Part 6
President Manuel Quezon’s speech on the creation of the cities of Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, and Zamboanga
It was during the first years of the presidency of Manuel Luis Quezon of the Commonwealth that the municipalities of Cebu (Commonwealth Act 58), Davao (Commonwealth Act 51), Iloilo (Commonwealth Act 57), and Zamboanga (Commonwealth Act 39) were enacted in 1936 and inaugurated in 1937. Here is the speech of President Quezon delivered in Iloilo (it was Elpidio Quirino who was Secretary of the Interior who represented Quezon in the inauguration of Cebu City on February 24, 1937):
“No industry in the Philippines is being benefited by our trade relations with America nearly so much as the sugar industry. There have sprung in Negros, Iloilo and Pampanga, in the last few years, millionaires as we have never had before. They have palaces, automobiles, and live a life of comfort and luxury here and abroad. I am not criticizing them; it is their privilege to spend their money as they please. I am merely stating a fact, for I want to point out that we are doing everything we can, not only to prevent the collapse, but to maintain in full blast, the prosperity of the sugar industry. But the government demands that this prosperity be shared with the workingmen in the sugar fields and in the sugar centrals. Very little, if any, of the immense profits of the sugar industry, has gone into the pockets of labor.
“I say in all earnestness, to the owners of sugar centrals and to the proprietors of sugar lands that unless they raise the wages of their laborers and treat them better, the Government and the country may lose interest in the defense of the sugar industry.
“We cannot be the servants of a privileged class. We are the servants of the whole people and we shall not permit an injustice to be done, much less perpetuated, against any constituent part of our community. Unless the sugar industry, of its own accord, increases immediately the wages of its workingmen, I shall ask the National Assembly to enact legislation that will compel that industry to do so.
“We are living in an age in which civilized society can only endure if justice is accorded equally to the rich and to the poor. Those who have can only hope to keep their possessions indefinitely, if they share part of their profits with those who work for them. This is a question of justice, not of charity. A man is more entitled to the fruits of his labor than the proprietor to the rent of his property.” (End of the series)
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