Note 5 — XXII

Debts.A Filipino seeking to borrow money has to give ample security and pay interest at the rate of one real for every dollar per month (twelve and one-half per cent. monthly); and it is not easy for him to borrow more than five dollars, for which sum only he is legally liable. Trade and credit are less developed in eastern and northern Samar than in the western part of the island, which keeps up a more active communication with the other inhabitants of the Archipelago. There current money is rarely lent, but only its value in goods is advanced at the rate of a real per dollar per mensem. If the debtor fails to pay within the time appointed, he frequently has to part with one of his children, who is obliged to serve the lender for his bare food, without wages, until the debt has been extinguished. I saw a young man who had so served for the term of five years, in liquidation of a debt of five dollars which his father, who had formerly been a gobernadorcillo in Paranas, owed to a mestizo in Catbalogan; and on the east coast a pretty young girl, who, for a debt of three dollars due by her father, had then, for two years, served a native, who had the reputation of being a spendthrift. I was shown in Borongan a coconut plantation of three hundred trees, which was pledged for a debt of ten dollars about twenty years ago, since which period it had been used by the creditor as his own property; and it was only a few years since that, upon the death of the debtor, his children succeeded, with great difficulty, in paying the original debt and redeeming the property. It is no uncommon thing for a native to borrow two dollars and a half from another in order to purchase his exemption from the forty days of annual service, and then, failing to repay the loan punctually, to serve his creditor for a whole year.5