The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 9, 1924, Page 9

THE CRUX OF THE PHILIPPINE CONFLICT OvE of the most pressing ques- “ tions confronting the Sixty- Eighth | Congress is the problem of Philippine independence. There are several bills dealing with the Amer- ican ge eorgye of the Philippine Is- lands be the senate and house. Were it not for the practically undivided attention the Teapot Dome affair is now receiving, the Philippine crisis would today have been in the forefront of our national political arena. Just now the Tea- pot politics eclipse everything else. But the Philippine question has its own little scandal, and its a mighty big one at that. And there is oil fn it, too. It is very likely that the next ‘seandal congress will tackle will be the General Wood family oil splash. No less noted an investi. gator than Samuel Untermeyer will probably step in to this exposure, which will be of first rate im port- ance. Besides, startling evidence is promised by an investigation of the peculiar way in which General Wood has permitted concessions to be handed out to some of hig political friends in the Archipelago. To the Ameriean workers and farmers the Filipino problem is a matter of serious and far-reaching dimensions. ‘Today the Philippines | {7 are the key to American imperialist supremacy in the Pacific—the thea- tre of the next great capitalist world conflagration. The very pith of the increasingly serious problem of mil- itarism is teday bound up with the acute crisis in the Philippines. No one can deny that militarism and imperialism in all their numerous dangerous ramifications are taking on ever-more threatening propor- tions, involving the life and security of the exploited workers and dispos- sessed farmers. To the extent that our working masses have a vital in- terest in this growing menace to their very existence, to that very extent are they drawn into the Phil- ippine maelstrom, Strategic Importance of Philippines The Philippine Islandy are the economic and mili gateway to the Far East. From the naval and commercial point of view, the harbor of Manila and the Islands are the premany ta toe extine tastes aoe premacy e entire Pacific. Osaka, and Yokahama, the flourish- ing business cities of Japan; the Chinest coast from Shanghai to Hongkong, and the ports of North China Dairen and Tientsin; -. pore, the British Gibraltar of Far East guarding the treasures ot India; the Dutch East Indies, end the route southward to Australia— all lie within a steaming radius of 2,500 miles from Manila ag a center. In this sphere of infinence encircling Vladivostok, the Pacific gateway to Siberia, “India to the Arabian Sea,|is where and Oceanica to Perth and Brisbane in Australia” there live and work close to eight million people—the prize labor market of the world. The overshadowing importance of this strategic loca’ of the Phil- ippine Islands has won for the Ar- chipelago the eovetous role of be- ing at “the cross-roads of the great- est trade routes of the future.” Ma- nila can well serve as a convenient distributing center for merchandise in this most densely populated sec- tion of the world. The Philippin tose A he TEN e es are a field for economic development. Of the total area of 115; re New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Dela- ‘ware, only about 11,500 miles are under cultivation y. This 10 per cent of the total area is worth close to a of a bil- lion dollars. This American dependency has close to 65,000 square miles of com- mercial forest land. The islands can are teeming with such mineral wealth, as coal, iron, silver, gold and other precious metals. ber, cocoanut oil and hemp afford inviting invest- po ro and call to fa in are Borneo Oil field section, one of six greatest oil areas of the world. With all its undevelopment, the 3 Archipelago’s total wealth today is estimated at about $6,000,000,000. The Philippines are making great headway in economic development. The value of their six leading agri- ‘cultural products—rice, corn, sugar, hemp, cocoanut, and tobacco has in- creased almost 300 per cent, from $122,000,000 to $343,500,000 in the period 1917-1920. From 1903 to 1918 the number of manufacturing plants increased 156 per cent and the value of their prod- ucts rose 754 per cent. The cocoa- nut oil factories, sawmills, sugar and rice industries have been making especially noteworthy progress. The Atlantic, Gulf & Pacific Co. and the Earnshaws Slipways and Co. have built modern iron and steel foundry plants and ship construction yards. In the period 1917-1920 the total annual foreign trade of the Philip- pines practically doubled, rising from about 160 million dollars to more than three hundred million dollars. In the 25-year period of American