Sugar Society and Centrals

New mills brought change to sugar society. At the top of the revised socioeconomic pyramid stood the centralistas, Filipino, Spanish, and American owners and executives managing either corporate or family interests. Americans included Fairchild, Renton Hind, and Horace Pond, all pillars of the expatriate community. Miguel Ossorio, the Elizaldes, and officials of Ynchausti and Company and Tabacalera represented the Iberians, while Jose de Leon, Augusto Gonzalez, and the Montillas, Aranetas, and Lizareses were the leading Filipino capitalists. Lines of nationality tended to blur, however, for Ossorio became an American citizen and Angel Elizalde married Mary Huntington Spreckels, thus forging bonds between Spanishowned La Carlota and the Pasumil-Calamba U.S. combine.

Intermarriage inextricably enmeshed native central families as well. For example, Eusebio Lopez, founder of Sagay Central, married the sister of Cesar Ledesma, vice-president of Talisay Central. One of the daughters of that union married Nicholas Lizares, president of Talisay; another wed lawyer, entrepreneur, and PSA executive Salvador Araneta. Meanwhile, Ledesma's son Ricardo married a daughter of Carmen Yulo, who possessed holdings in Binalbagan Central; thus ownership of three centrals was linked by kinship. Beyond Negros, too, the centralistas formed affinal ties. In November 1926, Fausto Gonzalez Sioco, brother of Pampangan magnate Augusto, married Amparo de la Rama, and wedding gifts included 350 shares of Central Talisay from her father, Esteban, and 100 shares of Pasudeco from his relatives.

The new class of central owner-operators did not spring sui generis from the establishment of the sugar factories but rather derived from some of the most entrepreneurial planter families of old. Lopez, the Elizaldes, de Leon, and Gonzalez all had substantial haciendas first. Ossorio represented fairly new money when he organized Victorias and Manapla, but the Lizareses and Aranetas planted well before they became mill proprietors. Their collective initiatives in modern processing made them even wealthier, the richest, most powerful people in their industry and society. In 1930 Carlos Locsin calculated that, depending on crop yields, profits from direct investments in centrals doubled or trebled those from investments in sugar lands.^[34]

Equities of central corporations were traded regularly on the Manila exchange, and sometimes planters received shares in their centrals in lieu of cash payments. During the 1920s those grinding at PNB centrals agreed to buy shares worth 25 percent of their net profit as a condition of not selling the plants to foreign buyers. But by the late 1920s centrals yielded good returns and appeared to have a profitable future, so shares became scarce on the open market and remained closely held by the largest investors.^[35]

Wealth bred further wealth, and several millionaire millers diversified with outside investments, some close to the sugar industry, some quite far afield. Ossorio purchased a seat on the New York Sugar and Coffee Exchange, de la Rama added new vessels to the family fleet, sugar merchant and investor Jose Ledesma bought PNB bonds, while Jose de Leon sat on its Board of Directors. Ynchausti and Company owned not only three centrals, plantations, and a distillery, but also paint, lumber, and shipping companies. The Elizaldes bought Ynchausti. Jose Gomez, general manager at Ma-ao, took an active interest in the construction of the very important shipping facility at Puhupandan; and Jose Escaler, who held a similar position at Pasudeco, acquired a major stake in the Philippine (copra) Oil Company. Pasudeco's Wenceslao Trinidad founded in 1931 the Luzon Investment Corporation and in 1933 the National Life Insurance Company. In the latter endeavor two of his coinvestors were Jose de Leon and Cesar Ledesma. Nicholas Lizares, Ledesma, and Salvador Araneta were among those who joined with the entrepreneurial Lopez family of Iloilo in forming the pioneering air passenger company in the Visayas. Sugar money penetrated almost every area of Philippine enterprise from agriculture and food processing to mining.^[36]

Philippine politics, whether a person was running for office or supporting other candidates, demanded considerable cash and time; hence, only the wealthiest members of society—for example, the centralistas and biggest hacenderos—could afford the game at the provincial level and higher. In Negros two of Manuel Quezon's chief lieutenants, Gil Montilla, associated with Isabela Central, and Rafael Alunan, vied to control offices. Montilla became successively representative, governor, and senator during this time and acted as political lider (local boss), influencing the choice of local slates. Alunan, though for a while serving as a legislator, preferred cabinet positions and the role of eminence grise in provincial elections. Negros's top officeholders tended to come from centralista ranks or centralista-supported candidates, men such as Mariano Yulo, Emilio Montilla, and Hermenegildo Villanueva; otherwise they tended to be big planters

like Jose Locsin, Isaac Lacson, Emilio Gaston, or Enrique Magalona (see appendix E).

In Pampanga the system worked somewhat differently, because Americans operated one of the two big centrals, and at the other, leading executives de Leon, Gonzalez, and Trinidad chose to concentrate on business. However, the latter three owned clout by virtue of their wealth and position, and Quezon solicited their support in his various local initiatives. Pampangan sugarmen had to share power with rice land proprietors; nevertheless, those connected—either through employment, shareholding, or family ties—with Pasudeco achieved success at the highest levels of insular government. Sotero Baluyut, from a relatively obscure local family, acquired an American education as an engineer and went on, following employment at the central, to become Pampanga's governor and senator.^[37]

Central owners gained numerous advantages from holding so much political power, including their ability to affect the legislative outcome of key bills. For example, despite growing labor agitation for passage of an eight-hour-per-day labor law, PSA managed to delay such legislation—at least as it applied to sugar central workers—for more than a decade. PSA, with the aid of such high-priced legal talent as Jose Yulo and the American Clyde Dewitt, also prevented the imposition of added taxes on processed sugar.

