than at any previous period in their history. In 1904 the
manager of an Yloilo firm (whom I have known from his boyhood)
showed me statistics proving the deplorable financial position of
the sugar-growers, and informed me that his firm had stopped further
advances and closed down on twelve of the largest estates working on
borrowed capital, because of the hopelessness of eventual liquidation
in full. For the same reasons other financiers have closed their
coffers to the sugar-planters.

Another object of the grant called the Congressional Relief Fund was
to alleviate the distress prevailing in several Luzon provinces,
particularly Batangas, on account of the scarcity of rice, due,
in a great measure, to the causes already explained. Prices of the
imported article had already reached double the normal value in former
times, and the Government most opportunely intervened to check the
operations of a syndicate which sought to take undue advantage of
the prevailing misery. Under Philippine Commission Acts Nos. 495,
786 and 797, appropriations were made for the purchase of rice for
distribution in those provinces where the speculator's ambition had
run up the selling-price to an excessive rate. Hitherto the chief
supplying-market had been the French East Indies, but the syndicate
referred to contrived to close that source to the Government, which,
however, succeeded in procuring deliveries from other places. The
total amount distributed was 11,164 tons, costing P1,081,722. About
22 tons of this amount was given to the indigent class, the rest
being delivered at cost price, either in cash or in payment for the
extermination of locusts, or for labour in road-making and other public
works. The merchant class contended that this act of the Government,
which deprived them of anticipated large profits, was an interference
in private enterprise--a point on which the impartial reader must
form his own conclusions. To obviate a recurrence of the necessity
for State aid, the Insular Government passed an Act urging the people
to hasten the paddy-planting. The proclamation embodying this Act
permitted the temporary use of municipal lands, the seed supplied
to be repaid after the crop. It is said that some of the local
native councils, misunderstanding the spirit of the proclamation,
made its non-observance a criminal offence, and incarcerated many
of the supposed offenders; but they were promptly released by the
American authorities.