began to pour out, and continued to pour in startling disproportion to his tiny pile.  He stood it half a minute and then laid down his bundle of stalks and strode away.  The onlooking land-holders were at first amazed and delighted.  Then suddenly a horrible thought struck them!  They got out their pocket pads and pencils and began to figure.  Then they held a consultation and declared that the deal was off—­that for one-twelfth the amount of rice streaming out of the thresher, the American’s profits would be highway robbery of the poor Filipino.  In vain the agent pointed out to them that the one-twelfth was a ratio in which their gain would always be proportionate to his.  They could see nothing except that he was going to make a large sum of money at their expense.  The economy of the thresher over their own wasteful system made no impression against the fact that his commission would be a bulk sum which they were unwilling to see him gain.  They could not afford to buy the machine, but they stopped the threshing then and there; and the agent learned that what is good advertising in America is not necessarily good in the Philippines.

The reader may fancy that he perceives in this chapter a direct contradiction of what I said in a preceding chapter about the Filipino aristocrat’s desiring the best of everything for his country.  But the Filipino is like the sinner who says with all sincerity that he desires to be saved, but who, when confronted with the necessity of giving up certain of his pleasures as the price of salvation, feels that salvation comes rather high, and begins to figure on how he can accomplish the desired result without personal inconvenience.  The present land-holding aristocracy is jealous to the last degree of its prerogatives, and it has fought every attempt to equalize taxation and to make the rich bear their fair share in the national expense account.  The land tax and the rentas internes, or internal revenue tax, are two governmental measures which the rich classes fought to the extreme of bitterness, and which they would revoke to-morrow if it lay in their power to do so.

An aristocracy represents a survival of the fittest—­not necessarily the ideally fit, but the fittest to meet the conditions under which it must prove a survivor.  The conditions which Spain created here to mould Filipino character were mediaeval, monarchical, and reactionary.  The aristocracy is a land-holding one, untrained in the responsibilities of land-holders who grow up a legitimate part of the body politic of their country.  Previous to American occupation the aristocracy was excluded from any share in the government, and the Spaniards were exceedingly jealous of any pretensions to knowledge or culture on its part.  The aristocracy which could survive such conditions had to do so by indirectness and courtier-like flattery, by blandishment and deceit.  The aristocrats learned to despise the poor and the weak; for the more extravagant the