palities support their 3,500 primary schools at an annual cost of $750,000 and the Filipino government spends $1,750,000 more on the other schools each year.

Schools open in August and the long vacation begins in March. Sixty per cent of the pupils are boys, and forty per cent are girls. Today there are eight hundred American teachers in the Islands and six thousand Fili

pino teachers who are either graduates of American Normal Schools or have received their education from Americans. There are several kinds of schools in the Islands now that had not so much as been heard of when Mr. Taft arrived. For instance, there are seventeen schools of Domestic Science, thirty-two Arts and Trades schools, five Agricultural schools, and thirty-six provincial high schools.

The Arts and Trades schools are a remarkable innovation. Formerly young Filipinos scorned handicrafts. They wished to become lawyers, physicians, chemists, or priests. No trades for them, but Mr. Taft has taught them. He has been to them what Booker Washington has been to the colored folk in the Southern States. The American idea of the dignity of labor is now a realization in the Islands.

Mr. Taft says very little practical political

education was given by the Spaniards to the Filipinos. Substantially all the important executive offices in the Islands were assigned to the Spaniards, and the whole government was bureaucratic. The provincial and municipal authorities were appointed and popular elections were unknown. The administration of the municipalities was largely under the supervision and direction of the Spanish priest of the parish. No responsibility for government, however local or unimportant, was thrust upon Filipinos in such a way as to give them political experience; nor were the examples of fidelity to public interest sufficiently numerous in the officeholders to create a proper standard of public duty. The greatest difficulty that we have had to contend with, in vesting Filipinos with official power in municipalities, is to instill into them the idea that an office is not solely for private emolument."

The Filipino seems to have been a natural sportsman, but Mr. Taft has kind words for him nevertheless.

"The educated Filipino," he says, "has an attractive personality. His mind is quick, his sense of humor fine, his artistic sense acute and active; he has a poetic imagination; he is courteous to the highest degree; he is brave; he is generous; his mind has been given by his

(Spanish) education a touch of the scholastic logicism; he is a musician; he is oratorical by nature."

That is good material to build on and now that American methods of education have superseded Spanish methods and are actively at work over the Islands instructing the youth of both sexes, and always in the English language, the future is bright indeed for the Filipinos. That they appreciate Mr. Taft's work for them is shown by the fact that the first bill passed by the National Assembly, which he formally opened in 1907, was one appropriating 1,000,000 pesos or $500,000 in gold for public schools.

CHAPTER XI.

Я

S is natural for a man with a clear conscience and a good digestion Mr. Taft is optimistic. He believes in American ideals and he believes in the young men of America. He delights to talk to these young men concerning the things that his quarter of a century of active life in the public service has shown him to be worth while.

"I acknowledge," he says, "the necessity of the material pursuits. None of them is in danger of being neglected by Americans. The greater part by far of the energy of a people will always be absorbed by manufacturing, production, business, transportation-the development of the country's resources and the increase of its material prosperity. That is natural enough and right enough.

"But there are interests which are not material, and there is work to be done which is not that of business. The material interests indeed depend upon others which are not ma