Note 12 — Modern Manila

Not unfrequently when a European nation acquires a new tropical possession, the imaginative mind discovers therein unbounded wealth which the eye cannot see, hidden stores of gold procurable only by manual labour, and fortune-making possibilities awaiting whosoever has the courage to reveal them. The propagation of these fallacious notions always allures to the new territory a crowd of neʼer-do-wells, amongst the bonâ fide workers, who ultimately become loafers preying upon the generosity of the toilers. This class was not wanting in the Philippines; some had followed the army; others who had finished their term of voluntary military service elected to remain in the visionary El Dorado. Some surreptitiously opened drinking-shanties; others exploited feminine frailty or eked out an existence by beggarly imposition, and it was stated by a provincial governor that, to his knowledge, at one time, there were 80 of this class in his province.12 The number of undesirables was so great that it became necessary for the Insular Government to pass a Vagrant Act, under which the loafer could be arrested and disposed of. The Act declares vagrancy to be a misdemeanour, and provides penalties therefor; but it has always been interpreted in a generous spirit of pity for the delinquent, to whom the option of a free passage home or imprisonment was given, generally resulting in his quitting the Islands. This measure, which brought honour to its devisers and relief to society, was, in a few instances, abused by those who feigned to be vagrants in order to secure the passage home, but these were judiciously dealt with by a regulation imposing upon them a short period of previous training in stone-breaking to fit them for active life in the homeland.