Visit to office of the usual series of men wanting me to get them jobs. Great relief when Rafferty arrived–he has forced his partners in the Manganese Mine, to “do him right.” Told me Sy Cip’s brother took a Chinese “dumb head” to the United States to campaign against our attempt to make the Chinese keep their books in English, Spanish or Tagalog so that the Government could collect taxes. The Chinese won.
We discussed the “customary law” of the Philippines which underlies the laws imposed by the Spanish and by ourselves. This explains many apparently incomprehensible events here. I told of the magnificent lands in the Cavite foot hills which were unoccupied because of the bandidos. He said he was the first of the Americans in Cebu to move out to a section on the outskirts of the City–no Filipinos would then live there because of the Pulijanes. Said Osmeña told him apropos of the recent surrender of Encallado, that this was the customary method of putting an end to brigandage: inviting the leader to one’s house and treating with him. “I was afraid” said Osmeña “when the criticism was running so high here over the princely way Encallado was treated by Quezon, that the papers would recall that this was the method I used myself when Provincial Governor to put an end to the Pulijan movement in Cebu.”
Long talk with Rafferty about Pershing and the “Moro question”; he was collector of customs in Cebu and Zamboanga at the time General Pershing was military governor there. Rafferty believes there was no Moro question there; only a “question” created by the United States Army! Said the reason why Pershing did not oppose my plan to remove the Army from Moroland and install Civil Government under Carpenter was that Pershing wished the credit, for having made this possible. (As a matter of fact we would never have had peace down there unless we had withdrawn the United States Army!) Rafferty says Pershing was utterly selfish and extremely unpopular in Zamboanga. His “illness” when he left for home as the last military governor of Mindanao was only an excuse.
Golf in p.m. at McKinley with Doria.
Memo: Beyer said yesterday that Governor General Murphy had been so afraid of provoking “labor” hostility in the United States that he had declined to take action against two or three labour leaders here when they deserved it. (That seems to have seen his fault as an administrator: every question to be decided here was considered with one eye on his political future at home.)
Quezon is making speeches in the Cagayan valley denouncing people who will not pay their (cedula) taxes, and those governments in the provinces which fail to collect it. (Perhaps the land tax is involved.) It seems probable that the situation is due both to “hard times” and to a general relaxation of government in recent years.
Quezon has announced that the June drawing in the Charity Sweepstakes will be the last; no doubt the affair has given rise to some scandal but I think it wiser for an aministration to regularize and make use of gambling rather than vainly trying to eliminate it.