No one disputes that rice is the one staple food of the Islands-its life's prime necessity. No one can dispute that the annual rice crop is the fruit, never of great planters' investments, but always of the aggregate efforts of the poor. And yet, thanks to Law No. 2874 and the spirit that bred it, tens of thousands of poor men's title-cases to-day await adjustment, the once-good Land Office, crippled in men, money and equipment, is years behind its work, and the all-important cadastral survey, to put its case in a single word, is hamstrung.

The attitude of the autonomized Philippine Government on such matters, and the degree of responsibility that it accepts, may most authoritatively be gathered from a statement of the Director of the Bureau of Lands, Mr. Jorge B. Vargas himself, made public in August, 1923:

It is true that the officers and agents of the Bureau of Lands are now vested with police authority over the . . . public lands. .. [but] it should be remembered . . . that Blas Ramos is one only of a large number of public land applicants, of which there were in the first of the month 22,591 in Nueva Ecija alone, and a total of 137,554 throughout the Philippine Islands. If the Bureau of Lands is expected to give police protection to all these applicants against encroachments of so-called land-grabbers . . . who may be minded to take the law into their own hands. . . it will be obviously necessary to place guards on the lots applied for by these 137,000 applicants, a requirement which is absurdly impossible for the Government of the Philippine Islands, let alone the Bureau of Lands to meet.

Chapter VI

THE SPIRIT OF '76

THE Province of Nueva Ecija is probably the best rice country in the Philippines. With full utilization of its natural water resources, it could double its present production. Some score of sizable rivers run unutilized in the Province to-day, of which the Talavera alone could irrigate, if put in complete harness, 10,000 hectares of rice land.

These facts, some seven years ago, set Kilmer Moe, American Superintendent of Muñoz Agricultural School, to thinking. For almost all the small streams in the then homestead country had already been used, and if more land was to be profitably cultivated more water was essential. Mr. Moe, attacking the problem single-handed, made the preliminary studies and worked out a plan.

No sooner did Mr. Moe reveal his scheme, however, than resistance confronted him. The people knew nothing of river control had never seen it. Therefore the professional troublemaker found in the very words an opportunity.

"Again these terrible American exploiters are after our fair Philippines!" they told the open-mouthed taos. "They want them for their Trusts. Trusts are bands of devil-monsters that first seize the people's property and then eat the people up. Now they plan to charm this river and make it rush out of its bed, destroy all in its path and cover the whole of central Luzon deep with dry stones.

"Then none of you can raise rice, ever again, and you all will starve.

"But I will defend you! Give me, then, your name on this petition. I will write your name and you will make your mark.

"Give me, also, fifty pesos, paying down what you have, and holding the rest as a loan from me till you pay all. When all the barrio people have done this, I will take the paper and carry it to Governor-General Harrison and beg him, for you, that he forbid the wicked American to commit such a crime."

So the people signed. And in this way one "politico" alone, it is affirmed, was enabled to hold back the irrigation work for eighteen months, pending "investigation and report."

However, in the end the wicked American wore delays and opposition down. Living with the thing day and night, he got the money released, got a good engineer appointed and, as soon as the cadastral survey was completed, saw to it that the land to be redeemed was fairly portioned out.

Then the engineer, another American, Mr. Baughman, pushed forward the work. At last the dam was done. The head-gates, flumes and syphons were finished. The canals, the intake also; and the power site, where the channel takes a fifty-foot drop, giving power enough to mill the whole crop of the valley. All these parts and more also had been completed, and about half the entire scheme was in active operation by early 1923.

Only simple routine tasks, such as could easily be finished in advance of that current agricultural year, that is, by July, 1923, remained to be done in order to round out the system. Feeling, therefore, that his real work here was accomplished, Mr. Baughman now stepped aside in favour of a Filipino Government engineer.

In March, 1924-eight months later-the only farmers of that new region who had irrigation water to grow rice were those to whom Mr. Baughman, before he resigned the reins, had already delivered it.

Yet, in this case, as in many a similar one in other fields, no real lack of good will should be assumed, but rather, passivity, lack of initiative, of energy, and of power of applying book-learning to practical problems.

The first attitude of the average Filipino toward new con

structive projects is an inclination to place every difficulty in their way. Then, when the project nevertheless begins to operate and he sees that it is good, he says in effect:

"This looks easy. I will take it over-and with it, the credit."

Which having done, he hands it on to some pariente office boy, and himself returns to his steady business of "politics."

The Province of Nueva Ecija now produces annually well over 8,000,000 bushels of rice, main food of the Islands, and, were its resources properly handled, could easily double that production. The Talavera Irrigation Project, even in its present partial development, has added many times its cost to the value of the lands irrigated. But the Philippine Islands in the calendar year of 1923 imported about 2,462,000 bushels of rice, valued at $3,706,431-a very serious outflow of cash from a poor country in vital need of development.

Much as one may deprecate saying it, no examination of the facts to-day will discredit the general statement that whatever has been done for the advancement of the Filipino people in the last quarter century has been done by America, Americans and Filipinos under American guidance. Whatever has been done to their harm, loss and oppression has been done by the Filipino himself, unguided.

The American frontiersman would laugh at the idea of himself as an altruist. But many of the pictures in which you persistently find him an actor tell their own tale. And once and again, out of the Malay mass a figure appears that doubly weds him to his fate; some simple, uncontaminated tao, showing, against oppressors incomparably worse than was ever that poor mad old German, King George the Third, our very own Spirit of '76. Blas Ramos is one of these.

As for Diego Tecson,' perhaps he was sent into this world. for the special encouragement of such as would grow faint

1 The name is here changed for his protection. But the narrative in no other way departs from fact.

hearted as to the people for whom he stands. I personally know the man and his story. I have sat in his house and eaten his salt.

Diego Tecson was the son of a poor tao. He may be fiftythree or four years old by now. In the Spanish days before we came, he somehow got a scrap of learning-got it against all odds, as men will everywhere, when the spirit wills.

Then, in 1902, American schools having opened, Diego began the identical process by which so many of our own best men have worked their upward way. He first earned a bit of money, then went to school for a few months of desperate grind, telescoping grades as fast as he could while the coin would last to keep him alive. Again and yet again he repeated the process. Until, when he had conquered a kind of English, he was offered, as "temporary teacher," a salary of seven dollars and a half a month. Out of this he lived and saved until he had accumulated fifty dollars.

Then he went for a year to the High School of his Province, allowing himself five dollars monthly-four dollars and a half for board, fifty cents for laundry, pencils, etc. At the end of each month just five cents remained out of his self-allotted dole.

And so he went on, first teaching for pay, saving every copper he could spare, then studying at the high school, spending never a copper he could save.

Until, in 1906, Diego's father intervened. "I want you to marry, my son," said he. "You have studied enough. Now you shall settle down to steady teaching. And when you have laid by sufficient money you and I will go homesteading, according to this new American law. Then we shall live as free men, and your children will grow up unafraid, in prosperity."

So Diego married-married a good, wise girl who had also some schooling from the Americans. And then he took his little wife and went away up to the borders of the New Country to teach public school.