The Wily Filipino

Tropical Poets.

Some of you might like this: this is from Willard Price's 1920 book on the Methodist Church's missionary work around the world entitled Ancient Peoples at New Tasks:

"Any Filipino who can scribble dog verse is a songster, a new Shelley, a budding Omar Khayyam. The population of the Philippines is ninety-nine per cent. poets and one per cent. farmers."

So wrote a critic of the Filipinos. He would not be correct in making such comment to-day. The work of the United States is transforming millions of easy-going, tropical "poets" into progressive farmers, manufacturers, and merchants is an achievement with few parallels in history.