The cholera and rinderpest had greatly reduced government revenues and many plans for much needed public works had to be modified or abandoned, while the condition of the currency added to the general chaos. There was no gold standard and the fluctuations in the value of silver made it necessary for the Governor to issue a proclamation about once a week fixing a new rate of exchange. In this way it was calculated that the government, with insufficient income at the best, lost a round million dollars gold during a period of ten months.
To cap all and add exasperation to uneasiness the ladrones had become increasingly active with hard times and were harrying the districts around Manila to such an extent that the people were in constant terror. The ravages of the rinderpest had made the carabao a very valuable animal and the chief object of the ladrones was to steal such as were left and drive them off to be sold in distant provinces. Nor were they at all particular about their highwaymen’s methods or chary of sacrificing human life. There was a veritable hotbed of ladronism at Caloocan, a suburb of Manila, which was augmented by the roughs and toughs from the crowded and miserable districts in the lower city, while across the Bay in Cavite province, known as the “mother of insurrection,” there were several hundred rifles in the hands of marauders who hid away in the hills and jungles and made conditions such that Mr. Taft was asked by the Director of Constabulary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, thus declaring the province in a practical state of siege. Mr. Taft would not do this, saying that he thought the only course was to “hammer away with the constabulary until the abuse was stamped out by the regular methods of supposedly peaceful times,” but the worst feature of the situation was that wherever ladronism showed its head there would be cohorts of “irreconcilables”—posing in everyday life as loyal citizens—ready, within the limits of personal safety, to encourage and assist it. Anything to hamper and harass the government.
Shortly after Mr. Taft’s arrival in Manila, the vice-Governor, General Wright, and Mrs. Wright left the Islands for a well-earned vacation and my husband wrote that the amount of work which confronted him was staggering. He took on General Wright’s department in addition to his own duties, and if it hadn’t been that he had at least halfway learned not to try to “hurry the East” he probably would not have lasted long.
Among the first steps to be taken was to provide against the inevitable famine, and to do this it was necessary for the Government to send to China and Saigon for large quantities of rice to be stored in public godowns. They bought and brought to Manila something like forty million pounds of this first of all necessities to an oriental people, and the intention was to sell it at cost when the market supply began to run low and prices began to soar beyond the poor man’s reach. A certain degree of paternalism has always been, is now, and probably always will be necessary in the government of the Filipino people.
Mr. Taft besought the United States Congress to appropriate a sum to be used for the importation of work animals, for the purchase of rice and the furnishing of work on public improvements. The animals were not to be given away, but were eventually to be sold at reasonable prices. Three millions were appropriated and spent.
Congress was also petitioned to establish a gold standard of currency, and this too was done, to the inexpressible relief of everybody interested in the Philippine welfare, in the following January. The currency now is as sound as our own, every silver peso, which corresponds to the old “dollar Mex,” being worth fifty cents gold.
When I arrived in Manila in early October I found the situation more interesting than it had ever been, even though it was distracting to the men who had to deal with it. My first necessity was, of course, to settle myself once more at Malacañan. During my absence the old Palace had been all done over, painted and patched and cleaned and redecorated until it was quite unlike its quaint, old dilapidated self. Some of the colours were a shade too pronounced and some of the decorations ran a little more to “graceful patterns” than suited my taste, but I was glad of the added comfort and cleanliness.
It was difficult in the beginning to accustom myself to cholera conditions. The disease was communicated to very few Americans or other white foreigners, but safety was secured at the price of eternal vigilance. Water could not be drunk unless it was boiled under one’s personal supervision; nothing uncooked could be eaten, not even a piece of imported fruit, unless it had first been washed in a carbolic solution, a process, I may say, which added nothing desirable to its flavour; a good many other precautions were necessary which made us feel as if we were living always in the lowering shadow of some dreadful catastrophe, but, even so, we were surprisingly calm about it—everybody was—and managed to come through the experience without any visible ill-effects.
There was one new thing for me, and that was a live cow. For two long years we had manfully striven to make ourselves believe that we liked canned milk and condensed cream just as much as we liked the fresh milk we had been used to all our lives. In fact, we were fond of declaring that we couldn’t tell the difference. But we could. And in our secret hearts we all welcomed
