During the hot season of 1908 the Bureau of Lands transferred a number of its employees to Baguio, quartering them in tents.  This was done in order to ascertain the practical effect of sending American and Filipino employees to this mountain resort.  The conclusion was reached that the small additional expense involved was more than justified by the larger quantity and higher quality of the work performed as a result of the greatly improved physical condition of the workers.  Every Filipino sent to Baguio gained in weight, with the single exception of a messenger who had to run his legs off!  Other bureaus subsequently followed the example of the Bureau of Lands, with similar results.

During the 1909 season, the railroad having reached Camp One, five large Stanley steam automobiles were operated by the government in transporting passengers from this place to Baguio, and more than two thousand persons were thus moved over the road.

Meanwhile, the unexpectedly heavy expense involved in completing the road had been made the subject of severe criticism by the public press of Manila.  Most of the critics were entirely honest, having no idea of the character of the country opened up, or of the importance of making it readily accessible.

Just at the time when the commission should have crowded its programme through to conclusion, it faltered.  The only government construction work performed at the summer capital that year, in addition to what has been mentioned, was the erection of a small office building and of a barrack building for labourers, the enlarging of five government cottages, the addition of out-buildings, and the enlarging of a building which served as a combination sanatorium and hotel.

This policy of inaction was a mistaken one.  It made the Benguet Road seem like the city avenue which ran into a street, the street into a lane, the lane into a cow path, the cow path into a squirrel track and the squirrel track up a tree, for while one could get to Baguio, there was very little there after one arrived.  The accommodations at the sanatorium were strictly limited, and there was some apparent justification for the charge freely made that the Philippine Commission had voted to spend very large sums of money to open up a health resort from which only its members and its staff derived benefit.

The government had at the outset been obliged to construct its buildings on a piece of private land purchased from Mr. Otto Scheerer, as prior to the passage of the Public Land Act and its approval by the President and Congress, building on public land was impossible.  Now, however, a town site had been surveyed, and plans for the future development of Baguio had been made by one of the world’s most competent experts.  The time had arrived for action.  Mr. Forbes, then secretary of commerce and police, argued vigorously for the carrying out of the original plan of the commission by the construction of adequate public buildings.