Note 5 — Chapter XXII · Governor Forbes—1909–1912

The foregoing unmasks, in all its contemptible falsehood, the pretence that the presence of a few wild tribes in the Philippines is a reason for withholding independence from 7,000,000 of Christian people in order that a greedy little set of American importers of Manila hemp may fatten thereon. True, hemp is not edible, but it is convertible into edibles—and also into campaign funds. That the existence of these wild tribes—the dog-eating Igorrotes and other savages you saw exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition of 1903–4—constitute infinitely less reason for withholding independence from the Filipinos than the American Indian constituted in 1776 for withholding independence from us, will be sufficiently apparent from a glance at the following table, taken from the American Census of the Islands of 1903 (vol. ii., p. 123):5