Yulo represented a category of appointed politicians who looked after sugar from the executive branch. After representing Pasumil-Calamba in numerous matters and acting as PSA attorney, he became secretary of justice from 1934 to 1938. Salvador Laguda typified the active hacendero in politics. A former newspaperman, he served successively as assemblyman, vice-president of the first Agricultural. Congress, vice-president of PNB, secretary of commerce and communications, and president of Lopez Central. Honorio Ventura of Pasudeco was chosen chief of the executive bureau from 1921 to 1925, then secretary of the interior between 1925 and 1933. From these vantages such administrators could influence government policy on crucial matters relating to sugar. In 1931, when strikes began to affect the sugar industry in the western Visayas, Ventura ordered the Philippine Constabulary to intervene if necessary to prevent violence and the disruption of central operations. Of all groups associated with the sugar industry, the centralistas dearly commanded the most influence in the halls of government.^[38]

The division between planters and centralistas contained a nationality component, for up to 91 percent of hacenderos were Filipinos while perhaps

50 percent of central owners were not. Not only did Americans and Spaniards directly possess from one-third to one-half of mill production, but local central-owning families with long residence in the Philippines sometimes held foreign passports. Miguel Ossorio acquired American citizenship, and the Elizaldes remained Spanish subjects. Foreign planters, who constituted a distinct numerical minority, came mostly from Spain but included a few other Europeans and a handful of Americans like H. B. Ross and W. J. Fassoth in Pampanga and Richard Nolan in Negros. Such outsiders possessed little influence on industry policy, unless they were, like Nolan, married into an influential local family, in his case the Lizares-Alunans. On national issues, planters tended to adopt a more consistently proindependence point of view, whereas centralistas, reflecting their mixed loyalties, assumed more flexible positions.^[39]

With the creation of a supraclass of millers, planters lost power and prestige as well as income, and the economic condition of many became more precarious as a result of the change. For the biggest landholders, centrals initiated more efficient operations on their estates and provided them with opportunities to improve crop productivity. The rich could also diversify their sources of income so that they did not have to depend exclusively on the whims of sugar's fortunes for their livelihood. President Corazon Aquino's father, Jose Cojuangco, in addition to cultivating some 15,000 hectares of Tarlac sugar plantings, also held considerable banking interests. Juan Nepomuceno, who became one of the biggest hacenderos with Pasudeco, also operated the electric companies of Angeles and Magalarig. Planters such as Segundo Montilla, Roberto Toledo III, and Timoteo Unson, who had the highest production of roughly 15,000 to 50,000 piculs per harvest, earned an excellent livelihood from the industry. Others with careers outside the sugar industry dabbled in cane production as a sideline and as a way of gaining status. Manuel Quezon, for instance, possessed some 52 hectares of farm land in Lubao and 200 in Arayat.^[40]

For those smaller planters who derived their main livelihood from their harvests, the central era brought some peril. Thomas McHale, a former sugar executive at Victorias Milling, summed up their new circumstance thus:

The new central mills clearly represented a quantum jump in technical and economic efficiency. Drawing cane from many sources and with no direct vested interest in the specific problems or prosperity of individual cane planters, however, the mills tended to be highly impersonal in their dealings with planters. As a result, planters began to complain that the contracts were onerous in that they required them to plant cane

irrespective of weather cycles, disease infestations, price movements or other problems and that the mills had the right to take over management of their land if they didn't comply with their contract regardless of the reason. . . . While planters were aware that from a practical point of view the mills had little control over the quality and quantity of cane they produced under their contract, they were also aware that if they wanted the cane made into sugar, they had no alternative to the one mill to which they were bound.

As corporate organizations with professional engineering and management personnel, many of the new sugar mills tended to treat their contract planters with condescension or patronizing formality rather than as business partners and equals. Their attitude was partly due to differences in social and technical backgrounds on the personal level; it was also a result of the fact that the mills, with their wider access to credit, were usually in a strong bargaining position with invariably less well-financed planters.^[41]

Large-scale renters, too, began to feel economic pressures. The leaseholder (arrendatario; inquilino in Pampanga) had long been a respected agriculturalist in Negros, though less frequently appearing in Pampanga. In the south, owner-planters sometimes added to their production by renting additional fields. According to his study of Negrense hacienda economics, Carlos Locsin estimated that 50 percent of farms in his two sample mill districts were leased. New grinding contracts, however, made the arrangement less desirable for renters. Centrals received normally 45 percent of milled sugar in Negros and 50 percent in Pampangao Rents varied but usually ran about 10-12 percent, so that leaseholders obtained a 40-45 percent share, from which they had to deduct expenses. They frequently borrowed cash from centrals or other credit institutions, thus adding interest costs. As prices fell toward the end of the 1920s, renters saw their margins shrinking to the point of extinction. Lessors, especially those charging fixed cash rents, large owner-planters, and centrals all had hedges against deflated prices, but lessees (all but the biggest) and small planters lived ever closer to desperation fearing bankruptcy and/or loss of their lands.^[42]

