ed. Those
were halcyon days for the old-established retailers as well as the
new-comers; but, as Governor W. H. Taft pointed out in his report
to the Civil Commission dated December 23, 1903, [292] "The natural
hostility of the American business men, growing out of the war, was
not neutralized by a desire and an effort to win the patronage and
goodwill of the Filipinos. The American business men controlled much of
the advertising in the American papers, and the newspapers naturally
reflected the opinion of their advertisers and subscribers in the
advocacy of most unconciliatory measures for the native Filipino,
and in decrying all efforts of the Government to teach Filipinos
how to govern by associating the more intelligent of them in the
Government.... The American business man in the Islands has really,
up to this time, done very little to make or influence trade. He
has kept close to the American patronage, and has not extended his
efforts to an expansion of trade among the Filipinos.... There are
a few Americans who have pursued a different policy with respect to
the Filipinos to their profit."

Governor Taft's comments were only intended to impress upon the
permanent American traders, for their own good, the necessity
of creating a new _clientele_ which they had neglected. The war
finished, the wave of temporarily abnormal prosperity gradually
receded with the withdrawal of the troops in excess of requirements;
the palmy days of the retailer had vanished, and all Manila began to
complain of "depression" in trade. The true condition of the Colony
became more apparent to them in their own slack time, and for want of
reflection some began to attribute it to a want of foresight in the
Insular Government. Industry is in its infancy in the Philippines,
which is essentially an agricultural colony. The product of the soil
is the backbone of its wealth. The true causes of the depression
were not within the control of the Insular Government or of any
ruling factor. Five years of warfare and its sequence--the bandit
community--had devastated the provinces. The peaceful pursuits of the
husbandman had been nearly everywhere interrupted thereby; his herds
of buffaloes had been decimated in some places, in others annihilated;
his apparatus or machinery and farm buildings were destroyed, now
by the common exigencies of war, now by the wantonness of the armed
factions. The remnant of the buffaloes was attacked by rinderpest,
or _