domination, Philippine trade with the United States has risen from the meager share of 11 per cent in 1900 to 65 per cent for the first ten: months of 1923. Cotton and cotton goods, iron and steel, machinery, au- temobijes, wheat, flour, meats and iry products chemicals, dyes and drugs are among the leading arti- cles exported by America the Philippines. Hemp, cigars, leaf to- bacco, cocoanut oil, hats, lumber, IN WEST VIRGINIA IA Breatning-Spell Between Battles sugar and embroideries are among America’s leading Philippine im- porta. Need for Eeonomic Development. It is obvious that the Philippines have great need and plenty of room for economic development, And here we come to the crux of the whole Filipino nr pivotal point i problem like all other colonial questions of imperialist exploitation, lies in the investment of forcign capital by the financiers and indus- trialists of the more developed cap- italist countries. The movement of powers for raw material and new spheres of influence. The Filipinos want ca They need capital. But they do not want to give themselves away in bondage to foreign capitalist masters, they = not want to surrender their na- é s 8 cure this capital. The Filipino would like to have the foreign cap come in, a oe ital, get his profit, big as it mig’ be, and then get out of the country The Filipmos, however, are deter- mined not to barter their na- tionality for the capitalist mess of pottage, for the help that the for- eign banker or manufacturer might give them. On_ the profit. A Capitalist Dilemma. Herein lies the dilemna confront- ing the colonial peoples struggling for national freedom, for complete independence from the big imperial- istic capitalist powers, The imper- ialist colonial problem presents an- other one of the many insolvable contradictions inherent in the cap- italist system of production and ex- change. Economically the Philip- pines, like all other industrially un- developed countries, need the capi- tal now controlled by the foreign capitalista of the highly developed industrial countries; politically, this very much needed capital is a mill- stone around the neck of the less industrially developed nation, a dag- ger at the heart of the nation, a menace to the very existence and independence of the people, The Filipinos thus find themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea, between Scylla and Charybdis. The capital they would welcome eco- nomically strikes terror into their national hearts politically. There is no way out of the terrible difficulty for the colonial peoples as long as capital which fs social in use re- mains private in ownership. The Filipinos can as much hope to make the economically welcome capital of the American banker and manufac- turer politically palatable as they ean hope to change the leopard’s spots. Hence the utter impossi- bility of complete genuine national independence ever being voluntarily granted by the United States capi- talist government to the Philip- pines, The Government In Business. Aware of the difficulties and dan- gers that accompany the investment of foreign capital, the native Fili- pino government attempted to meet the situation by getting imto busi- ness itself, by taking over the role of the foreign capitalist itself. The development of the Islands’ natural resources, banking, transportation, the sugar and coal industries were some of the enterprises embarked upon by the Filipino government. In 1916, while American capital- ists were busy piling up fabulous profits ¢hru their supplying the bel- ligerents with the means of life and death, the needs of industry and war, the Philippine Legislature passed Act 2,596 to encourage the organization of various industries along the Japanese lines thru the guarantee of a 5 per cent dividend on stocks of certain kinds of indus- tries for a period of five years. In the same year Act 2,612 was passgd te provide the proper fiscal agency for these native developments. The Philippine National Bank was thus founded on Feb. 4, 1916. Twhen there were formed in quick succession, the National Coal Co. under Act 2,705 on March 10, 1917, to develon the coal resources; the National Petro- leum Co. under Act 2,814 on March 4, 1919 to develop the Filipino oi! fields; the National Development Co. under Act 2,849 on March 10, 1919 to help the Philippines become self- subsisting thru the financing of iso- lated enterprises; the National Ce- ment Co, on March 12, 1919 under Act 2,855, to meet the great demand for cement in the Islands. In the meanwhile the Manila Railroad was taken over by the government from British capitalists, All of these corporations were organized on the basis of the native government owning at least 51 cent of the stock so that ign capitalists could not sneak