The Huntsville Daily Times
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Description: National Report Made on Philippine Lands
Date: March 3 1911Newspaper published in: Huntsville, AL
Source: Library
Page/Column: Page 1, Column 1
National Report Made on Philippine Lands
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By Associated Press
Washington, D. C., March 3 – Though concurring for the most part in the findings of the majority of the committee, particularly in its exposition and interpretation of the law with regard to the sale of public and friar lands and, likewise, in its exoneration of public officials from blame, the minority report presents a number of radical disagreements on the policy to be pursued in the administration of the Philippine islands.
The officials involved, the report declares, handled a cumbersome situation to the best of their ability and were guided by the law, but the sale of the San Jose estate “should stand as a warning both to the Philippine government and the United States.”
Taking up the sale of the San Jose estate, the report says:
“Mr. Welch had no sooner acquired the San Jose estate for himself and immediate associates than he __used to be organized what have been described in the majority report as the California corporations. The stockholders of these corporations are made up of his wife, brother-in-law, business associates and __erks. Of course he is the dominating figure, and by the community of interest that is apparent in the situation, there is to all practical intent and purposes, a holding of about 56,000 acres of Philippine land by one person.
“This estate was not sold to the sugar trust, but it was sold to its next door neighbors. One of the men to whom it was sold, Horace Havemeyer, was at that time a director of the American Sugar Refining Company.
“Another, Charles, H. Senff, had been its vice president, and the third, who appears to be largely the moving spirit in the transaction, is Charles J. Welsh, a sugar commission merchant and a large produce of sugar in Cuba and Hawaii. They appreciated the profit certain to be made by the establishments of a large sugar plantation in the Philippines, with a modern mill for the manufacture of raw sugar, after 300,000 tons of sugar should be permitted to come to the United States free of duty as it now does under the provisions of the Payne tariff act.
“Captain Sleeper, chief of the bureau of public lands, solicited them to buy the San Jose estate. It was tenantless and vacant and there was no hope to sell it, for many years, to small landholders. There seemed nothing ahead unless it could be sold to some capitalist who desire to establish a large plantation, except to let it be idle and profitless and continue to pay out interest upon the investment. That is but a fair statement of the situation and it is but fair to the officials of the interior department to state it in that way.