Mateo Guanzon, a small farmer from Kabankalan, lamented to Makinaugalingon in 1930 that, whereas hacenderos used to have tenants, the former were now the tenants of the centrals, that is, that the factories currently made milling, marketing, and credit decisions that planters used to handle themselves. This observation reflected the commentator's social anxiety rather than legal reality. The fear of becoming a tenant, an acsa

(also agsador) paying shares to a landholder, pointed to a significant socioeconomic distinction within sugar society: possessing land not only provided security, it conferred status as well. Owners, large or small, sought, for both social and economic reasons, to keep their property, despite new pressures to lose it.

Before the central era the distinction between sugar acsas and arrendatarios had blurred, since both manufactured sugar at hacienda muscovado factories and paid their rent in cash or produce to the owner; however, the separation became pronounced again under the influence of the new milling system. Arrendatarios signed formal contracts with landholders and might possess property in their own right. They managed their lease-hold alone, dealing personally with the central and receiving quedens (plant vouchers often used in lieu of cash) in their own name. Furthermore, they obtained direct loans from PNB and tended to rent larger estates from 10 to 200 or 300 hectares. In contrast, acsas frequently emerged from the ranks of duma'an and cultivated but 2 to 8 hectares that often contained both rice and sugar. Their annual share, established by verbal agreement, came from the hacendero who held the central milling contract and who provided cash advances and other necessities. Some acsas worked land themselves, but others only supervised paid hands. Acsas made a better living than duma'an and exercised some control over farm management, but they lacked the flexibility and status that belonged to arrendatarios. While reliable statistics do not exist, sugar acsas clearly cultivated only a small fraction of Negros sugar lands.^[43]

Lessees and small planters frequently lacked the incentive, skills, or cash resources to make prescribed improvements in irrigation, seed selection, fertilization, and farm mechanization. Centrals such as Silay, Ma-ao, and San Carlos constructed shoreline loading docks, and Pasumil built new railroad tracks, all to reduce their transportation and handling expenses; however, cost-cutting innovations remained sporadic among their contracting hacenderos. The technology gap between planters and central operators pointed to an unequal socio-cultural, as well as economic, response to the introduction of modern processing.^[44]

A revised system of credit distribution emphasized the changing hierarchy in the sugar industry as well. Centrals and PNB replaced exportimport houses and wealthy private individuals as major sources of loans, although a few entrepreneurs still continued to supply money to smaller farmers. Exporters like PCC, Warner, Barnes and Company, and Ker and Company offered mortgages, sometimes tied to sales of fertilizer, to their customers; however, these transactions were confined to the Negros sugar area and remained infrequent compared to the business of the centrals.

Most Chinese lenders withdrew from the sugar industry with the decline of muscovado exports. Thereafter they concentrated on the distribution of imported goods, making infrequent crop loans and occasional purchases of sugar for resale to bigger exporters.

Credit remained the essential lubricant of the sugar industry during the central era, but a major difference persisted between conditions in Negros and Pampanga; planters in the former region still depended much more on government funding than did those in the latter. PNB's program of crop loans granted directly to Negrense farmers or indirectly to them through the five bank centrals year after year sustained their sugar plantations. In 1925, of a total of P6,003,260 in PNB crop loans, P5,545,060 (92 percent) went through the Bacolod and Iloilo branches. Najeeb Saleeby, representing the hemp industry, complained as early as 1922 about sugar's monopolization of bank loans, and four years later Juan Alegre, a senator from another district, commented that businessmen had no faith in PNB, describing it as "only a collection agency, its resources being buried in the Negros cane fields."^[45]

About this time an official of PNB wrote to Quezon:

The crop loan to Pampanga is less than P600,000 for the present 1925 crop—the biggest they ever had—and [as of] now 95% is already paid to the Bank although the milling season is not yet finished. No planters of Pampanga Sugar Development Co. owe the Bank any amount, outside of crop loan and on the first milling season in 1920 the planters paid up not only their crop loan but their original debt to the Bank .^[46]

This comment indicated a major socio-cultural as well as economic disparity between residents of the two regions.

A 1927 Free Press article contrasting Capampangan and Negrenses contained the following insight:

The difference between us, the planters of Negros, and those of Pampanga—told us by a very knowledgeable woman sugar planter of the south three years ago, with notable frankness—is that they do not know how to owe, while we start with little or no capital, charging everything against the productivity of our fields. . . .

But now that the Pampanga Sugar Development, the only mill in Pampanga financed by the National Bank, has just redeemed itself totally, paying all of its debts to the Bank, the commentary that involuntarily comes to our lips is that the Pampangan planter, if he does not know how to owe, on the other hand knows how to get out of debt. . . .

