Note 15 — Chapter X · FILIPINO INDOLENCE

Even when actual slavery was not enforced upon the native, the returns for his labor and efforts were so meager and uncertain he had no longer an incentive to work. There was a kind of padrone or contractor called the encomendero to whom the people of a district were virtually delivered over that he might extract from them all available profit and steer back to Spain with both pockets stuffed with the gold he had wrung from their toil. Usually this person had no other interest than to make his exit as early as possible and as heavily laden, to the which ends conscience should be no hindrance. He robbed the natives of produce where he could not steal labor; he used false measures in buying and selling. The unhappy Filipinos had no appeal. In one town where a particularly brutal encomendero exacted additional tribute by using a steelyard twice as long as it should have been, they rose and tried to kill him—it appears, unfortunately, without success.15