Too Wise to Work.
[Sixto Lopez and Thomas T. Patterson in the Springfield Republican.]
The charge is that the Filipinos will not work.
The sentence is not complete; it should read: The Filipinos will not work for foreigners.
That is to say, they will not work for the vampire and the wolf whose sole intent is to amass wealth by the labor of others.
This is a fact of which every Filipino ought to be proud, for it places the Filipinos in marked contrast with all the peoples of the East, excepting Japan, where a similar condition is found.
In India and China and in other eastern countries the white
man’s burden
consists in making colossal fortunes out of the
inadequately paid labor of the brown man.
But the Filipinos and the Japanese will not take up the white
man’s burden
; they prefer to let the white man carry it himself, and
hence his complaint.
The Hawaiian, the Indian, and even the shrewd Chinaman are
deceived by the professions of those who declare that it is all for the brown
man’s benefit.
But the Filipino knows that unless this
philanthropy
promises to yield 50 or 100 per cent. profit it will never
be put into practciepractice.
The Filipino, in short, will not slave for the benefit of foreigners any more than will the American or the Englishman or Mr. Kipling; nor will he barter his substance for rum, and so the white man finds when he takes rum to the Philippines he has to drink it himself!
That is what is now taking place in the once temperate city of
Manila. Rum—using the word in its generic sense—is the only
kind of trade that follows the flag,
and those who carry the flag have to
drink the trade!