We use these terms only by way of comparison, and to mark better the dividing line between the one and the other, for we all know that the Negrense is intrepid, extravagant and optimistic; the Pampango is conservative, foresighted and prudent. All this, naturally, speaking in general terms.^[47]

This perceived difference touches on only partially accurate cultural stereotypes. Indeed, hacenderos who invested in the cultivation of wilder portions of the two regions shared a common outlook, both "optimistic" and "foresighted"; even so, Negrenses, on the whole, earned more money than their northern counterparts and could afford the more "extravagant" lifestyle their reputation implied. But, more to the point, each region had a markedly different credit system.

Capampangan still arranged credit through local sources: mortgages with Pasumil, Pasudeco, and (after 1929) Tarlac Central, plus smaller mills at Mabalacat, Arayat, and Calumpit, Bulacan; through private mortgages on both land and crops; through the old pacto de retro; and, to a limited extent, through little local institutions like People's Bank and Trust. Although associated with Pasudeco, Emilio J. Valdes of Angeles and the de Leon-Joven family of Bacolor still provided agricultural credit. All these sources kept PNB business to a minimum.

Closer-knit ties among the Capampangan made possible the Arayat Cooperative Marketing Association, formed in 1934 in the face of a credit squeeze caused by the pending imposition of quotas. A joint stock company, the cooperative provided 12 percent mortgages, with milled sugar as the main security, to small farmers in eastern Pampanga from San Luis to Magalang. Collateral ranged from a high of 1,500 piculs to a low of 20, with the average around 250, and loans were for no more than P1 per picul. The subscribers and stockholders included members of the Alejandrino family of Arayat, all relatives of Revolutionary War hero General Jose Alejandrino. Officers of the cooperative included a local farmer and a director of the small Arayat Central, who followed the policy of making modest loans available to farmers to enable them to put down next season's crop. The modesty of the venture contrasted with the large, impersonal loan policy carried on by PNB in Negros.^[48]

Relations between Negrenses and their chief creditor, PNB, proved unsatisfactory in that hacenderos became heavily reliant upon the bank. The policy of providing crop loans based on estimates of forthcoming harvests sometimes left planters overextended if the crop failed for some reason. Furthermore, PNB, perhaps responding too much to industry pressure, set loan amounts too high for planters to pay back comfortably. In 1922 PNB gave P3 per picul, and the sum rose to P4.90 by 1930. All the while sugar prices continued to drop from the P10 range down to

around P6.50 in the early 1930s. Interest charges ran from 7 percent to 12 percent, depending on the degree of risk of the loan. Furthermore, as part of agreements made in the mid-1920s, contracting planters at bank centrals had an obligation to pay off a portion of the accrued debt of those plants. Hence, PNB became the prop not only of the five centrals, but also of the farmers who milled there. One estimate of 1927 noted that PNB money financed 30 percent of the crop at Isabela Central, 60 percent at Binalbagan, 70 percent at Ma-ao, 80 percent at Tallsay, and practically all at Bacolod. Negrense sugarmen enlisted their planters' associations, politicians, central officials, and journalists in efforts to coerce bank officials and senior government administrators to keep funds flowing in an ever-faster stream.

Bankers became worried about these investment patterns in view of the failure of some planters to repay, for the health—and perhaps very survival—of PNB came to depend on the sugar industry. By 1926 the threat of numerous farm loan failures loomed, though PNB officials revealed a reluctance to foreclose. In a 1929 petition to lower interest rates and refinance loans, officials of the Bacolod-Murcia Planters' Association admitted that 20 to 25 percent of planters' debts consisted of accrued interest. PNB sought to reduce loans in 1930 but had only partial success. The bank branch at Bacolod slated for closure in 1932 remained open, though with a reduced staff, because of a persistently high volume of business there. A revised policy went into effect in 1933, with PNB offering smaller loans to Negrenses and seeking to make credit available on a modest scale in Pampanga.^[49]

Sugar planting not only depended on a continuous supply of credit and good international markets, it proved incapable of generating additional off-farm industry. Instead, the sugar business produced a regular outflow of plantation-derived capital. The erection of centrals initially drew off cash, and profits from foreign plants regularly fled to Spain, Hawaii, and the United States. Gains from locally owned centrals also left in the form of expenses for fertilizers, mechanical farm and transportation equipment, and conspicuous consumption, another notable trait of the Negrense lifestyle. Outside the centrals, sugar created some additional service industry and little more. In 1939 the number of chauffeurs (2,361) for private auto owners surpassed that for all categories of nonsugar manufacturing save carpenters, embroiderers and dressmakers, and sawmill workers.

Negrense sugarmen spent prodigally in the 1920s, often acquiring big obligations along the way. American Baptist missionary W. B. Charles wrote the following from Bacolod in 1922:

The hacienderos [sic ] (in the main sugar planters here) plunged deeply on possible continuous high prices on sugar. Invest-

ments in machinery needed and useless also ran high. Luxuries of all kinds were purchased on time payments. Borrowed money was lost at the gaming table. . . . The inevitable crisis left many woefully in debt.^[50]

The very rich set the tone for this lifestyle with stunning examples of extravagance. The Elizaldes formed their own polo team and played in international competition. In 1925 the Free Press wrote the following concerning the five daughters of Gil Lopez:

The parents of the girls believe in education by travel, so years ago they spent weeks and months traveling on the family's steam cutter, making trips over the Visayan islands. On the boat they had their musical instruments, such as the piano, violin and cello. They took their teachers with them during these trips.^[51]

The same paper announced in 1928 that Miss Consuelo Lopez (not of the same family) would wear jewelry worth P250,000 during her crowning as carnival queen of Negros Occidental.

