CHAPTER XXIV

THE PHILIPPINE CIVIL SERVICE

Is our Occupation of the Philippines to be temporary, like our occupation of Cuba after the Spanish War, or "temporary" like the British Occupation of Egypt since 1882? The Unsettled Question.

The policy to be pursued is for Congress to determine. I have no authority to speak for Congress in respect to the ultimate disposition of the Islands.

Secretary of War Wm. H. Taft to Philippine Assembly, 1907.

The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, known as the Philippine Government Act, is entitled "An Act temporarily to provide" a government for the Philippine Islands. The young American who goes out to the Philippines to take a position with the Insular Government there has usually read his share of Kipling, and his imagination likes to analogize his prospective employment to the British Indian Civil Service. The latter, however, offers a career. But what does the former offer? Take the prospects of the rank and file, as set forth by Mr. J. R. Arnold, of the Executive Bureau of the Philippine Government, in an article published in the North American Review for February, 1912. Suppose a young man goes out to the Philippines at a salary of $1200. Mr. Arnold discusses fully and frankly the cost of living in the Islands, and how much higher board, lodging, etc., are out there than in the United States. He states that board and lodging will cost $15 to $20 a month more than here. So that, so far, a salary of $1200 in the Philippines would seem equivalent to a salary of say approximately $950 in the United States--say in Washington. Also he calls attention to the fact that the government will pay your way out, but you must get back the best way you can. He does not say so, but the walking is not good all the way from Manila to Washington. Seriously, according to the authority from whom we are quoting, it costs $225 to $300 to get back. So if you come back at the end of a three years' stay--you must contract to stay at least that long--you must have laid by, taking his maximum return fare as the more prudent figure to reckon on, one hundred dollars a year to buy your return ticket. Mr. Arnold does not say so, but it is a fact, that various little expenses will creep in that are sure to amount, even with the most rigidly frugal, to $50 per annum that you would never have spent in the United States. You are hardly respectable in the Philippines if you do not have a muchacho. Muchacho, in Spanish, means the same as garcon in French, or valet in English. But muchachos are as thick as cigarettes in the Philippines. And you can hire one for about $5 a month. To resolve not to have a muchacho in the Philippines would be like resolving at home never to have your shoes shined, or your clothes pressed. It would be contrary to the universal custom of the country, and would therefore be "impossible." You have not been long in the Philippines before you get tired of telling applicants for the position of muchacho that you do not want one, and, benumbed by the universal custom, you accept the last applicant. You must figure on a muchacho as one of your "fixed charges." Count then an extra $50 annual necessary expense that you would not have at home. If you do not succumb to the muchacho custom, you will get rid of the $50 in other ways fairly classifiable as necessary current expenses. Thus, if you take from your $1200, worth $950 in Manila, as above stated, the $100 per annum necessary to be laid by against your home-coming, and the other $50 last suggested, your salary of $1200 per annum in Manila becomes equivalent to one of $800 at home, so far as regards what you are likely to save by strict habits of economy. In other words, to figure how you are going to come out in the long run, if you go out as a $1200 man, while your social position will be precisely that of a man commanding the same salary in a government position in Washington, you must knock off a third of the $1200. This is not the way Mr. Arnold states the case exactly. I am simply taking his facts, supplemented by what little I have added, and stating them in a way which will perhaps illustrate the case better to some people. Mr. Arnold says you are apt to get up as high as $1500 and finally even to $1800 in three to five years. Suppose you do have that luck. Still, if, as has been made plain above, you must consider $1200 in Manila as equal to only $800 in Washington (so far as regards what you are going to be able to save each year), by the same token you must consider $1500 in Manila as being equal to only $1000 in Washington, and $1800 as only $1200.

The utmost limit of achievement in the Philippine Government service, the only one of the higher positions not subject to political caprice, the only one regarded out there as a "life position"--and this excepts neither the Governorship of the Islands nor the Commissionerships--is the position of Justice of the Supreme Court. The salary is $10,000 per annum, American money. But there is not an American judge on that bench who would not be glad at any moment to accept a $5000 position as a United States District Judge at home. All of them whom I know are most happily married. But I believe their wives would quit them if they refused such an offer from the President of the United States, or else get so unhappy about it that they would accept and come home.

While we have now considered the case from bottom to top, we did not originally figure on the young American going out to the Philippines otherwise than single. In this behalf Mr. Arnold himself says:

I do not think it can be fairly called other than risky for an American to attempt to practise love in a cottage in the Philippines.

