Peace on the Pasig
When a Philippine plebiscite last spring voted in favor of suffrage for women by a 400,000 to 40,000 majority, only one more wrinkle remained before Filipino women became enfranchised. This was the actual framing of a law to allow them to vote. Last week, the wrinkle was ironed out in characteristic Filipino fashion.
Filipino males pay a head tax of $1 apiece. The tax receipts have been the means whereby voters are identified. Philippine President Manuel Quezon last week announced that he would veto the woman suffrage bill unless it imposed a poll tax on women, recommended 25¢ a head as a minimum tariff for Filipino females. Next day, while Filipino suffragettes sputtered with indignation that a tax should go with the right to vote, the National Assembly passed a bill which evaded the question of the poll tax by substituting a different method of identifying voters. If President Quezon signs it, Filipino voters will hereafter put their thumbprints on their ballots. The prints will then serve to settle anticipated arguments about fraudulent voting.
Whether this incident represented a minor revolt of his rubber stamp legislature or whether dictatorial little President Quezon had quietly arranged it as a window dressing to prove to visiting U. S. officials that parliamentary government functions in the Philippines, it was only one of several matters which kept him busy last week. For while all was apparently peaceful along the Pasig—the muddy little stream that flows through Manila—Manuel Quezon was busily heating several political irons in the fire.
Island Problems. The difference between my critics and me is that while they talk, I do things." This recent boast by President Quezon, to a crowd in front of his handsome Malacanan Palace, referred to the fact that, during his absence in the U. S. and Europe, he was running the Philippines from the U. S. by radio telephone messages to his moon-faced little secretary Jorg Vargas, the U. S. Supreme Court in Washington had approved the constitutionality of giving the Philippines the $50,000,000 (100,000,000 pesos) proceeds of the coconut oil processing tax which the U. S. imposed in 1934. So President Quezon, although he bitterly opposed the original imposition of the tax, now has 100,000,000 pesos to spend and is intent on getting full credit for it. To a special session of his legislature, he explained how he proposed to start spending this windfall.
First major expenditure would be $3,500,000 for buying large haciendas for resale to impoverished tenants. For those who were surprised that, in view of the Philippines' recent acute agrarian troubles, no more was earmarked for this purpose, President Quezon had a ready answer: if he promised to buy estates wherever agrarian trouble started, landowners who were eager to sell out would foment trouble to encourage sales.