The smaller Negrense farmers could not match the lifestyle of the very rich; nevertheless, they too had diversions befitting the Negros image. Foreign travel; gambling; tea dances in town and, for students, in Manila; beauty contests; jewelry; and, above all, automobiles absorbed planter resources. Despite the fact Negros had relatively rough roads and poor bridges crossing its many rivers, in 1925 the province boasted ownership of 1,038 cars, highest for any area in the Philippines save Manila. Some planters began to take out mortgages on their crops and other property in order to purchase vehicles.^[52]

Capampangan, too, spent on such luxuries, but, as befit their image, they did so generally on a smaller scale; hence, the problems of debt associated with Negros do not seem to have afflicted Pampanga, at least not on the same alarming scale. Some Capampangan lived in the grand manner: Florentino and Tomasa Pamintuan became residents of Washington while their children attended school there; the province claimed ownership in 1925 of 322 autos, fifth highest in the archipelago; and the beauty pageants at the provincial carnival attracted daughters of the leading planters. Nevertheless, social life among the hacendero class had a practicality about it that seemed lacking in Negros. The carnivals, for instance, though very elaborate and costly, were in actuality trade fairs designed to attract investment. Social clubs like Circulo Fernandino did conduct frequent dances, but other groups formed in the period the Pampanga Cooperative League (1920) and the Pampango Youth League (1933), for example—had

mainly professional and political purposes. Although usually more conservative than southern hacenderos, Pampanga's landlords gained sufficient freedom to participate in their province's active town social life and, for some, to take up residence in Manila.^[53]

For several reasons comprehending changes in living conditions among sugar hands as a result of the inauguration of modern mills is difficult. Comparative material for previous and subsequent periods continues hard to accumulate; worker well-being remains, to some extent, as much a matter of perception as of physical reality; and several categories of workers existed, each with its own history. Nevertheless, certain observations about life in the central era emerge from available sources.

Modern developments brought new jobs to sugarlandia to replenish those lost when muscovado factories closed. Workers at centrals, trainmen on central railroads, sugar weighers (manugpisar ), paymasters (pagador ), bookkeepers (tenedor de libro ), and warehousemen (bodeguero ) replaced maestrillos and others who made sugar the old-fashioned way. In 1929 a plant the size of La Carlota employed 118 workers and 9 foremen. Carters (pakyador ) and truckers found extra work moving some cane to mills, and there now existed additional demands for tractor drivers, herdsmen (bakero ), timekeepers, watchmen (ronda ), and other supervisory personnel to fill the jobs created by expanded production. Furthermore, the opening of piers along the Negros shore, while it diminished the number of dockworkers at Iloilo, provided a new source of employment to Negrenses as cargadors, loading sacks onto ships. Centrals thus created more jobs, both in the fields and out, than were lost. Whether this labor force enjoyed a better life, however, represents another question.

A 1970 information questionnaire about their livelihood in the 1920s and 1930s, administered to 255 Negrense duma'an and to rice and sugar agsadores from the ages of 56 to over 100, drew a wide range of responses, from how hard their life seemed to how much better it was before than in 1970. They continued to work long hours at strenuous, sometimes debilitating jobs simply to earn a livelihood. The Sugar News in 1929 offered the following description of wages and work in the Negros fields that, generally, coincides with data provided by the older hands themselves:

Movement of hand labor is more important in Negros than in Luzon, because the system of tenants is less widely established. Permanent hand labor is derived from laborers living on the land with their families, having at their disposal a bit of land and sometimes possessing a team of carabao. They do the usual labor of cultivation according to their age and sex. The

men do the plowing and harrowing, establishing and maintaining the canals and ditches. Their usual wage is P2.50 per week plus seven kilos of rice which is given in daily rations.

The boys do the lighter work, such as weeding and hoeing and taking care of the animals. The average salary is P1.50 with seven kilos of rice per week.

The women and girls plant the cane generally by contract [pakyaw]. They are paid for each 10,000 [laksa]: P0.50 for stripping and P2.00 for planting and covering up, which bring the cost of planting a hectare up to P6.25 to P7.50, depending on whether 25,000 or 30,000 points are planted. . . .

Daily farm wages are as follows:

The only discrepancy between this description and the questionnaire comments lay in the number of gantas given: of those who acknowledged receiving daily rice, few earned more than three to four gantas a week. No matter that planters garnered P40,000 a year for 120 hectares; they paid their hands about P100 for a season's work.

