American Rule in the Philippines
In the Independent, Mr. Albert Gardner Robinson, writing of the present situation in the Philippines, says:— In no other place in the islands are America and American rule so unpopular as in the city of Manila, the place of longest experience. . . . Personally, the mass of Americans, as individuals, make no favorable impression on the mass of Filipinos. The same is the case in Porto Rico, in Cuba, and in Hawaii. It is somewhat humiliating, but it is a fact. Politically, we have given the Filipinos nothing that was really better than that which they had before. We have promised something unofficially, and offered something—with a string tied to it. The old system of Spanish laws has been continued, with few, if any, modifications; while some, petty but notably objectionable, have been enforced where Spain had allowed them to fall into disuse. The same applies in the matter of taxes and tariffs. The United States officials have obtained from an impoverished people a greater sum, by taxation, than was obtained by Spain in their more prosperous days. And since this was written, it has been most impressively confirmed, especially as to Cuba, by the exposure of a complicated system of robbery that had been conducted by United States officials in the postal service in that island for more than a year. Of this the Independent says:— We undertook to organize for the Cuban people a complete postal service, in which, as the postmaster-general said 'only a few weeks ago, there should be a substitution of American integrity for the old corrupt administration. . . . What are the American people to say to the Cubans who have been told so many times that they should learn from our example the difference between American honesty and Spanish corruption?