TERRITORIES: Gabaldon’s Going

While echoes of Governor General Stimson’s inaugural speech still rang in the Philippine press, a short, swart, bald, bearded little man in Washington put finishing touches on a speech of his own, sent it to the U. S. House of Representatives, caused his trunks to be packed and, with his wife, started for home. Governor General Stimson had declared flatly his opposition to Philippine independence in anything like the near future (TIME, March 12). The little man in Washington, Resident Commissioner Isauro Gabaldon of the Philippines, was resigning and going home, not only to keep independence sentiment alive but to fan it up afresh as never before.

Richest native of the islands, an able lawyer (trained in Spain), politically independent of such professional agitators as Manuel Quezon, Sergio Osmena and Manuel Roxas, Lawyer Gabaldon intended to play a lone hand as George Washington of the Philippines. He planned, first of all, to see to it that his successor in Washington should be appointed by the Filipino Senate and not by Governor General Stimson. To effect this, he dated his resignation ahead to July 16, when the insular Senate will be in session. Secondly, he planned to enter the Filipino legislature on a straight Independence ticket. Thirdly, he said he would establish a newspaper to fight, slug for slug, the Stimson policy of introducing U. S. capital to the islands in a large way.

It is customary for retiring Commissioners to address the U. S. House of Representatives. But Lawyer Gabaldon had so many harsh things to say that he thought it best simply to print his farewell in the Congressional Record because, as he said to the invisible Representatives in his introduction: “Personally, I love you one and all . . . I do not blame you individually, gentlemen of the House . . . I only wish that our fate were in your hands. . . .”

The target of Lawyer Gabaldon’s attack, which historians called the most bellicose formal pronouncement ever made by a Filipino Commissioner in the 30 years the U. S. has governed the Territory, was “Powerful forces that you do not see . . . enormous sums of American capital.”

“Every additional dollar of American investment there is an additional nail in the coffin of our independence,” he wrote. “. . . What frightens me as a Filipino is the knowledge that those American ‘captains of industry’ who have millions invested in the Philippines are also heavy contributors to the campaign chest of the Republican Party. In the name of God, Members of the American Congress, I beseech you to give us our independence before the Philippines, like the ‘Teapot Dome’ and the naval oil lands, are donated to campaign contributors whose mouths are watering for our golden natural resources.”

After this purely political appeal, Lawyer Gabaldon settled down to cases. He flayed Katherine Mayo, the palpitant, middle-aged maiden lady from Manhattan, whose Isles of Fear preceded her Mother India as a sensational bestseller, calling her a “vile propagandist” who had represented as typical of the Philippines such “filth” as she could find in the “sewers.” He cited for inconsistency with the present Philippine policy of the U. S., many a glowing period on liberty and independence by President Coolidge, Charles Evan Hughes, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln. He argued that the Philippines were capable of economic independence, even if faced with a U. S. tariff wall, as suggested by the fact that smaller, poorer, less populous and less literate republics are increasing their export trades far more rapidly than the paternalized Philippines.

The insulting refusal of U. S. colonists to treat Filipinos as social and political equals when in their country was another grievance cited.

“My experience of seven years as Resident Commissioner in Washington,” concluded Lawyer Gabaldon, “has convinced me that the average member of Congress is too busy with affairs concerning his own country to give Philippine matters the attention they must receive to be intelligently and fairly passed upon.”

The legislation in question provides for increased salaries for the Governor General and other officials and pay for “advisers” desired by Governor General Stimson in addition to his regular Cabinet. Lawyer Gabaldon’s objection was based in the familiar phrase, “Taxation without representation.” He thought the Philippine legislature, when it meets, should be allowed to pass on these expenditures of island taxes. In general, the Gabaldon revolt is against the dilatory, if not reactionary trend of U. S. Philippine policy since 1899, when Dr. Jacob G. Schurman, president of the first Philippine Commission, construed the U. S. policy to be for “continuously expanding liberty to issue in independence.”