It may have happened that as the central era progressed more duma'an labored on the pakyaw system, that is, having their pay set according to the number of hectares plowed or fertilized, rows weeded, and tons of cane cut, loaded, or transported to the mill. Almost two out of three interviewees stated that they worked either totally or part-time on pakyaw. One planter, Ramon Ramos of Bacolod, noted that he moved to pakyaw from daily wages in the 1930s and that performance-driven work presented obvious advantages to planters confronting lowered prices. Nevertheless, more comparative evidence from years preceding the 1920s needs to become available before this trend can be confirmed.^[55]

As yearly production expanded, the outlook for wages and employment continued bright for farmworkers throughout the 1920s. Sugar News and other publications complained about shortages in the fields and urged that officials curtail labor migration to Hawaii and Mindanao. Industry leaders like John Dumas and Rafael Alunan revived the notion of bringing in "Oriental" immigrants to work during milling season and then to retire docilely to government-provided homesteads. By 1930, however, when sugar prices had slipped to dangerous levels, Sugar News changed its tune, insisting that the labor force be reduced and carping on the high wages paid to Philippine sugar workers, compared to those in Java and elsewhere. In

1932 and 1933 large numbers of duma'an usually hired throughout the year found themselves unemployed when harvesting ended. Governor Isaac Lacson then initiated a program of ensuring that public works jobs went first to Negrenses needing work.^[56]

Numerous duma'an noted that although wages stayed low, so did commodity prices. They expressed contentment often in terms of eating three meals a day, of times remaining peaceful and their place uncrowded. Some described their existence as hand-to-mouth, but more that it was comfortable. None commented that the coming of centrals either appreciably improved or worsened their lot. For many, satisfaction rested upon their ability to supplement low hacienda wages with some other source of income, because many hacenderos did not pay wages during the slack season from June to September, called tiempo muerto (dead time) or tiempo tinggulotom (starvation time). Some duma'an had permission to plant either rice or sweet potatoes (carnotes ) and vegetables on fallow fields, while others served as ronda or as part-time agsadores on hacienda rice lands. Duma'an also found a variety of off-hacienda work as fishermen, vendors, carpenters, house help, firewood and rattan collectors, tuba (palm wine) makers, and cargadors. A few returned to their original home provinces, where they farmed or stayed with relatives.

Comparisons with workers' salaries in other regions make little sense because of differences in living conditions, but as an indication of the sorry state of Visayan economic life elsewhere, sacadas from neighboring islands risked travel to Negros on crowded vessels to accept poor wages because they could earn more than by staying at home. Carlos Locsin estimated that Negros needed 15,000 sacadas to handle the 1927 crop; by 1931 that number had grown to 20,000.

Even when planters enhanced the anticipo to one-third of their seasonal wage, they had no assurance that the workers would materialize or stay. Hacendero Ramon Ramos noted an additional problem: that sacadas unprepared for the rigors of hacienda labor did not do good work. Locsin estimated that 25 percent of the work force could not perform their job adequately. Negrenses tried to solve the migrant labor problem by several means. A scheme to establish recruiting stations in Antique and Cebu failed for lack of cooperation, as did one to register and fingerprint all sacadas when they arrived to keep them from escaping from one hacienda to another. Planters sent encargados and cabos, even went themselves, to outlying islands to enlist help, but sacadas generally preferred to work for a contratista from their own community.

Sacadas I interviewed expressed mixed attitudes toward Negros. Some went annually because they needed money to support their families, others

occasionally for the adventure. A few took their wives, some of whom also cut cane. Most disliked the place and felt homesick. They brought back from P20 to P70 for an entire season's work, depending on their strength, and all observed they could not earn as much at home. A considerable portion of the rest of their wages went to the contratista to pay for their food and any medical expenses they incurred. More experienced and daring hands might eventually go to Negros on their own, thereby avoiding having to share their money with the capataz. Usually hacenderos provided money for their passage to Negros, but sacadas paid their own return fare, and transportation costs ate into salary as well, equal to as much as ten days of work. Amador Española of Barrio San Francisco, Tibiao, Antique, recalled paying P0.40 for a bus from Ma-ao to Pulupandan, P1.50 for the boat across the Guimaras Strait to Iloilo, and P3 for the truck (bus) to his hometown, a barrio along the main road on the narrow coastal plain of eastern Panay. Several hours of walking from the bus stop awaited those living in Guba’ and Bugtung Bato ("Destroyed" and "Lone Stone" in the local dialect), remote sitios (hamlets) of Bugasong, Antique, high on the slopes of the province's mountain spine. Despite all the difficulties facing sacadas, however, contratistas every year filled to overflowing the passenger boats plying the waters of Negros.

In a sense sacadas participated only peripherally in sugar society, despite their crucial economic role. They came for four to six months, remained largely to themselves, and returned to their own world. Many stayed in Negros, however, and became part of the permanent labor force, so that 40 percent of the workers surveyed had a birth place outside Negros. Sacadas thus transformed into duma'an, and occasionally a contratista became a cabo or encargado.^[57]

Much better wages awaited those sacadas or duma'an fortunate, ambitious, and adept enough to become skilled and lower-management personnel. Cabos regularly made P30 to P40 a month, and encargado salaries ranged between P30 and P180, depending on the level of responsibility assumed. Truckers earned P30 to P40, while tractor drivers received from P1.25 a day to P50 a month. Even watchmen could garner a salary of P3.50, more than the regular wages of field hands.

