the battalion of scouts used on rinderpest quarantine duty it was decided, on the recommendation of all, that the scouts be withdrawn inasmuch as after two years of operation it was felt no considerable improvement was noticeable. This, however, was in no way attributable to failure on the part of the scouts to do all that was required

of them.

The Governor General desires here to make of record the thanks of the Philippine government to the commanding general, Philippine department, and to the officers of his command for the services rendered.

The executive secretary is also charged by law with the duty of conducting the new census of the islands.

The first and only census was made in 1903, and, owing to confused conditions existing in the islands at that time, it is believed the new census will be more accurate and will show a greatly improved general condition. The finances of the government did not permit of the census being taken, as was hoped, early in 1915, but it is expected that next year the work will be accomplished. Meanwhile the executive secretary and his assistants in the census work have prepared a thorough and satisfactory plan for the census.

It is of peculiar importance in the Philippines that a census be taken as soon as possible. Here, as in the United States, the apportionment of popular representatives is based upon population, as are also the distribution of insular financial aid to provinces and the apportionment of the provincial share of the internal-revenue tax. As before stated, the first census is believed to have been imperfect, owing to conditions which prevailed at the time it was taken. In addition to this, without doubt there has been a considerable increase in population since 1903, and such increase is probably greater than the normal increase in the United States, owing to the fact that comparatively greater strides have been made in the past 11 years in the control of diseases which have worked havoc in the Philippine Islands heretofore, while in the United States similar diseases have been well under control for several decades past.

The executive bureau has likewise taken an active part in the foodproduction campaign made necessary not only by the temporary paralysis of commerce incident to the breaking out of the European war but also by rinderpest, locusts, flood, and finally the great drouth of 1914. The bureaus of education, constabulary, and agriculture conducted an active campaign to induce the people to plant quickgrowing food crops, which was attended with most satisfactory results.

One of the most important works of the executive bureau is the reassessment of land values throughout the provinces for the purpose of taxation. Most gratifying results have already been shown, and the revenues of the provinces and municipalities will be greatly increased in consequence. In a large proportion of cases land had been left unassessed or had been assessed far below its proper value. The total number of taxable parcels registered in the tax registers in the Philippine Islands on January 1, 1914, was 1,953,032, as against 2,151,627 on December 31, 1914, an increase of 198.595 parcels.

The total number of exempt parcels in the Philippines on January 1, 1914, was 476,645, as against 488,475 on December 31, 1914, an increase of 11,830.

9489°- -WAR 1915-VOL 3- --36

The total valuation of taxable real property carried in the tax registers in all the provinces of the Philippine Islands on January 1, 1914, was 301,895,852. These figures were increased on December 31, 1914, to P370,132,704. The total valuation of exempt property on those dates was P57,888,931 and 70,405,739, respectively, an increase of P68,236,852 in taxable property and P12,516,808 in exempt property.

The foregoing figures do not include the city of Manila, the department of Mindanao and Sulu, the provinces of Palawan, Mindoro, Nueva Vizcaya, Batanes, and the Mountain Province where the general land-tax laws are not applicable.

The additional annual revenue resulting from the increase of P68,236,852 in taxable valuation will, beginning with the year 1915, be as follows:

Another feature of the work of the executive bureau is the supervision of loans of the insular trust funds, namely, the insurance fund, the public works bonds sinking funds, the friar lands bonds sinking fund, and the gold standard fund. Loans from the first three funds bear interest at the rate of 4 per cent per annum; those from the gold standard fund at 3 per cent per annum. The law permits the lending of the above funds to provinces and municipalities for permanent public improvements, which are construed to be market buildings, slaughterhouses, municipal buildings, municipal and provincial school buildings, provincial capital buildings, bridges, artesian wells, waterworks, and sewers, and also, expressly, cadastral survey work. During the year 1911 the repayments of loans previously granted, excluding interest, amounted to 1,056,873, and new loans in the amount of P1,490,000 were granted during the year for the following purposes and in the amounts shown:

For public works and improvements in the city of Manila_-_

147, 200

Grand total

1,490, 000

On January 1, 1915, there was available in the trust fund for loans 627,038.82, and during the year 1915 the repayments of loans, excluding interest, will amount to P1,145,170.30. Each of the projects for which loans are made is carefully investigated and must be favorably recommended by the executive office before the loan is

made.

The report of the executive secretary also shows the gradual filipinization of the 43 provincial and 757 municipal governments, which in the case of the latter is almost complete. In 1914 there were 37 American and 134 Filipino provincial officials, as against 40 and 113 in 1913, while in municipal offices there were 116 Americans and 13,272 Filipinos, as against 121 and 12,384 in 1913.

Three hundred and eighteen administrative cases against municipal officers and justices of the peace were handled by the bureau in 1914, and the action taken by the executive is shown in his report. Eight hundred and nineteen municipal presidents were in office in 1914, and 12 were found guilty of offenses requiring removal. Of the 733 justices of the peace, 13 were tried and removed; and of the 541 auxiliary justices of the peace, 4 were tried, of whom 3 were removed and disqualified. Of the 634 municipal treasurers, only 1 was tried and removed.

The report of the executive secretary shows that the expenditure by the insular government in the form of insular aid to the provinces was increased to the amount of approximately 1,000,000. This is in large measure due to the reduction by the Legislature of the amount of surcharge by the bureau of public works to the provinces from 6 to 3 per cent in the appropriation bill of January, 1914.

From the executive secretary's report it appears also that the expenses of government of the 36 provinces of the islands increased in all about 1,000,000 in 1914 over 1913. It is found upon examination that this increase is in part explained as follows:

(a) New cost of revision of land assessments, approximately P300,000.

