as to the Filipino teachers about as those who are best informed understand them. In his report to the general superintendent for the current year he says:

"The native teacher in the province is a representative of the better class of Filipinos. He is invariably welldressed, courteous, and accommodating, and has the respect of the people. From the American point of view, he is not, however, competent to regulate a school, nor well qualified by nature to be genuinely educated. He lacks energy, and can not successfully maintain a daily routine of work. He is inclined to be slack in matters of punctuality, and sees no special reason for exerting himself to be on time in the morning at the opening of the daily school session, nor of maintaining of strict supervision of the pupils' work when once he has taken his place in the schoolroom. To do the same thing every day, and to try hard to do it better each successive day, is something that the Filipino teacher has not yet learned to appreciate. He is not ambitious to succeed; that is, a very small success seems sufficient to satisfy him, and he is unwilling to put himself to serious inconvenience in order to improve his education and make his services valuable.

"The above statement will, as a rule, hold good; but there are notable exceptions, and the number of these has been steadily increasing during the three years of American schools. The example set by a good American teacher in controlling and teaching a school has taught the Filipino more than his daily lesson in English and arithmetic. The object-lesson thus furnished is being learned slowly, but without doubt surely. The native teacher has gained something of perspective, and, in a degree, has succeeded in being able to think more than one thing at a time. This part of his education, which has come seemingly without volition and unconsciously, is the most valuable thing the American schools have given him. There was a time when he thought it not inappropriate to take his seat during the entire session, to ignore pupils not reciting, to smoke cigarettes before the class

during school hours, to pay no attention whatever to the roll-call, and, finally, to pass unnoticed the entire subject of schoolroom decorum and discipline.

"From the purely academic point of view, it will be some years before the provincial teacher can achieve much. The Filipino who has during the last three years reached the age of twenty-five, passed the formative period of his life during a time of turmoil. He has not had a fair chance, and it is perhaps true that he will never readjust himself completely to the new régime. There are native teachers in this division to whom this does not applyteachers who have fallen quickly and easily into the routine of the present system of schools, and who are reliable, energetic, and intelligent, but their number is small. An extended period of education is yet necessary, if the native teaching force is ever to be brought to that stage of efficiency which will enable them to take the place of the American teachers. This is true from every point of view, whether we consider scholarship, power to assume responsibility, practical knowledge of schoolroom discipline, courage to face opposition, or ability to take the initiative in matters connected with the improvement of the schools."

Act No. 854 provides for sending a number of students to America each year for a four years' course of study in some American institution. The Bill carries. an appropriation of $72,000. The first party was sent in October, and is now in the United States. "Appointees must be natives of the Philippine Islands, not less than sixteen nor more than twenty-one years of age." After severe physical examinations, the student must take the oath of allegiance to the government of the United States, and sign an agreement to attend to such institution as may be designated by the civil governor for four years, obeying its rules and faithfully pursuing its course of study, unless formally released by the civil governor. He further promises to return to

CHAPTER XIII.

FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS.

SPAIN worked the plantation theory of colonial government. That theory left little scope for programs of improvement. For three centuries she had her own unhindered way in an Archipelago of unusual beauty and almost unequaled fertility; and at the end of that period. an inadequate school system, and that poorly and inefficiently worked, waterworks in the capital city (where Spaniards chiefly lived), and one short railway of less than one hundred and fifty miles, constituted the sum total of all that might by any kind of courtesy be called large improvements of a public character.

Aside from the essentially vicious theory of colonial government which hampered all attempts to benefit the colony, the almost universal official corruption which reigned in all departments was the most powerful cause contributing to the policy of neglect. Public funds went. to enrich greedy public officials, rather than to improve harbors, build schoolhouses, make roads, and improve the sanitation of pest-ridden cities. A governor-general who did not "clean up" at least a quarter of a million dollars in a three or five year incumbency of the post was considered honest and public-spirited. A few, like General Despujol, were incorruptible. But Despujol incurred friar hatred for his unbending uprightness, and was dismissed by the influence of friar officials after eighteen

years of the most horrest and sympathetic government the Filipinos had known for two centuries.

Corruption, which managed to flourish in Manila with increasing difficulty, fattened unhindered in remote provinces. Taxes could be paid in crops. Officials were permitted to trade openly until 1844. They would take rice or other crops at their own price, and sell it at current rates, pocketing often from fifty to five hundred per cent on the transaction The rice was covered into the treasury at the scandalously low rate which the oppressed cultivator was bullied into accepting on pain of false arrest or deportation on charges concocted by the official who was also the judge. Since the Royal Decree of 1844 forbidding trading on the part of provincial officials, it has gone on less openly, and some of its worst features have been eliminated; but it has always been possible to set up a dummy man to act for the official, and attain much the same ends through more circuitous channels. If Manila officials became troublesome and threatened exposure, the alcalde well knew the one means of satisfying the "lidless watcher of the public weal." A small percentage of his ill-gotten gains would make his way smooth again until another inspection came due. Meantime he would give the screws another twist, and be ready. Funds raised for road-building, for education, for construction of bridges over streams which kept the products of fertile provinces from markets, and for needed sanitation in centers of population ravaged from time to time by awful epidemics of cholera or smallpox, were stolen under one pretext or another, until ladronism or highway robbery as a profession grew up among the people as their only defense against official exactions and spoliation. All improvements were delayed, and people trailed on foot from town to town over mud-tracks called roads, and wretched