At centrals the scale reached even higher, up to P220 for a locomotive mechanic and P160 for an electrician. Sugarmen relished pointing out to social critics and others that mill personnel enjoyed the highest standard of living and most perquisites of any laborers in the Philippines. Mills offered permanent housing, health benefits, and recreational facilities to their help, for management fully comprehended the value of maintaining a healthy labor force. Moreover, centrals needed the medical help because of the numerous industrial accidents experienced by those who regularly

worked around the machinery and chemicals during the long, hard hours of milling season.^[58]

While the south remained committed to a paid labor system with a plantation hierarchy, the Capampangan still opted for tenancy. On the typical Pampanga sugar farm, a landholder contracted with casamac, from one to a hundred or more, depending on the size of the holding. Larger plantations concentrated in the newer northern towns. Under the more or less loose supervision of an owner or his representative, called palsunero or katiwala, tenants grew both rice and sugar on plots of 2 to 7 hectares, sometimes alternating the crops in succeeding seasons. They and the landlords normally split harvests fifty-fifty; however, with loans of cash and, sometimes, draft animals, the sharing favored owners. The two parties divided most expenses equally, but landholders supplied cane points (tab-tab ) and casamac paid the people (sakul ) who planted them. Tenants delivered cane to factories, and landlords kept the milling records and settled accounts seasonally.

Casamac bound to a particular landowner clustered in the same community, working on adjoining fields. They selected their own barrio lieutenants, although in a few places the palsunero held the title. Often related to one another, casamac frequently employed the sugu system of ganging together to accomplish chores. Occasionally on bigger estates, hired migrants from the Ilocos region to the north harvested cane, but more often casamac saved money by doing the work themselves.

The system generally provided tenants who planted sugar with a satisfactory livelihood, according to their own estimation. They earned sufficient income, often stated as around P150 to P200 a year, and some even made enough to provide schooling for their children. Managing their holdings, they possessed access to a variety of local resources so that when harvests came up short, they could supplement their income with fishing; trapping crabs, frogs, and locusts in paddies; raising animals for meat; collecting materials for craft work; gathering firewood; and growing produce in home gardens. All these items had value in local markets. Besides acting as vendors, women and children performed extra housework in wealthy homes, while men did carpentering and other forms of day labor. Casamac thus exercised more control over their economic lives and gained more independence than did the duma'an of Negros.

Tenancy in Pampanga baffled observers who could not understand its persistence, from either the point of view of the planter or the casamac. An editorial in Sugar News in 1924 contained the following appraisal:

Under the existing system . . . namely, the tenant system, the high cost of cane, or the low return for cane, is passed on to

the tenant. It is an idiosyncrasy of Filipino character that he will willingly work under the tenant system on his own time in the production of cane and be quite satisfied if, at the end of the year, he has averaged but thirty, forty or fifty centavos for each day of labor, his return being based on the price per tonne paid him by the hacendero or the Central. This same laborer would scoff at any offer under eighty centavos or one peso a day for a day's work of from ten to twelve hours.^[59]

That casamac had long labored under this arrangement, preferred its managerial autonomy and economic latitude, and relished their barrio life, escaped the purview of outsiders. Plantation efficiency may have offered a better means of meeting production demands, but it scarcely satisfied the needs of the soul.

Specialists contrasted low productivity in Pampanga with higher Negrense yields and urged management reform; however, landholders, like their tenants, resisted change. The diversified two-crop farms of central Luzon provided a hedge against unfavorable market conditions, and tenants absorbed lower sugar prices with diminished shares. Owners profited from sugar, despite receiving on average a 5 percent lower share from centrals than did their counterparts in Negros. In addition, casamac took better care of land and tools than did hired workers, and the system in general reduced administrative costs while at the same time providing a stable, reliable labor force. Even when ownership changed hands, casamac tended to remain with the property.

Modern production delivered prosperity to sugarlandia but did not change the basic settlement and cultural patterns that had previously developed in the two areas. Negros still demonstrated something of its flamboyant character, while Pampanga continued to exhibit a more traditional lifestyle in its stable communities. Having room to expand and more commitment to sugar, the former area experienced far more rapid population increase than did the latter. The annual growth rate of 3.55 percent in Negros Occidental greatly exceeded the 2.12 percent for the archipelago as a whole, while Pampanga's 1.83 percent fell considerably below both. However, towns in southern Tarlac absorbed Capampangan seeking new sugar fields to plant.^[60]

Perhaps the greatest alteration in the Negros landscape, besides the appearance of smoke-gushing centrals with their veins of narrow-gauge railroad tracks reaching onto vast expanses of cane, was the port at Pulupandan and the offshore loading facilities near the mill towns. These new docks and wharves not only denied business to Iloilo, leading to its demise as a major commercial center, they also kept more Negrenses at home to

conduct affairs. Bacolod, the capital and fastest-growing city on Negros, stole much of the luster that had formerly accrued to the city across the Guimaras Strait.