Says the late Arthur W. Fergusson--who gave his life to the Philippine Civil Service--in his annual report for 1905, as Executive Secretary:

The one great stumbling-block, and which no legislative body can eradicate, is the fact that very few Americans intend to make the Philippines their permanent home, or even stay here for any extended period. This is doubtless due to the location of the islands, their isolation from centres of civilization and culture, the enervating climate, lack of entertainment and desirable companionship, and distance from the homeland. Every clerk, no matter what his ideals or aspirations, realizes after coming here that he must at some time in the future return to the United States and begin all over again. After spending a year or more in the islands, the realization that the sooner the change is made the better, becomes more acute. This condition causes, doubtless, the class of men who are not adventurous or fond of visiting strange climes to think twice before accepting an appointment for service in these islands, and generally to remain away, and a great majority of those who do come here to leave the service again after a very short period of duty. [497]

Then Mr. Fergusson comes to the obvious but apparently unattainable remedy, which he says is

to make a Philippine appointment a permanent means of livelihood by providing an effective system of transfers to the Federal service after a reasonable period of service here. * * * Under the present regulations influence must be brought to bear at Washington in order that requisition may be made by the Chief of some bureau there for the services of a clerk desiring to transfer.

You see, if a Washington Bureau, say the Coast and Geodetic Survey, or the Geological Survey, sends a man out to the Islands, he is never for a moment separated from the Federal Civil Service or the Federal Government's pay-roll. The same is true of civilian employees of the army. But the man in the Insular Service, when he wants to get back home, is little better off than if he were in the employ of the Cuban Government, or the British Indian Government, or that of the Dutch East Indies. Mr. Fergusson also says:

It is believed to be useless to try to influence men to come out here unless there is something permanent offered to them at the expiration of a reasonable term of service. * * * The average European is content to live and die "east of Suez"; the average American is not. * * * I am firmly convinced that a permanent service under present conditions is entirely out of the question.

How can you have "a permanent service" unless you have a definite declared policy? Why not declare the purpose of our Government with the regard to the Islands?

In his annual report for 1906 [498] Mr. Fergusson says:

Our relations to the islands are such that the education and specialization of a distinct body of high class men purposely for this service as is done in England for the Indian service, will probably be always a practical impossibility.

He then goes on to reiterate his annual plea for a law providing for transfer as a matter of right, not of influence, from the Philippine Civil Service to the Federal Civil Service in the United States, and tells of a very capable official of his bureau who got a chance during the year just closed to transfer from the Philippines to a $1400 government position in the United States, and was glad to get it, although $1400 was "considerably less than half what he received here." Mr. Fergusson quickly gives the key to all this in what he calls "the haunting fear of having to return to the States in debilitated health and out of touch with existent conditions, only to face the necessity of seeking a new position." He adds:

That this is not a mere theory is proven by the number of army (civilian) employees who contentedly remain year after year.

In 1907, Mr. Fergusson reports on the same subject [499]: "Matters do not seem to be improving," and that the Director of the Insular Civil Service informs him that "during the fiscal year there were five hundred voluntary separations from the service by Americans, of whom one hundred were college graduates." He adds: "When the expense of getting and bringing out new men, and of training them to their new work is considered, the wastefulness of the present system is evident."

You do not find any quotations from any of the Fergusson disclosures in Mr. Arnold's North American Review article. He would probably have lost his job, if he had quoted them. Yet the evils pointed out by Mr. Fergusson come from one permanent source, the uncertainty of the future of every American out there, due to the failure of Congress to declare the purpose of the Government.

On January 30, 1908, Arthur W. Fergusson died in the service of the Philippine Government. No general law putting that service on the basis he pleaded for to the day of his death has ever yet been passed. Since his death, his tactful successor appears to have abandoned further pleading, and concluded to worry along with the permanently lame conditions inherent in the uncertainty as to whether we are to keep the Islands permanently or not, rather than embarrass President Taft by discouraging young Americans from going to the Islands.

The report of the Governor-General of the Philippines for 1907, Governor Smith, says [500]:

American officials and employees have rarely made up their minds to cast their fortunes definitely with the Philippines or to make governmental service in the tropics a career. Many of those who in the beginning were so minded, due to ill health or the longing to return to friends or relatives, changed front and preferred to return to the home land, there to enjoy life at half the salary in the environment to which they were accustomed. * * * That which operates probably more than anything else to induce good men drawing good salaries to abandon the service * * * is the knowledge that they have nothing to look forward to when broken health or old age shall have rendered them valueless to the government.

If Congress should ever care to do anything to improve the Philippine Civil Service and the status of Americans entering the same, certainly the one supremely obvious thing to do is to make transfer back to the civil service in the United States after a term of duty in the Islands a matter of right.