hen
their own desires begin to reinforce the clamors of the children,
they will start out at the eleventh hour to find an errand or an odd
bit of work. There may be a single squash on the roof vine waiting
to be plucked and to yield its few centavos, or they can go out to
the beach and dig a few cents' worth of clams.

The more intelligent of the laboring class attach themselves as
_cliente_ to the rich land-holding families. They are by no means
slaves in law, but they are in fact; and they like it. The men are
agricultural laborers; the women, seamstresses, house servants, and wet
nurses, and they also do the beautiful embroideries, the hat-plaiting,
the weaving of pina, sinamay, and jusi, and the other local industries
which are carried on by the upper class. The poor themselves have
nothing to do with commerce; that is in the hands of the well-to-do.

As the children of the _clientele_ grow up, they are scattered
out among the different branches of the ruling family as maids and
valets. In a well-to-do Filipino family of ten or twelve children,
there will be a child servant for every child in the house. The
little servants are ill-fed creatures (for the Filipinos themselves
are merciless in what they exact and parsimonious in what they give),
trained at seven or eight years of age to look after the room, the
clothing, and to be at the beck and call of another child, usually a
little older, but ofttimes younger than themselves. They go to school
with their little masters and mistresses, carry their books, and play
with them. For this they receive the scantiest dole of food on which
they can live, a few cast-off garments, and a stipend of a medio-peso
(twenty-five cents cents U.S. currency) per annum, which their parents
collect and spend. Parents and child are satisfied, because, little
as they get, it is certain. Parents especially are satisfied, because
thus do they evade the duties and responsibilities of parenthood.

It was at first a source of wonder to me how the rich man came out even
on his scores of retainers, owing to their idleness and the demands
for fiestas which he is compelled to grant. But he does succeed in
getting enough out of them to pay for the unhulled rice he gives
them, and he more than evens up on the children. If ever there was
a land where legislation on the subject of child labor is needed,
it is here. Children are overworked from infancy. They do much of the
work of the Islands, and th