The Indolence of the Filipino | Page 2

colonial Spaniards seemed to the Filipinos less creditable
representatives of the metropolis than the average of those who
remained in the Peninsula, so not all who now pass for Americans in
the Philippines are believed here to measure up to the highest
homestandard.
Sitters in swivel-chairs underneath electric fans hold hopeless the future
of the land where men do not desire to be drudges just as did their
predecessors who in wide armed lazy seats, beneath punkahs, talked of
Filipino indolence.
Ingratitude, to-day as then, is the regular rejoinder to the progressing
people's protest against paternalism, and altruistic regard for their real
welfare is still represented as the reason why special legislation should
be provided when Filipinos prefer the same laws as govern the
sovereign people.
Though those who claim to champion the Philippines' cause apparently
are unaware of it, these Islands have a population strangely alike in its
make up to the people of America; their history is full of American
associations; Americans developed their leading resources, and
American ideas have inspired their political aspirations. It betrays
blindness somewhere that ever since 1898 Filipinos have been trying to
get loose from America in order to set up here an American form of
government,
There seems now a, prospect that insular legislation may make
available to the individual the guarantees of personal liberty upon
which America at home prides itself, that municipal self-government
and provincial autonomy may become realities in the Philippines, and
possibly even that both Filipinos and Americans may realize before it is

too late how our elastic territorial government could be made to exact
from them much less of their independence than the sacrifice of
sovereignty necessary in Neutralization or internationalization.
Unwillingness to work when there is nothing in it for them is common
to Filipinos and Americans, for Thomas Jefferson admitted that
extravagance and indolence were the chief faults of his countrymen.
Labor-saving machinery has made the fruits of Americans' labors in
their land of abundance afford a luxury in living not elsewhere existing.
But the Filipino, in his rich and not over-populated home, shutting out,
as we do, oriental cheap labor, may employ American machinery and
attain the same standard. The possibilities for the prosperity of the
population put the Philippines in the New World, just as their discovery
and their history group them with the Western Hemisphere.
Austin Craig,
University of the Philippines,
Manila, December 20th, 1913.

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I
DOCTOR Sancianco, in his Progreso de Filipinas, (1), has taken up this
question, agitated, as he calls it, and, relying upon facts and reports
furnished by the very same Spanish authorities that rule the Philippines,
has demonstrated that such indolence does not exist, and that all said
about it does not deserve reply or even passing notice.
Nevertheless, as discussion of it has been continued, not only by
government employees who make it responsible for their own
shortcomings, not only by the friars who regard it as necessary in order
that they may continue to represent, themselves as indispensable, but

also by serious and disinterested persons; and as evidence of greater or
less weight may be adduced in opposition to that which Dr. Sancianco
cites, it seems expedient, to us to study this question thoroughly,
without superciliousness or sensitiveness, without prejudice, without
pessimism. And as we can only serve our country by telling the truth,
however bit, tee it be, just as a flat and skilful negation cannot refute a
real and positive fact, in spite of the brilliance of the arguments; as a
mere affirmation is not sufficient to create something impossible, let us
calmly examine the facts, using on our part all the impartiality of which
a man is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except
upon solid bases of virtue.
The word indolence has been greatly misused in the sense of little love
for work and lack of energy, while ridicule has concealed the misuse.
This much-discussed question has met with the same fate as certain
panaceas and specifies of the quacks who by ascribing to them
impossible virtues have discredited them. In the Middle Ages, and even
in some Catholic countries now, the devil is blamed for everything that
superstitious folk cannot understand or the perversity of mankind is
loath to confess. In the Philippines one's own and another's faults, the
shortcomings of one, the misdeeds of another, are attributed to
indolence. And just as in the Middle Ages he who sought the
explanation of phenomena outside of infernal influences was
persecuted, so in the Philippines worse happens to him who seeks the
origin of the trouble outside of accepted beliefs.
The consequence of this misuse is that there are some who are
interested in stating it as a dogma and others in combating it as a
ridiculous