Assembly Bill 352 exempted all uncultivated land, except land in Manila, from the payment of the land tax for a period of five years. The excuse given for its passage was the alleged lack of draft animals. Its real purpose was to exempt valuable property from taxation. It would have encouraged the continued holding of great tracts of uncultivated land and was in the interest of large landowners whose land taxes were likely to be burdensome if they did not come to a reasonable agreement with their tenants and bring their holdings under cultivation. Assembly Bill 360, "specifying the responsibility in a publication and amending certain sections of the existing libel law," would have rendered that law abortive by making it possible for a newspaper to employ as a "libel editor" some irresponsible person who would be glad to go to jail upon occasion for a consideration. The Philippines has a fairly good libel law and it was imperatively needed, for in oriental countries especially, the tendency of a public press which has been subjected to the strictest censorship is to run to license when complete liberty suddenly comes. Assembly Bill 370, creating the new province of Zamboanga, embodied an attempt on the part of that body to legislate for territory inhabited by Moros and other non-Christian tribes, over which it had no jurisdiction. If passed, it would have led to bloodshed between Moros and Filipinos. Assembly Bill 433 was an act prohibiting the use of lumber imported from foreign countries in the construction of public buildings. It was not then possible to get enough native lumber to erect the public buildings authorized and needed. The passage of this act under the circumstances showed lack of business sense. Assembly Bill 487 provided for compulsory school attendance. It was so worded as to make it largely inoperative, and if operative it would have been impracticable, as there were something like 1,200,000 children of school age in the islands and there were neither teachers enough to instruct them, schoolhouses enough to hold them, nor funds available with which to pay for new buildings and additional teachers. Its passage showed lack of business sense. Assembly Bill 547 amended the so-called "bandolerismo [154] act." Up to the time of the American occupation brigandage had been a crying evil throughout the islands. The amendment proposed would not only have greatly weakened the act under which it had been very successfully suppressed, but would have turned loose 1156 criminals, many of whom were desperate and hardened, seriously disturbing the tranquillity of the country and necessitating the early hunting down of many of them.