l functionaries,
are Filipinos. The provincial justices of the peace are also natives,
and necessarily so because their office requires an intimate knowledge
of native character and dialect. Their reward is the local prestige
which they enjoy and the litigants' fees, and happily their services
are not in daily request. At times the findings of these local
luminaries are somewhat quaint, and have to be overruled by the more
enlightened judicial authorities in the superior courts. Manila and
all the judicial centres are amply supplied with American lawyers who
have come to establish themselves in the Islands, where the custom
obtains for professional men to advertise in the daily newspapers. So
far there has been only one American lady lawyer, who, in 1904, held
the position of Assistant-Attorney in the Attorney-General's office.

CHAPTER XXXI

Trade and Agriculture Since the American Advent

During the year 1898 there were those who enriched themselves
enormously as a consequence of the American advent, but the
staple trade of the Colony was generally disrupted by the abnormal
circumstances of the period; therefore it would serve no practical
purpose to present the figures for that year for comparison with the
results obtained in the years following that of the Treaty of Paris.

The tables at the end of this chapter show the increase or decrease in
the various branches of export and import trade. Regarded as a whole,
the volume of business has increased since the American occupation--to
what extent will be apparent on reference to the table of "Total Import
and Export Values" at p. 639. When the American army of occupation
entered the Islands, and was subsequently increased to about 70,000
troops, occupying some 600 posts about the Archipelago, there came
in their wake a number of enterprising business men, who established
what were termed trading companies. Their transactions hardly affected
the prosperity of the Colony one way or the other. For this class of
trader times were brisk; their dealings almost exclusively related
to the supply of commodities to the temporary floating population
of Americans, with such profitable results that, although many of
them withdrew little by little when, at the close of the War of
Independence, the troops were gradually reduced to some 16,000 men,
occupying about 100 posts, others had accumulated sufficient capital
to continue business in the more normal time which follow