State of the Union Address (1790-2001) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 5,523 pages of information about State of the Union Address (1790-2001).

State of the Union Address (1790-2001) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 5,523 pages of information about State of the Union Address (1790-2001).
and railways, of irrigation and artesian wells, public buildings, and better means of communication.  But large parts of the islands are still unreached, still even unexplored, roads and railways are needed in many parts, irrigation systems are still to be installed, and wells to be driven.  Whole villages and towns are still without means of communication other than almost impassable roads and trails.  Even the great progress in sanitation, which has successfully suppressed smallpox, the bubonic plague, and Asiatic cholera, has found the cause of and a cure for beriberi, has segregated the lepers, has helped to make Manila the most healthful city in the Orient, and to free life throughout the whole archipelago from its former dread diseases, is nevertheless incomplete in many essentials of permanence in sanitary policy.  Even more remains to be accomplished.  If freed from American control sanitary progress is bound to be arrested and all that has been achieved likely to be lost.

Concurrent with the economic, social, and industrial development of the islands has been the development of the political capacity of the people.  By their progressive participation in government the Filipinos are being steadily and hopefully trained for self-government.  Under Spanish control they shared in no way in the government.  Under American control they have shared largely and increasingly.  Within the last dozen years they have gradually been given complete autonomy in the municipalities, the right to elect two-thirds of the provincial governing boards and the lower house of the insular legislature.  They have four native members out of nine members of the commission, or upper house.  The chief justice and two justices of the supreme court, about one-half of the higher judicial positions, and all of the justices of the peach are natives.  In the classified civil service the proportion of Filipinos increased from 51 per cent in 1904 to 67 per cent in 1911.  Thus to-day all the municipal employees, over go per cent of the provincial employees, and 60 per cent of the officials and employees of the central government are Filipinos.  The ideal which has been kept in mind in our political guidance of the islands has been real popular self-government and not mere paper independence.  I am happy to say that the Filipinos have done well enough in the places they have filled and in the discharge of the political power with which they have been intrusted to warrant the belief that they can be educated and trained to complete self-government.  But the present satisfactory results are due to constant support and supervision at every step by Americans.

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State of the Union Address (1790-2001) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.