American civil government was established in the Islands in 1901 and 1902. Under this government the Philippines made remarkably rapid strides along the road of progress. But the most significant stride is perhaps the development of Philippine home rule, For it should be known that today, with few exceptions, notably those of the American Chief Executive and the American Vice-Governor, who is also Secretary of Public Instruction, the Philippine government is run by the Filipinos themselves. II. THE MATERIAL SPAIN FOUND [Power of Propaganda to Misrepresent Conditions] So powerful is propaganda in misrepresenting actual conditions that the Philippines used to mean, and often still means, a mere fringe of civilization, or something similar to it, where the Spaniards had planted and the Americans had watered, but within all was still savagery and primeval ways. An exhibition of an Igorot village at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 probably spread in America more of the notion of the Philippines as an untamed wilderness than tons of statistics could correct. These, then, were the people America had undertaken to govern--wild, naked creatures, beside whom the North American Indian was a gentleman and a scholar! Indeed, a long time must elapse before you can reduce these to suspenders and beefsteaks. A long time? Why, centuries and centuries! [Non-Christian population] Again, to the assiduous readers of press dispatches, the typical Filipino has come to mean the fierce Mohammedan Moro; although, there are in the Islands less than 400,000 Mohammedans of all kinds, whether fierce or urbane. Still others have concluded that the wild-eyed nomad of the mountains, the man with the bow and arrow, with no religion at all, must be the determining factor of the situation because there are so many of his kind; and yet the census reveals the total number of persons in all the Islands that do not profess either Christianity, Mohammedanism, or Buddhism as only 102,000. [Literacy] So, too, the ignorance of the Filipinos has always been believed to be appalling and a bulwark of darkness not to be overcome in generations, if ever; and yet the census reveals the percentage of literacy in the entire Islands at 49.2 per cent. The percentage compares favorably with the literacy of many of the small independent nations of the world at present. The facts are these, as regards the Filipinos even in Pre-Spanish days: [Facts of Filipino Attainments in Pre-Spanish Days] The Spaniards found that the inhabitants of the Islands built and lived in planned houses, had a machinery of government of their own, maintained a system of jurisprudence, in many cases dwelt in ordered cities and towns and practised the arts familiar to the most advanced peoples of their times.