Centered on its newly renovated plaza, Bacolod emerged as an attractive, bustling community with markets, department stores, and amusements. Carnivals with the accompanying round of balls annually drew the Visayan sugar community to the city. The Arco Theater went up in 1926, and planters who formerly journeyed to Iloilo to see films could now watch them on their own turf at one of the largest picture houses in the islands. They could attend meetings and conferences or just hobnob at the popular University Club; meanwhile, the Negros Golf and Country Club provided an opportunity for centralistas and hacenderos, Americans and Filipinos, to meet in a more social setting. The Bacolod Sporting Club offered bowling, and the Negros Jockey Club introduced regular horse racing to the province in 1934. Whatever sense of isolation had previously existed on Negros ended through the easy communication with Manila and the outside world that followed inauguration of daily mail in 1924, long distance telephone calling in 1927, and airplane travel via Iloilo in 1931. Much improved passenger boat service supplemented these other facilities and made it possible for tourists to visit such spots as the nearby Mambucal spa. Symbolic of its improved status, the city became the seat of a new Roman Catholic bishopric in 1933.^[61]

Other communities, especially some of those with large centrals, harbored an active urban life as well. Silay, despite new docking facilities, continued as the grand old center with theaters, the province's most beautiful church, and after 1928, its second high school. Facing toward Cebu and with a large Cebuano-speaking population, San Carlos turned into the most active settlement along the eastern shore, boasting new sugar-loading facilities, three cinemas, a new church, and other amenities. Visitors also commented on the transformation in the center of La Carlota. Even smaller towns now obtained electric lights and telephone service, and Pulupandan offered a hotel to the travelers who appeared daily at its port. More than in prior times town plazas became places where the local elite congregated, held their club meetings, and enjoyed the attractions of the modern world.

May Coggins, a Baptist missionary who operated a girls' dormitory in Bacolod, wrote home in 1925 that people in Negros seemed to possess an anti-American attitude and dung to the old Spanish Catholic culture; however, despite her observation, lifestyles had certainly altered. During the 1920s—as novelist Nick Joaquin now laments—old Filipino-Spanish culture and values gave way to the manners and norms of the new con-

querer, and the sugar industry undoubtedly provided means and motives for the change. While Spanish and Ilongo remained the languages of choice among many planters, American English increasingly served as the medium of business and government. U.S.-style public schools and American teachers played a very important role in this transformation. Furthermore, baseball, golf, beauty contests, vaudeville, jazz, movies, and radios all served as carriers of change, replacing the zarzuela and other traditional forms of native entertainment. In 1923 Negros even claimed a world boxing champion: flyweight Pancho Villa of Ilog, the son of a duma'an. Negrense youth responded easily to their times, and the dowagers of San Enrique sought to impose a P50 yearly tax on girls who bobbed their hair.^[62]

Pampanga experienced similar changes, and San Fernando, home of the provincial hospital and public high school, led the way. The most rapid growth occurred in towns with centrals and large expanses of sugar. The province was linked to Manila by two bus companies, railroad service, and car travel. Tourism flourished after the government developed a spa and park at the base of Mount Arayat, as well as other attractions, and arriving visitors feasted on the vaunted native cuisine. Intertown travel also remained more frequent than in Negros.

Long-settled Pampanga clung more tightly to its well-developed native culture, despite the presence of electric service, long distance telephones, a dozen movie theaters, bowling halls, and other seductions of the Jazz Age. The province boasted seventeen brass bands, and President Diosdado Macapagal as a young man in the 1930s still toured with a company of players performing Capampangan zarzuelas, some of which were written by his father. Evangelina-Hilario Lacson describes the era this way:

The Kapampangan literary world of the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century comprised many writers, all of whom were productive and delightfully festive. They made the period a bountiful one of writing, the writers as lively as birds in a wide-spreading molave tree—the magical tree lording it over the Athens of Pampanga, the town of Bacolor. In other Pampanga towns the same liveliness obtained in Hilario's birth town of San Fernando; Yuzon's Guagua; Macapagal's Lubao; Punsalan's Magalang; Sanchez's Angeles, and in almost all the other towns of Pampanga.^[63]

Besides its venerability, another reason for the survival of so much native culture was the large professional class in the towns. Capampangan prided themselves on their educational achievements, and local yearbooks

always touted those with professional success more than those who had been successful exclusively as farmers. Capampangan placed greater importance on intertown communication and support of education than did their counterparts to the south (see table 14). Although the school-age population of Pampanga was 40 percent less than that of Negros Occidental, Pampanga had almost as many public high school students. Pampanga also boasted more private schools. Negrenses depended much more on the casual generosity of planters to maintain local public schools, in town and on haciendas, so when economic times turned bad, schools faced being dosed for want of money.^[64]

Despite the expansion of modern culture in western Negros, the province still exhibited characteristics of its frontier past, especially in its interior and on its northern fringes. Homesteading continued in the north, as did incidents of land grabbing, and the Philippine Constabulary chased and arrested cattle rustlers and robber bands. Makinaugalingon reported on persistent plantation violence, and even in the towns where new centrals sprang up, trouble occurred between managers and workers and between foreign and native laborers. Use of guns during arguments was ubiquitous in the province. Northern Pampanga and southern Tarlac exuded some-thing of the same atmosphere, but not to the same degree. Overall, Pampanga gave the impression of being more stable and sedate than its southern counterpart. In both Places, provincial character had been set by 1920, and nothing that happened during the central era or since has changed that essence.^[65]