ishing facts in the Philippines is how relatively few of the student class are ever seen smoking. These tremendously earnest young people seem determined to do nothing that will injure their bodies or minds. All they need is a hint that tobacco is injurious and they will have none of it. This abstinence on the part of the students indicates that the fight against tobacco may not be as hopeless as it seems. In the meantime everything possible ought to be done to make the working conditions of tobacco factories as healthful and as wholesome as possible.

While problems connected with factories are not yet serious outside of Manila, great injustice has been done in all parts of the Islands to agricultural laborers and to house servants. The public conscience has not yet become awakened to this injustice. Matters are so infinitely much better than they were in Spanish times that people are inclined to regard them as ideal. In truth the ancient feudal system, known in Spanish as casiquism, still exists in modified form among ignorant people in all the provinces. The so-called tao class are so accustomed to it that they want nothing else—they feel unsafe unless thay may throw the responsibility for their economic welfare on the shoulders of some man whom they regard as more intelligent than they are. Where laborers are too ignorant to check up their own accounts, the owner keeps all the books and gets rich, while his laborers get only a bare subsistence-they expect no more. Agitation can do little to remedy this condition. Universal education is the only cure. As education progresses the last vestiges of casiquism will fade away. Meanwhile the Church can champion the victims of unusual hardship, and can demand the best possible educational and religious training for the children of those who toil. Innumerable house servants, men as well as women, are being held to their tasks by the fact that their employers have loaned them money, and the servants imagine that they are legally bound to work off the debt or go to jail, just as they had to do in Spanish times. Christians must become sensitive to the essential immorality of making virtual slaves

out of servants by loaning them money, even though the servants desire it.

The question of child labor in homes and on farms needs to be brought to the consciences of the Filipino people. "Go to any home and you will see a boy or girl doing some labor he or she ought not to do; go to the provinces and you will see girls remarkably retarded in growth by the fact that they must carry heavy loads, such as jars of water too large for them, or great baskets full of vegetables; and you will see the same little girls working in the kitchen all day long. In the fields you will see boys of eight, nine, or ten years of age behind heavy plows. Many of the children of the Philippines are working ten or fifteen hours a day." When children have come to be regarded as the most important product in the nation, there will be no more sacrificing of their welfare to make money for their parents or masters.

4

The last moral reform which we will consider in this long and necessarily sketchy chapter, is that relating to corruption in politics. Filipinos have, as Dean Bocobo has so effectively pointed out, imitated American ways with too little discrimination. One of the bad American practices which has had too many imitators is that of selling votes. Fortunately the young generation of Filipinos is imitating the good American custom of treating these corruptors of the ballot to pitiless exposure. Miss Maria Lanzar received the first Master of Arts degree ever given by the University of the Philippines, in 1923. Her thesis was entitled "Corrupt and Illegal Practices in Philippine Elections." After a pitiless exposure of all the worst election frauds which have come to light, she ends with this fine idealism, so typical of the best thought of the younger generation:

"We must prove to the world that we can establish in these islands real democratic institutions where the rights and privileges of our people, rich and poor, shall remain sacred and inviolable. We must convince them that we are endeavoring to make this country safe not only for the present genera

• Mariano J. Molina, "Christianizing the Social Order in the Philippines."

tion but for all posterity. Free, pure, and clean elections will be an incontrovertible proof of our capacity for an independent existence. We need a real illegal and corrupt practices act to further check corruption and to protect the rights of the people."

These magnificent young people, as splendid as any in the world, and in some respects without rivals, must bring about the moral reforms which have been discussed in this chapterand they will!

The widespread habit of petty dishonesty which the rising younger generation so greatly deplores is perfectly understandable for one who has studied the iniquities of the Spanish regime. The only way in which a man could avoid absolute starvation was to deceive his casique, and due allowance was always made for this deception. While it was severely punished when discovered, a casique would have considered his tenant a fool to have been strictly honest. The crime was not in being dishonest, but in getting caught. The one great principle in life was not to cross or irritate the man in power. It was more important to say what he wanted said than to tell the truth. Little good would it do a man to go to court in defense of the truth, for the courts were not made for justice but for those in power. Justice was always up for auction to the highest bidder. The Guardia Civil exacted fowls, eggs, milk, and goats from poor villagers, and large sums of money from the rich, as the price of protection from ladrones (thieves), and at the same time took their "squeeze" from the ladrones as the price of protection from the courts. Friars and priests were fattening upon their fees for masses, baptisms, marriages, funerals, and shrivings. It was an age in which one had to learn the art of concealing and lying successfully, and of avoiding the payment of any bill until absolutely compelled to pay it. When one recalls the dark past out of which the Filipinos have emerged, one wonders, not that there are any dishonest people, but that there are so many thousands of honest, noble, and thoroughly trustworthy Filipinos.

It must be said in conclusion, (for we do not wish to follow the all-too-prevalent custom of exaggerating the vices of the Filipinos), that none of the vices above enumerated, excepting cockfighting, are as prevalent as they are in most of the countries of Europe, and many of them are not as bad as they are in America. This fact is no ground for complacency, however, in a land which aspires to become the Christian model for the Orient.

A few years ago it was customary to endeavor to conceal unpleasant facts, with the idea that they would interfere with the campaign for independence. The era of concealment is passing. The young generation wants to know the truth, and when it comes into power it will be satisfied with no condition that is less than the best. The Filipinos are aiming, not to be the replica of America nor of any other country, but to be all the finest that their talents will permit them to become.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MEDICAL MISSIONS

The Spanish friars, by fostering a state of mind which was inimical to the scientific treatment of disease, rendered hospitals superfluous outside the more advanced centers. Excepting in Manila, Cebu, and Iloilo people would not have used hospitals if any had existed. Let the entire blame for this state of affairs fall where it belongs. Here, more than anywhere else, perhaps, the friars deserve sweeping condemnation. They did not themselves believe the superstitions they taught, and they spread these false teachings for the sole purpose of enchaining the Filipinos in the meshes of fear.

The oldest hospital and the best in the Spanish period was that of San Juan de Dios, which was established in 1696, by the Santa Misericordia Fraternity. It was turned over a halfcentury later to the religious order of San Juan de Dios. When the Americans occupied Manila the hospital had five departments, the first for men, the second for persons afflicted with the cigarette habit, the third for foreigners, the fourth for persons of distinction, priests and Spaniards, and the fifth for women. The San Lazaro Hospital was established in 1784 for lepers "under the indefatigable zeal and direction of R. P. Fray Juan de Mata, of the religious order of Francisco Descalzos." This was probably the finest act of charity in Spanish times. To-day the hospital is used by the government for contagious disease such as leprosy, smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, and includes also an insane asylum. All who have crossed the Ayala bridge in Manila must have noticed the little island in the middle of the river. On this island is situated the Convent of San Andres, one part of which is called the Hospicio de San Jose, a resort for convalescents. Another hospital at the convent of San Jose in Cavite com