a high protective tariff carefully prepared to meet trade and the manufacturing conditions in the United States would have been a great hardship. It is true that to sugar and tobacco planters would have been opened a fine market, but it would have greatly reduced all trade between the Philippines and China and other oriental countries and all European countries, and it would have necessitated a heavy internal tax to pay the expenses of the central government. Now the people may reasonably entertain the hope that Congress will give them a tariff here suited to the best development of business in the Islands, and may infer from the liberal treatment accorded in its legislation to Porto Rican products imported into the United States that Philippine products will have equally favorable consideration.

The finances of the insular government are at present in a satisfactory condition, though changes in laws made or about to be made may affect them considerably. There is now in the insular treasury a sum of money exceeding $3,700,000 in gold unappropriated. The engineers in the Manila harbor work have been authorized to make contracts involving a liability of $2,000,000 beyond the $1,000,000 already appropriated, but this is the only liability of the government and it will not accrue for two years at least. The insular income, which is now about $10,000,000, gold, a year, is likely to be reduced more than $1,000,000 by the provision of the provincial act which applies the proceeds of the internal-revenue taxes to the support of the provincial governments. Moreover, a new customs tariff is soon to be put in force, the immediate result of which may be to reduce the total amount of duties collected. It reduces the import tax on necessities and increases it on luxuries and roughly approximates, as nearly as a tariff of specific duties can, to a purely revenue tariff of 25 per cent ad valorem. In addition to this, the cost of the insular government is bound to increase as the establishment of peace and civil government is extended through the Archipelago and the skeleton bureaus and departments now recognized in the law are enlarged and given a normal usefulness. Still the increase of business due to returning

peace and prosperity will doubtless keep pace with the needs of the government.

It

The conduct of the civil and military branches of a military government under independent hands is necessarily a delicate matter. depends, as the President in his instructions says, upon the fullest cooperation between the military and the civil arms, and I am glad to be able to say that I believe that there will be the same cooperation in the future as there has been in the past; that the possible friction which may arise between the subordinates of the respective arms will have no encouragement from those in whom is the ultimate responsibility. There is work enough and to spare for all who are concerned in the regeneration of these Islands.

The burden of the responsibility which, by taking the oath this day administered to me, I assume, I shall not dwell upon, except to say that no one, I think, realizes it more keenly than I do. While I am profoundly grateful to the President of the United States for the personal trust he has expressed in appointing me to this high office, it is with no exultant spirit of confidence that I take up the new duties and new task assigned to me. I must rely, as I do, upon the cooperation, energy, ability and fidelity to their trust of those with whom I am to share the responsibility now to be presented, upon the sympathetic and patriotic patience of those educated Filipino people who have already rendered us such tremendous aid, and upon the consciousness that earnest effort and honest purpose, with a saving of common sense, have in the past solved problems as new, as threatening and as difficult as the one before us.

The high and sacred obligation to give protection for property and life, civil and religious freedom, and wise and unselfish guidance in the paths of peace and prosperity to all the people of the Philippine Islands is charged upon us, his representatives, by the President of the United States. May we not be recreant to this charge which, he truly says, concerns the honor and conscience of our country. He expresses the firm hope that through our "labors all the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands may come to look back with gratitude to the day when God gave victory to American arms at Manila and set their land under the sovereignty and protection of the people of the United States." God grant that in spite of all the trials and perplexities, the disappointments and difficulties, with which we are sure to be confronted, we may live to see this fervent hope made a living fact in the hearts of a patriotic people linked within the indissoluble ties of affection to our common and beloved country.

APPENDIX E.

REPORTS OF THE CIVIL-SERVICE BOARD TO THE CIVIL

GOVERNOR.

Hon. W. H. TAFT,

PHILIPPINE CIVIL-SERVICE BOARD,
Manila, August 23, 1901.

Civil Governor of the Philippine Islands, Manila.

SIR: In compliance with your instructions of the 30th ultimo, received through the executive secretary, the board has the honor to submit the following supplementary report, together with its report of February 7, 1901, showing the operations of the board from its organization on September 26, 1900, to the close of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1901. In the preparation of this report the board has availed itself of the information submitted to the military governor in its report of May 31, 1901.

In its report submitted on February 7, last, the board referred, among other things, to the work of preparing civil-service rules and the manual of information relative to the Philippine civil service, and stated that the time of the board would be taken up during the succeeding few months in the preparation of suitable examinations, the answering of correspondence and personal inquiries, interpretations of the act and rules and numerous details incident to their application to the service. The board took occasion to state that all of this work would require careful study and adjustment to carry into effect the practical methods authorized by the civil-service act.

Since the submission of its report in February the board has had printed for distribution to applicants and others 10,000 copies of the manual of information relative to the service, 2,000 copies of its report, and a supply of application blanks, all of which were printed in both English and Spanish. Suitable forms have also been prepared for the use of the board in the transaction of business.

The demand for information relative to the Philippine civil service has been very great on the part of the Filipinos and Americans in these Islands, while a large supply of manuals and application blanks was forwarded to the United States Civil Service Commission for the information of applicants and others in the United States.

The first examinations of the board were announced for March 28, 29, and 30, but it was found necessary, on account of the large number of applicants, to continue the examinations several days in April. When these examinations were announced the board informed the heads of different departments and offices that in accordance with the requirements of section 25 of the civil-service act positions held by tem