ly not ten per
cent of the laboring population realize it. They know that an American
cannot hold them in his employ against their will, but they do not
know that this is true of Filipinos and Spaniards. Nor is the upper
class anxious to have them informed. The poor frequently offer their
children or their younger brothers and sisters to work out their debts.

Children are sold here also. Twice in my first year at Capiz, I refused
to buy small children who were offered for sale by their parents lest
the worse evil of starvation should befall them; and once, on my going
into a friend's house, she showed me a child of three or four years
that she had bought for five pesos. She remarked that it was a pity
to let the child starve, and that in a year or two its labor would
more than pay for its keep.

Filipinos who have capital enough all keep one or more pigs. These
are yard scavengers, and, as sanitary measures are little observed
by this race, have access to filth that makes the thought of eating
their flesh exceedingly repulsive. When the owners are ready to kill,
however, the pig is brought upstairs into the kitchen, where it lives
luxuriously on boiled rice, is bathed once a day, and prepared for
slaughter like a sacrificial victim. If you are personally acquainted
with a pig of this sort and know the day set for his decease, you
may send your servant out to buy fresh pork; otherwise you had better
stick to chicken and fish.

Before the Insurrection, when the rinderpest had not yet destroyed the
herds, beef cattle were plenty, and meat was cheap enough for even the
poorest to enjoy. A live goat, full grown, was not worth more than a
peso (fifty cents gold). Now there are practically no beef cattle at
all, so the only meat available is goats' flesh, which is sold at from
twenty to sixty cents a pound (ten to thirty cents gold). Americans
living in the provinces rely largely upon chicken, though in the coast
towns there is always plenty of delicious fish. There are also oysters
(not very good), clams, crabs, shrimps, and crayfish.

One of the most irritating features of housekeeping here is the
lack of any fixed value, especially for market produce. There are no
grocery stores, every article must be chaffered over, and is valued
according to the owner's pressing needs, his antipathy for Americans,
or his determination to get everything he can.

You may be driving in the country and see a flock of chickens
feeding u