Note 11 — V. The Nineteenth Century and Economic Development

In this way a new element was introduced which was essential for economic development: capital. Up to that time money had been scarce and it was all derived from local sources: owing to the conditions to which we have heretofore referred our community was obliged to furnish its own capital. It was necessarily small, first, on account of the slight productive forces, second, because of the easy destruction of acquired property, which was dissipated in fires and storms principally. In those first days of our history, the preservation and transmission from one generation to another of created and inherited wealth was, as it is even now, a problem almost impossible of solution. The general construction of houses, manufactured from such weak and transient elements as cane and nipa, does not leave us in a condition to conserve: it leaves us rather in a condition of easy destruction, as may be readily understood. So it is, that we get the benefit of only a small part of the property acquired by the generations that have gone before us. Where will you find even the trace of so many millions of cane and nipa houses which have absorbed the money earned by past generations? Destroyed by fire and storms. In their destruction was also involved all the industrial production, all the labor converted into capital represented by furniture, books, manuscripts, cloths, jewelry, coins, articles, of practical utility, religious, artistic and every sort of objects which ran the same precarious risk and had the same ephemeral existence as our flimsy cane and nipa houses.”—Results of the Economic Development of the Philippines.