Word: manila
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...most Americans are concerned, they stumbled into the Philippines in their sleep, awakening one morning in May 1898 to learn that Commodore George Dewey had steamed his four cruisers and two gunboats into Manila Bay and said: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." (One who wasn't surprised was Assistant...
...Deceive Was Patriotic. When the promised Independence Day came, on July 4, 1946, the Philippines were one great wound of war. Manila was more than 50% destroyed. Everywhere schools, factories, plantations were in ruins...
...rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Wages for common laborers in Manila stayed at $1 to $3 a day, while the cost of living rose to a point almost three times that of Chicago. In the provinces, landlords continued to take 70% of the crops for themselves, getting interest of 100% to 200% on loans to tenants who were already so deeply in debt that their grandsons would not own enough land to live on or a carabao to plow...
...Luzon. In some places they levied taxes, ran their own schools and newspapers, and maintained a string of "production centers." They had the help and sympathy of thousands of villagers who found them less objectionable than the government itself. Their Politburo met under the nose of the government in Manila and boldly drew up a "strategic plan for the seizure of national power." At this point, the display in "the show window of democracy" looked pretty shabby...
...goings-on caught the eyes of Manila's newspapers, who supported him, and of U.S. officials (including able Ambassador Myron M. Cowen), who keep a fatherly eye on the young republic. It was at U.S. urging that Quirino put through needed economic reforms, so that in one year, tax revenues increased by 70%. Quirino also pushed through a new minimum-wage law, which increased the pay of 90% of Filipino wage earners. The U.S. also diplomatically persuaded Quirino that a cleanup of the army and constabulary was overdue, and that Congressman Magsaysay was just...