The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-10
LABOR The Split in the Labor Congress OF the Philippine Islands

IN order to understand the split in
the COngresO Obrero de Filipinas
philippine Labor Congress) which
I occurred at the May LIST Congress,
we must understand the character
of the Philippine Islands and the ma
ture of their relations to American
imperialism: this is made doubly
necessary because of the insulaT
mind of the American working class,
who should be the first with assis-
lance to the Filipino workers and
peasants, and that, generally, little
is known of the Philippines in the
international trade union movement.
Instead of picturing the Philip
pines as a group of small islands of
second-rate Importance, we must I'M
derstand they have a total land area
of 115.026 square miles and 10 of
the islands have more than 1000
square miles each. The Island of
Luzon is as big as Holland, Den
mark and Belgium combined, and
the island of Mindano is as large
as Portugal. The total population
is approximately 100000, while
$4,000 live in Manila.
Strategically these islands are of
first-rate Importance and extend
1852 miles from North to South,
and lay across some of the main
oriental trade routes. 1t is here the
chief naval base for the U. S. Asiatic
fleet is maintained and the islands
lay abreast of the coast of Asia,
stretching from within few miles
of Japanese territory, in Formosa,
in the North, to within a few miles
of British Borneo in the South; and
will no doubt play an important part
in the next world war centered in the
Pacific.
Like all other colonial countries,
the Philippines are predominantly
agricultural. The aim of the Ameri-
can imperialists, of course, is the
control of the basic products and
raw materials, and to utilize the
Philippines as a market for U. S.
manufactured goods. The Philip
pines rank first in the production of
cocoanut, furnishing more than one
third of the worlds supply of copra,
and hold natural monopoly in
abaca, which produces an unequalled
hemp for rope manufacture. To-
gether with tobacco and sugar, these
products form the basic exports of
the country.
In recent years, however, much at
tention is given to rubber and cocoa
production, because of monopoly in
the former by the British; and re-
garding the latter, the U. S. A.
does not possess other colonies with
climatic conditions favorable for
growing cocoa. The country has
fairly rich mineral resources, but
with the exception of gold, these are
undeveloped, as the United States is
not concerned in developing native
industry to compete with her own
manufactures.
Imperialist Economic Policy.
To intensity the exploitation of
the Filipino workers and peasants
and to economically and politically
enslave them, the American CAPT
taists develop their policy in har-
mony with their own requirements.
The tendency is towards larger
farms and towards large planta-
ttions. This is an attempt by U. S.
financiers to obtain a monopoly of
the basic products. The latter are
developed on purely capitalist
basis: large corporations own the
plantations, the factories, transport
and warehouses, and control the
products that make up the chief
exports of the country. They are
also aiming to control rice produc-
ton, the chief food product of DOM
este consumption, by constructing
| 1dI &c III dIlOl SSllSIilSo III llOC ulS-
tricts. In this way American i'm
perialism tightens it's grip on the
Philippines.
This development already tends to
change the character of agricultural
life, although farming, carried on by
! primitive methods, is dominated by
very small ownership, and only a
few hundred native landowners own
100 hectares or more. However, al
ready this new tendency has the eff
feet of driving the peasants from
the land and adding to the unem-
ployed in the towns.
To carry through this economic
development" so much emphasized
by the former Governor-General
Stimson (now U. S. Secretary of
State), the U. S. imperialists find
! the mass meeting from the stems of