ercised
by a local man or family. There are examples in America, where every
village owns its leading citizen's and its leading citizen's wife's
influence. Booth Tarkington has pictured an American cacique in "The
Conquest of Canaan." Judge Pike is a cacique. His power, however,
is vested in his capacity to deceive his fellowmen, in the American's
natural love for what he regards as an eminent personality, and his
clinging to an ideal.

A Filipino cacique is quite a different being. He owes his prestige
to fear--material fear of the consequences which his wealth and power
can bring down on those that cross him. He does not have to play a
hypocritical role. He need neither assume to be, nor be, a saint in
his private or public life. He must simply be in control of enough
resources to attach to him a large body of relatives and friends whose
financial interests are tied up with his. Under the Spanish regime
he had to stand in by bribery with the local governor. Under the
American regime, with its illusions of democracy, he simply points to
his _clientele_ and puts forward the plea that he is the natural voice
of the people. The American Government, helpless in its great ignorance
of people, language, and customs, is eager to find the people's voice,
and probably takes him at his word. Fortified by Government backing,
he starts in to run his province independently of law or justice,
and succeeds in doing so. There are no newspapers, there is no
real knowledge among the people of what popular rights consist in,
and no idea with which to combat his usurpations. The men whom he
squeezes howl, but not over the principle. They simply wait the day
of revolution. Even where there is a real public sentiment which
condemns the tyrant, it is half the time afraid to assert itself,
for the tyrant's first defence is that they oppose him because he is a
friend of the American Government. Local justice of the peace courts
are simply farcical, and most of the cacique's violations of right
keep him clear at least of the courts of first instance, where the
judiciary, Filipino or American, is reliable. Thus our Government,
in its first attempts to introduce democratic institutions, finds
itself struggling with the very worst evil of democracy long before
it can make the virtues apparent.

The poor people among the Filipinos live in a poverty, a misery, and
a happiness inconceivable to our people who have not seen it. Their
poverty is real