in thru a yuan es bmg door and stifle tl peo General Wood Butts In. For a few years the situation was -| developing rather favorably. Then the great economic depression of 1920-1921 that swept the world set in and set its heavy foot on the throat of the rising enterprises of the native government. Of course, these government i dustries, like al industries everywhere ered and suffered severely thru acute eco- nomic crisis, Here the American ¢apitalists saw their chance, tho the precise extent to which their observation was con- scious cannot be guaged accurately, to throttle these da jus attempts called State Soc “4 en! aA an excuse to drive ipinos out of national busi- ness, The utterly fraudulent inten- tions and the brazen arrogance of this anti-native policy adopted by = i 3 g By JAY LOVESTONE Harding are exposed in all their naked ugliness and dishonesty by the fact that in the depression of 1921 Philippine commerce fell only 32 per cent while American com- merce dropped 48 per cent. The first bombshell fired into the camp of the Filipinos was the re port of the Wood-Forbes mission denouncing “the dangerous way in which the Filipinos fhad involved the State in-business.” Then General Wood’s entire policy to date has been resolute and aggressive, highhanded and militarist, with the object ef driving the Philippine Government out of business and having it stay out of business for good. The choice of Wood as Filipino Governor General is in itself the best indication of the economic and naval importance attached to the Islands by the American imperial- ists and of the serious concern with which our capitalists viewed the en- try of the native government into national business. General Leonard Wood has the unenviable record ef being the most tyrannical and effi- cient seryant of our employing class. The strikebreaker, General Wood has left his bloody imprint on the strug- gles of the West Virginia miners, en the 1919 steel strike in Gary, on the race troubles in Omaha, and on the Cuban people. Governor General Wood’s tmper- ialist policy is aggravated by his being in a position to hand out valu- able concessions to some of the to- bacco, railroad, and oil millionaires who invested $2,000,000 in his disas- trous 1920 presidential primary cam- paign. In April, 1923 Colonel Proe- ter, who spent close to $750,000 on Wood in 1920, organized in the Is- lands & special corporation called the “Procter and Gamble Trading Co.,” to exploit the cocoanut oil possibili- ties of the Philippines, Here we have the conflict of im- perialist capitalist interests with the needs and demands, and with the wel- fare and existence, of the Filipino nation. Here we have the lie given to all the sham pretenses at the self- determination of nations so gran- diloquently mouthed by our ruling class in the last world war slaughter. In the case of the American imper- jalist attempt to uproot the most substantial basis for Philippine na- tional freedom, the economic basis, the workers and farmers of the United States and the world are pre- sented with a view of what our capitalism really is—stripped to the skeleton in all its naked brutality. Salvation Lies in Unity of Oppressed It is plain therefore that the very economic conditions of capitalist fm- perialism militate against the Fill- pino people being given freedom from our employing class exploita- tion and oppression. It is likewise clear that because twice as much British capital is to- day still invested in the Philippines, the American imperialists will not dare to throw away the inestimable political advantages at their disposal : thru the present political domination of the archipelago by Wall Street. The spectre of Anglo-Japanese unity in the Pacific still haunts our tm- perialists. The inestimable value of the Phil- ippines as a source of new raw ma- terials, as a naval base, as the com- mercial gateway to the Far East, is uppermost in the minds of our capitalist rulers. Consequently the Philippine crists is bound to devilon and grow ever more acute. Our exploiters will never surrender the bargain they got from the decrepit Spanish govern- ment when they paid $20,000,000 for these treasure islands, The best that can be forced out of our employing class, the most the Filipipos can hope for as long as the capitalists dominate our political and economie life, is some incomplete, limited na- tional autonomy of some form er other. The salvation of the Filipino peo- ple lies only in their union with oppressed of the world, under Com- — leadership and for Commun- Complete economic and freedom for the Philippines, genuine national freedom without Fg all other op nationalities only when capi om is abol the exploiters ended, only when the Workers and Farmers Republic is established. ws