Note 1 — Trade and Agriculture Since the American Advent

The tables at the end of this chapter show the increase or decrease in the various branches of export and import trade. Regarded as a whole, the volume of business has increased since the American occupation—to what extent will be apparent on reference to the table of “Total Import and Export Values” at p. 639. When the American army of occupation entered the Islands, and was subsequently increased to about 70,000 troops, occupying some 600 posts about the Archipelago, there came in their wake a number of enterprising business men, who established what were termed trading companies. Their transactions hardly affected the prosperity of the Colony one way or the other. For this class of trader times were brisk; their dealings almost exclusively related to the supply of commodities to the temporary floating population of Americans, with such profitable results that, although many of them withdrew little by little when, at the close of the War of Independence, the troops were gradually reduced to some 16,000 men, occupying about 100 posts, others had accumulated sufficient capital to continue business in the more normal time which followed. Those were halcyon days for the old-established retailers as well as the new-comers; but, as Governor W. H. Taft pointed out in his report to the Civil Commission dated December 23, 1903,1 “The natural hostility of the American business men, growing out of the war, was not neutralized by a desire and an effort to win the patronage and goodwill of the Filipinos. The American business men controlled much of the advertising in the American papers, and the newspapers naturally reflected the opinion of their advertisers and subscribers in the advocacy of most unconciliatory measures for the native Filipino, and in decrying all efforts of the Government to teach Filipinos how to govern by associating the more intelligent of them in the Government.... The American business man in the Islands has really, up to this time, done very little to make or influence trade. He has kept close to the American patronage, and has not extended his efforts to an expansion of trade among the Filipinos.... There are a few Americans who have pursued a different policy with respect to the Filipinos to their profit.”