The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
The organization of the Moro Province was provided for by an act
passed on June 1, 1903. It is the largest single province in the
Philippine Islands, including within its limits more than half of
the great island of Mindanao with various small islands adjacent
thereto, and Basilan, Joló, Siassi, Tawi Tawi, Sibutu, Cagayan de
Joló and the very numerous other small islands stretching between
Mindanao and North Borneo. It is divided into five districts, each
with a district governor. The province has a governor, a secretary,
a treasurer, an attorney, an engineer and a superintendent of schools.
The four officials first named constitute a legislative council the
acts of which are subject to the approval of the Philippine Commission.
The province is allowed to expend the moneys accruing from the
customs dues paid at Joló and Zamboanga, which are ports of entry,
but is not fully self-supporting. The insular government pays for
the Philippine constabulary serving there. Until within a very short
time the provincial officials have been almost exclusively officers
of the army of the United States. In my opinion this arrangement has
been a bad one, not because of the character of the men who have done
the work, many of whom were of exceptional ability and were admirably
fitted for the performance of the duties which fell to their lot, but
because no one of them has retained a given office long enough to carry
a policy through to its logical conclusion and get the results which
might thus have been obtained. Indeed, the lack of a fixed policy,
combined with some unnecessary and unjustifiable killing, explain,
in my opinion, the fact that the results accomplished have come far
short of what might have been expected when one considers the splendid
body of men from which the provincial officials have been drawn.
Noteworthy public improvements have been made in places like Zamboanga
and Joló, but the country of the hill people, which ought to have
been crisscrossed with trails long ere this, is still not opened
up. Tribes like the Mandayas would, if given the opportunity, advance
as rapidly as have the Bukidnons, but such opportunity has not been
given to them to any considerable extent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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