e they are making rice cakes and taffy candy,
which an old woman will presently hawk about the streets for her.

One of the curious things here is the multiplicity of resource which
the rich classes possess. A rich land-holder will have his rice fields,
sugar mill, vino factory, and cocoanut and hemp plantations. He will
own a fish corral or two, and be one of the backers of a deep-sea
fishing outfit. He speculates a little in rice, and he may have some
interest in pearl fisheries. On a bit of land not good for much else
he has the palm tree, which yields _buri_ for making mats and sugar
bags. His wife has a little shop, keeps several weavers at work,
and an embroidery woman or two. If she goes on a visit to Manila,
the day after her return her servants are abroad, hawking novelties in
the way of fans, knick-knacks, bits of lace, combs, and other things
which she has picked up to earn an honest penny. If a steamer drops
in with a cargo of Batangas oranges, she invests twenty or thirty
pesos, and has her servants about carrying the trays of fruit for
sale. According to her lights, which are not hygienic, she is a good
housekeeper and a genuine helpmeet. She keeps every ounce of food under
lock and key, and measures each crumb that is used in cooking. She
keeps the housekeeping accounts, handles the money, never pries into
her husband's affairs, bears him a child every year, and is content,
in return for all this devotion, with an ample supply of pretty
clothes and her jewels. She herself does not work, busy as she is,
and it speaks well for the faith and honor of the Filipino people
that she can secure labor in plenty to do all these things for her,
to handle moneys and give a faithful account of them. It is pitiful
to see how little the Filipino laboring class can do for itself,
how dependent it is upon the head of its superiors, and how content
it is to go on piling up wealth for them on a mere starvation dole.

As before said, the laboring man who attaches himself to a great
family does so because it gives him security. He is nearly always
in debt to it, but if he is sick and unable to work he knows his
rice will come in just the same. Under the old Spanish system, a
servant in debt could not quit his employer's service till the debt
was paid. The object of an employer was to get a man in debt and
keep him so, in which case he was actually, although not nominally,
a slave. While this law is no longer in force, probab