7,000
Treasury Office Treasurer 7,000
Weather Bureau Director 2,500

The total cost of the Civil Service for the year 1903 amounted to
8,014,098.77 pesos (_vide_ "Official Gazette," Vol. II., No. 8,
dated February 4, 1904), equal to $4,007,049.38 gold.

At the time of the American occupation (1898) the Government was
necessarily military, the first governor being Maj.-General Elwell
S. Otis up to May 5, 1900, when he returned to America and was
immediately succeeded by Maj.-General Arthur McArthur. On January 20,
1899, during General Otis's governorship, a Commission of Inquest
was appointed under the presidency of Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman
known as the Schurman Commission, which arrived in Manila on May 2
to investigate the state of affairs in the Islands. The Commission
was instructed to "endeavour, without interference with the military
authorities of the United States now in control in the Philippines,
to ascertain what amelioration in the condition of the inhabitants
and what improvements in public order may be practicable." The other
members of the Commission were Rear-Admiral George Dewey, Charles
Denby, Maj.-General Elwell S. Otis, and Dean C. Worcester. Admiral
Dewey, however, was soon relieved of his obligation to remain on
the Commission, and sailed from Manila on May 19 on the _Olympia_
for New York, _via_ Europe. The commissioners' inquiries into
everything concerning the Islands, during their few months' sojourn,
are embodied in a published report, dated December 20, 1900. [239]
The War of Independence was being waged during the whole time, and
military government, with full administrative powers, continued,
as heretofore, until September 1, 1900. In the meantime the
Washington Government resolved that military rule in the Islands
should be superseded by civil government. The pacified provinces,
and those in conditions considered fit for civil administration,
were to be so established, and pending the conclusion of the war and
the subsidence of brigandage, the remainder of the Archipelago was
to be administered as military districts. With this end in view,
on March 16, 1900, Judge William H. Taft [240] was commissioned
to the Islands and sailed from San Francisco (Cal.) with his four
colleagues, on April 15, for Manila, where he arrived on June 3. In
the three months' interval, pending the assumption of legislative
power,