She herself does not work, busy as she is,
and it speaks well for the faith and honor of the Filipino people
that she can secure labor in plenty to do all these things for her,
to handle moneys and give a faithful account of them. It is pitiful
to see how little the Filipino laboring class can do for itself,
how dependent it is upon the head of its superiors, and how content
it is to go on piling up wealth for them on a mere starvation dole.
As before said, the laboring man who attaches himself to a great
family does so because it gives him security. He is nearly always
in debt to it, but if he is sick and unable to work he knows his
rice will come in just the same. Under the old Spanish system, a
servant in debt could not quit his employer's service till the debt
was paid. The object of an employer was to get a man in debt and
keep him so, in which case he was actually, although not nominally,
a slave. While this law is no longer in force, probably not ten per
cent of the laboring population realize it. They know that an American
cannot hold them in his employ against their will, but they do not
know that this is true of Filipinos and Spaniards. Nor is the upper
class anxious to have them informed. The poor frequently offer their
children or their younger brothers and sisters to work out their debts.
Children are sold here also. Twice in my first year at Capiz, I refused
to buy small children who were offered for sale by their parents lest
the worse evil of starvation should befall them; and once, on my going
into a friend's house, she showed me a child of three or four years
that she had bought for five pesos.
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