The result of American occupation has been a rise in the price of
agricultural labor, and in the city of Manila in all labor. But
in the provinces the needle-woman, the weaver, and the house
servant work still for inconceivably small prices, while there
has been a decided rise in the price of local manufactures. Jusi,
which cost three dollars gold a pattern in 1901, now costs six and
nine dollars. Exquisite embroideries on pina, which is thinner than
bolting cloth, have quadrupled their prices, but the provincial women
servants, who weave the jusi and do the embroidering, still work for
a few cents a day and two scanty meals.
When I arrived here a seamstress worked nine hours a day for twenty
cents gold and her dinner. Now in Manila a seamstress working for
Americans receives fifty cents gold and sometimes seventy-five cents
and her dinner, though the Spanish, Filipinos, and Chinese pay less. In
the province of Capiz twelve and a half cents gold per day for a
seamstress is the recognized price for an American to pay--natives
get one for less. A provincial Filipino pays his coachman two and
a half dollars gold a month, and a cook one dollar and a half. An
American for the same labor must pay from four to eight dollars for
the cook and three to six dollars for the coachman. As before stated,
the subordinate servants in a Filipino house cost next to nothing,
because of the utilization of child labor.
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