(b) Increased participation of both provinces and municipalities in the extension of district health organizations.

(c) Increased participation in the expense of public education. (d) Administrative expense, #131,000.

A further apparent increase is due to a change in subprovincial bookkeeping.

There are six subprovinces in the Philippine Islands attached to regular provinces for administrative purposes, it being much more economical to administer them in this way than for each to have a complete set of officials. Under the law 30 per cent of the collections in each subprovince go to the province to which it is attached in payment of the expenses of administration. Heretofore when taxes were collected 70 per cent was credited directly to subprovincial funds and 30 per cent directly to the provincial funds of the province to which attached. Under changed bookkeeping methods prescribed by the insular auditor the entire amount collected in a subprovince is now first credited in toto to subprovincial funds and then the amount due the province is transferred, thereby constituting a payment which appears as a disbursement. This is, of course, balanced by a corresponding amount being taken up by the province

as a receipt. The practical result is that while the disbursements are increased a certain amount, the receipts are also increased exactly the same amount, and there is no increase of actual expenditures for 1914 over the amount expended in 1913.

BUREAUS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS.

The other bureaus and offices of the government are assigned to the supervision of the several secretaries of department and their operations for the period under discussion are fully set forth in the reports published herewith. It is necessary, therefore, only to make special reference to certain matters calling for particular attention.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

Under the secretary of the interior are the bureaus of health, lands, science, forestry, and weather.

BUREAU OF HEALTH.

This is one of the most important divisions of governmental work and one in which the public, both in the United States and in the Philippines, has evinced the most interest. Inasmuch as before the arrival of the secretary of the interior on March 2, 1914, the undersigned was acting secretary of the interior, he was able, both during that period and subsequently, to come in close touch with the development of health work in the islands. Dr. Victor G. Heiser, for so many years the director of health, had, as elsewhere mentioned, left the insular service for a wider field of work with the Rockefeller Foundation, and upon his recommendation his fellow member of the United States Public Health Service, Dr. John D. Long, was appointed director of health. It is confidently expected that Dr. Long will ably carry on and extend the work initiated by Dr. Heiser. The bureau has under preparation, moreover, extensive plans for new health and sanitary work in the provinces, which will receive an increasing amount of the time and attention of the director. Under the supervision of the bureau of health and the bureau of quarantine service Manila has become one of the most healthful cities in the Far East, and outbreaks of the cholera and the plague, which are epidemic in certain neighboring countries, are speedily and successfully handled by the health authorities at Manila. Many of the fatal diseases so common in the United States are infrequent or almost unknown in the Philippines. The Philippine General Hospital takes its rank with the finest institutions of its kind elsewhere, and the Legislature has shown every interest in appropriating for its work and for health work in general. Vaccination is general throughout the islands, and smallpox, which used to cause 30,000 deaths annually, is now almost unknown, although a small outbreak occurred in the province of Samar in 1914. The time has now come, having the support of the people who are accustomed to and admire the efficiency of the health work in the city of Manila, for a vigorous extension of similar health measures throughout the islands. A prime factor in this campaign is the rapidly increasing number of artesian

wells, so that already a majority of the municipalities are enjoying a good water supply. This is not only a preventive of active disease, such as cholera, but of many slower and less frequently fatal infections of the intestines. In some municipalities where artesian wells have been drilled the death rate has been observed to drop 50 per cent. A system was begun and put into practice during 1914 by which quinine was sold at cost price by the municipal treasurers, it having been found by experience that inferior quinine at high prices had exposed the people to the ravages of malaria. Another health measure was the passage by the Legislature of a bill prohibiting the publication of misleading advertisements, by which it is hoped the use of fraudulent patent medicines may be prevented. During the cholera epidemic in the Luzon provinces in the summer of 1914 excellent assistance was rendered by Dr. Edward Earl Munson, United States Army, who, in the absence of Dr. Heiser on vacation, acted in an advisory capacity to the secretary of the interior on health matters. He received the most thorough support from the administration in all of his requests for assistance.

It is believed that the health officer should be the first man to follow the establishment of peace and order in the non-Christian sections of the islands. By this means the confidence of the people is more easily obtained and a firm basis established for the future work of civilization. It is hoped, therefore, that the Legislature will continue its enthusiastic support of health work by furnishing adequate and constantly increasing funds for the spread of the knowledge of sanitation among the non-Christian peoples.

The greatest problem which lies before the bureau of health to day is the prevention of the unnecessarily high rate of infant mortality. Over 60 per cent of the infants born in the Philippines fail to reach the age of 5 years, many of them dying of probably preventable causes. This is not only distressing to the sense of humanity but it is a serious economic weakness in the islands. The island of Java alone, smaller than the island of Luzon in territory, contains more than three times the population of the entire Philippine Islands. When the government shall have solved the problem of infant mortality it will have conferred the greatest blessing possible upon the Filipino race.

THE MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, NUEVA VIZCAYA, PALAWAN, AND MINDORO.

The work of the secretary of the interior in the Mountain Province maintains and continues with notable success the excellent foundation laid by former Secretary of the Interior Dean C. Worcester. Peace and order among the people of the Mountain Province are most satisfactory; increasing numbers of non-Christians traveling from one subprovince to another and to the plains below clearly demonstrate a growing sense of confidence and security; the construction of trails and school buildings and of irrigation works continues; a marked advancement in education and sanitation is recorded for the year 1914; and particular interest has been taken in agricultural and industrial development. It is impossible to speak too highly of the work of the personnel of the Mountain Province, who at their lonely stations and generally upon their own initiative