McKinley charged this Commission that their work was "_not to subjugate, but to emancipate_." We made many mistakes, for we were new to the business and dealing with a strange people, but until very lately even the selfishness which is supposed to be inherent in party politics has been absent in our dealings with this people, whom we considered our sacred charge. No one ever asked an American official in the Islands what his politics were. Even the governorship itself was out of the reach of the spoilsman. Of the five governors who were appointed by the Republican administrations, only one besides the first governor belonged to the dominant party, and he was in office but a few months. Since the Taft Commission first organized, several changes have taken place. Filipino members have been added, and it has acquired the character of an upper house, rather than a legislature. The work of a lower house is done by the Assembly, made up of eighty-one members chosen by the people of the Christian tribes. They have no authority over the Moro and other non-Christian tribes, which are legislated for by the Commission directly. To-day the Filipinos control their municipal and county governments, but their finances are kept under supervision. The problems which the Commissioners had to solve were many and varied. Trade was at a standstill. During the last normal year under Spain the exports from the Islands had amounted to about sixteen million dollars. By 1912 they had more than trebled. There was also a currency problem. Coins from everywhere--Mexico, China, America, India--were in common circulation, with almost daily fluctuations in value. The Islands now have their own money on a gold basis. Then, close on the heels of the insurrection, came a famine. Locusts swept over the land and destroyed what little grain the war had left. The natives in some parts of the archipelago ate the locusts, however, and liked them, making the work of the officials more difficult. Grain shipped from America decayed in the storehouses before it could be distributed, and, as if that were not enough, carabaos died by the thousand from rinderpest.