Many Filipino
families of the upper class permit their daughters to go to and from
the American schools on the trolley car, and it is no uncommon thing
to see three or four youngsters, all under ten, climbing on and off
with their books, asking for transfers, and enjoying their liberty,
who ten years ago would have been huddled into a quilez and guarded
by an elderly woman servant.
Lastly, a bill for female suffrage was introduced into the Philippine
Assembly a few weeks ago. It is one of those "best" things which
Filipinos all want for their land. The young man who introduced it had
probably been reading about the female suffragist movement in England,
and he said to himself that it would be a fine idea to show this
dull old world how progressive and modern are the Philippine Islands;
and so he drafted his bill. Nothing seems to have been heard of it,
and it was probably tabled, with much other progressive legislation,
in the hurry of the last days of the session. Another bill was one to
put an annual license of one thousand pesos (five hundred gold dollars)
on every minister of the gospel, Protestant or Catholic. I suspect its
parent of having been coached up on modern French thought. However,
that is not pertinent to the woman question. What I desire to do is
to give a correct impression of a country where _real_ conditions are
such as I have described them, and _ideal_ conditions have advanced
to the point of a bill for female suffrage.
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