File:The Philippine problem 1898-1913 (1913) (14782554142).jpg

Identifier: philippineproble00cham (find matches)
Title: The Philippine problem 1898-1913
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Chamberlin, Frederick Carleton, b. 1870
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Publisher: Boston, Little, Brown, and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ht that it couldbe averted, improved, or mitigated. A nativeTagalog seldom employed Why .^— about thefirst and most incessant word with the young-est American children; and in originality, inresourcefulness, in independence, in progressive-ness, in shrewdness, in the power to invent, thedesire to hunt causes and effects, the power ofdeduction, the mind of the Anglo-Saxon boy offive is immeasurably more advanced than wasthe brain of the average Tagalog man of ma-ture age. Speaking of the latter as a class, hehad none of these faculties in action. With a forked stick or root for a plow, theTagalog would wade about up to his knees in hisrice paddy by the hour, perfectly contented.When the harvest came, the women would godown into the same mud and with rude sicklescut the crop and thresh it with their bare feet. A glance about one of the small steamers 1 See Census P. I., vol. I, pp. 499 et seq., for various high au-thorities upon most of my statements of Tagalog characteris-tics. F. C.
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>I—I H1-1 U THE PROBLEM IN 1898 43 that plied around Manila would have shown tothe quick intelligence the degree of civilizationwhich the bulk of the Tagalogs had attained.The following account which I wrote in theearly days seems still to tell the tale with care-ful accuracy.^ Many, in fact the majority, of passengers,sat on the deck, usually on their heels, in theOriental fashion. Most of the women weresmoking. Others were chewing betel nut withirregular teeth that were already reddened orblackened with the habit. Poor teeth werealmost universal. The odors aboard would have sickened aperson of weak stomach; and had I not foughtthe tendency as hard as I could, I should surelyhave succumbed. When the boat had started,I pushed as far forward as possible and thusobtained some relief. There was an incessantjabber. The females dressed about alike.Within six feet of me stood a woman of aboutthe average size, five feet tall, weighing perhapsone hundred pounds. She wore silver ear-rings

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