The Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike of 1924–1925

15. A Decade of Little Change

112 15 A Decade of Little Change THE FILIPINO community of Hawaii did not change in any essential way during the decade following Manlapit’s imprisonment. While the Japanese and other Oriental groups, no longer fed by substantial immigration, steadily became Americanized and were laying the foundations of a middle class, the Filipinos remained a foreign agricultural proletariat, still with a full measure of the handicaps listed at the beginning of this study. The Filipinos could scarcely be said to inch ahead: their advancement was measured in millimeters. Although the 1930 census lists 60 Filipino retail dealers as against 6 in 1920, that number was only .00129 per cent of the gainfully employed. When Cariaga in 1937 appended a who’s who of outstanding Filipinos to his book, he included about 42 businessmen. Of these perhaps half a dozen were of any substance—one with a payroll of over 20 and another with capital of over $25,000. The rest owned tailor shops, barber shops, little family stores, and the like. He found one dentist and one attorney.1 Consequently the Filipinos continued to be treated with slight regard for their human dignity and civil liberties. For several years the HSPA continued its large scale importation of laborers, while drastically reducing the already low proportion of women. In 1928, the peak year of immigration, 12,254 men and 180 women entered Hawaii from the Philippines . Then, for a variety of economic and political reasons, immigration declined rapidly until it practically ended in 1932. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 completely ended it except for insignificant exceptions.2 A Decade of Little Change 113 Planters began to reconcile themselves to the idea of an increasingly native born labor force. Filipinos in 1924 had comprised half of the sugar plantations’ male labor force. In 1930– 1932 they made up 70 per cent. But in 1938 they had fallen to 54 per cent.3 Now at last, slowly, the Filipinos could begin to follow in the footsteps of earlier immigrant nationalities. By 1926 a labor movement had ceased to exist among the Filipinos. From mid-1925 to mid-1933 not even a one-day strike on a single plantation is recorded. A Filipino Labor Union existed only in the Honolulu directory, which from 1927 to 1935 listed Epifanio Taok as its business agent or president. Taok lacked Manlapit’s cleverness and charisma. His only notable action, shortly before Manlapit’s return, was to lead 300 unemployed Filipinos on a march to Ligot’s office.4 In place of a union, Hawaii’s Filipinos acquired a cult. The Filipino Federation of America was carried to the islands by 24 missionaries in October 1928 and within a few months was permanently established. With their unshorn hair and (hopefully ) beards the Federationists marked themselves as a chosen people; with their strict vegetarianism and abstinence from tobacco, liquor, gambling, and prostitutes (and from unionism) they developed pride in living on a higher moral plane than ordinary people; and as Filipinos they took nationalistic pride in the ostentatious living and divine pretensions of the ‘Master,’ Moncado.5 Only a small minority of Filipinos, however, was attracted to the cult. Jack Butler, who was visited by a Federation delegation with the plea that their life style made Federationists desirable workers, scorned the cult as a racket and warned plantation managers against it.6 For a few years managers and police were unfriendly. In August 1931 Sheriff Patrick Gleason broke up a parade of 500 Federationists including a hundred uniformed bandsmen, honoring the arrival of Moncado in Honolulu, and banned further demonstrations, ostensibly because of the opposition of other Filipinos.7 In time, however, planters and politicians came to realize the anti-union potential of the Federation and to adopt a more benevolent attitude toward it. Cayetano Ligot, resident labor commissioner, had emerged as victor over Manlapit in the 1924–25 strike. He enjoyed the 114 THE FILIPINO PIECEMEAL SUGAR STRIKE support of the sugar planters and the governor. In 1927 he launched an Ilocano journal, Ti Silaw, with financial aid from the HSPA.8 One would expect Ligot to be in an unchallengeable position. Instead, he had to fight hard for survival against strong and persistent efforts to replace him in his post or abolish it altogether. The basis of criticism was his superior attitude toward Filipino workers, his failure to protect their interests, and his close...