Notes 7

• The Americans arrived in the Philippines in some surreptitious and treacherous means
• Pres. Aguinaldo was fooled into believing that the Americans would come as liberators of a colonized people, when in fact the Mock Battle of Manila in August 1898 came to a theatrical finale with Spaniards surrendering to the new colonizers instead to Pres. Aguinaldo
• Gen. Wesley Merritt entered Intramuros and began to establish a military government under the American colonial government


  August 1898
• President William McKinley issued the Benevolent Assimilation policy over the Philippines


  December 10, 1898
• William Howard Taft was appointed as the first American governor-general
• Spanish educational system


  Highly religious and not scientific, only the well-to-do could afford the privilege
• Christian schools were permitted to operate under the American period, subject to the standards and supervision of the Bureau of Instructions and were also established for free primary to high school education
• The establishment of a legislature composed of 100% elected Filipinos was already planned under the Philippine Bill of 1902
• The first national election for the legislature was held

  July 30, 1907
• Legislative bodies


  • Philippine Assembly (lower chamber)
  • Second Philippine Commission (upper chamber)
• Sergio Osmena


  President of Nacionalista Party (against Progressive Party), elected as speaker by his peers
• Manuel Quezon


  Majority floor leader
• W.Cameron Forbes became the new governor-general

  After the appointment of Taft as Secreteary of War
• Thomas Woodrow Wilson became the new US President, appointed Francis Burton Harrison as the new governor-general of the Philippines


  1912
• True to their thrust, a Democrat congressman, William Jones authored a law which would later be known as the Philippine Autonomy Act or the Jones Law of 1916. In the wordings of the law's perambulatory clause was the assurance of US to grant us our independence as soon as a stable government can be established
• Legislative bodies (later)


  • Senate (upper house)
  • House of Representatives (lower chamber)
• The first cabinet was organized and the Council of state composed of the governor-general, speaker of the house, senate president and 6 department secretaries


  January 11, 1917
• Osmena having selected by Harrison as Vice- chairman of the council was almost running the government. This created the pro-Quezon, pro-Osmena rift since Quezon was the second highest official and in the event of granting independence, he should be preferred to head the government, but Harrison seemed to be grooming Osmena for the job
• The Philippine Supreme court also ran completely by Filipinos
• By the end of Pres. Wilson's term in 1921, 96% of Filipinos were already in government posts, what would then be needed was a change or governor-general into a president elected by Filipinos
• Before Pres. Wilson's term expired, he wrote to the U.S Congress about his recommendation of granting independence to the Philippines
• Warren G. Harding became the US President and he sent Leonard Wood and W.Cameron Forbes to investigate the condition in the Philippines


  1921
• In the report, Wood and Forbes indicated the lack of transparency, corruption, political rivalry and inefficiency as the main problem that best describe the government when the Filipinos almost run them. Not much infrastructures, lack of roads and school buildings built were the major problems when the Department of Public Works was run by Filipinos. When the Filipinos took over the Department of Health, the infestation of mosquitoes and other pests plagued Manila once again. The deterioration of public health could be dramatized with 37,839 Filipino deaths because of cholera while 73,796 due to smallpox. There was massive vaccination during the time when the Americans were handling the health bereau but the deterioration of public health simply meant the lack of vaccination programas and poor public sanitation under the Filipinos
• Gov.gen Wood then had only one mission, and that was to put the government which they permitted the Filipinos to handle be placed on the right tract
• The Filipino politicians wanted to regain their hands-free mode from the governor-general. This placed Gov.gen. Wood and Filipino politicians on a head-on collision
• While Wood wanted to put the government back on track, Filipino politicians branced him as meddler and and anti- Filipino. Wood vetoed 124 out of 411 bills passed by the Philippine legislature headed by Quezon and Osmena. Quezon lashed out on Wood for having interfered on the work of a purely local matter. This was followed through with the mass resignation of the members of the government but what Wood simply did was to accept the mass resignations and have other appointees take over their positions
• Filipino politicians filed a petition to Pres. Harding airing their grievances against Wood


  1926
• Leonard Wood


  Graduate of Harvard Medical School, later conscripted to the US Army as a medical doctor
• McCOy compiled these cartoons and wrote a book which Alfredo Roces co-authored entitled Philippine Cartoons: Caricatures of the American Era, 1900-1941
• Newspapers with editorial cartoons

  • The Independent (founded and edited by Vicente Sotto of Cebu)
  • Bag-ong Kusog (New Force) (a Cebuano newspaper)
  • Philippine Free Press (by Judge W.A Kincaid)
• At the later part of the American period, there was jubilant expectation of a liberated nation. However, it was interrupted with the coming of the Japanese and Philippines was ushered into its grim moments.
• Henry Stimson


  The successor of Wood who had the difficult task of reconciling the American bureaucrats and the Filipino politicians
• The new US president was Pres. Herbert Hoover


  1929
• The world suffered from the Great Depression characterized by poor economic growth brought by the fear of difficult life ahead which led to the lack of desire to buy and thus lack of demand and in turn, the lackof motivation to produce due to low demand.
• Franklin Roosevelt became the US President


  1933
• Hare–Hawes–Cutting Act


  The first law setting a specific date for Philippine independence from the United States
• The bill was passed by the Senate in December 1932 but was vetoed by Pres. Herbert Hoover. To Hoover's surprise, Congress promptly overrode his veto, and the bill became law on Jan. 17, 1933.
• The act, however, required approval by the Philippine Senate, and this was not forthcoming. Filipino political leader Manuel Quezon led a campaign against the bill because of provisions in it that allowed the indefinite retention of U.S. military bases in the islands.
• The Tydings–McDuffie Act, substantially similar to the rejected measure but incorporating minor changes, was accepted by the Philippine Senate in 1934.
• The Jones Law acted like an establishment for the Philippines until 1934 when the Tydings-McDuffie Act provided for self government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines and for Filipino independence after a period of 10 years.