New Britain herald., 1915-12-07

| llooAS'AP oAAN A1o 1llGdIlnS III Cn1S con-
 nection There is the partisanship in
 democrat with power of removal
 which prompts him to dismiss trained
 republican officeholders with out re-
 gard to the injury to the public ser l vice. That kind We have just been 1 considering.
 For Patronage Purposes
 Then there is shown another kind
 or partlsanshlp even more injurious.
 That is the making of vacancies by
 forcing resignations of competent and
 trained American civil servants for
 the purpose of giving patronage to
 MT. Queson and his group of Filipino
 politicians and enabling them to se- ] cure official berths for their hench- men in Filipino politics. Then there
 is partisanship in removing competent ! Filipinos from office for the same pur- ] pose. There were three Filipinos,
 members of the commission, one of
 them the secretary of finance and justice Araneta, all faithful, loyal, public servants of years training, l whose needs were demanded because ' they had been in the previous admin istration. After Arellano, Chief Jus l tice, Araneta is the ablest Filipino in
 the Islands. Why did these men have l to be sacrificed for partisanship, Why
 should the public lose the value of
 their services to gratify the political
 revenge and plans of MT. Qneson ex- ] cept for motive of partisanship. Removal of Sleeper.
 1 Let us now come to the next re- 1 moval, that of Captain Sleeper, from the land office. I have explained the 1 importance of the office in the sale 1 of the Friars Lands and in the set 1 clement of land of titles generally in the Islands. With Sleeper's organi- zation, the sinking fund for the Friar's Fund Lands of S7,0O0,00O was growing successfully. With his organization and 9 competent and trained land court of five judges, there had been settled and recorded thou sands of land titles. The uncertainty Of tenure and boundaries was one l of the great evils of the Islands 1 Sleeper had conducted accurate sur- | veys and increased the land registra- tions to 6O,O0O in his last year. What did this new non-partisan regime doo They removed Sleeper as soon as Mr. Harrison reached the Islands, and his assistant, Wilson. later. If the record shows that Wilson voluntar- fly resigned, so much the worse for the record. So humorous have the records as evidence in this regard be- come in the Islands that the word resigned" with quotation marks is a recognized term in the vernacular In the copy of a record sent me by Mir Worcester, T find Mccoy, Sleeper Will son, Leech, Hogsette, all as having resigned after satisfactory service. The work of registering the land ti- ties in the Islands has thus been halted and the record of 6O,000 cases for year under Sleeper is a dream of the past, and the reorganization l of the courts greatly contributed to , such a halt ,
 Looking for DismissaIs. {
 'The number of cases like those I have cited justifies the conclusion that MT. Harrison was looking for dis missals and seizing any pretence for making them. All this is explained by the circumstances that Mr. Harri- sons policy was the result of a ser . ies of long consultations on his long trip together across the Pacific with : MT. Queson, the delegate, whom he .. confessed to be his creator, and who was thus enabled to secure rich pa tronage for his political group. Tn some instances the vacancies made by removals of bureau chiefs were filled
  but in such case the opportunity for vacancies for Filipinos of course fol- lowed.
 MT. Harrison seeks to justify the wide employment of Filipinos in the I revenue system by the report , of MT. Nolting, when he was internal f revenue collector, that Filipinos ' worked we'll in the positions under :. him. Now it is true-it was so 'n r my day-it was so fin MT. Forbes day 2 that American heads of bureaus were 10th to increase the number of Q FiHpinos under them in the subor- V dinate positions because of the addi- c tlonal care and responsibility that f the supervision of such subordinates . involved" \
 Letter From Forbes" a
 After my article appeared I re- f ceived the following letter from Mr. n Cameron Forbes, formerly governor II general of the islands. a
 New York, December 2, 1915. a Hon. William H. Taft, b
 New Haven, Conn.
 Dear MT. Taft: regret to have to say that the evidence which comes to d me from all sources from Americans, f t1np1nOs, army men and civilians, in c and out of public service, travellers h new to the situation, and residents t familiar with it, all bears out in the a main the correstness of your descrip- ton Of conditions as they exist in the K islands today. It would be strange | D if there were not someone to rise up p