Metropolitan Manila in The Great Depression PDF

Metropolitan Manila in the Great Depression: Crisis for Whom?
Author(s): Daniel F. Doeppers

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 511-535
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057559
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Metropolitan Manila in
the Great Depression:
Crisis for Whom?
DANIEL F. DOEPPERS
DESPITE ITS IMPORTANCE, "the exact course and depth of the recession in the
[Philippinel Islands have never been seriously studied" (Richardson 1984:208). Indeed,
studies that attempt to calculate the impact of global trade cycles, including that
of the Great Depression, on the employment economies of the primate cities of
Southeast Asia form a special lacuna within the generally underdeveloped literature
on the economic history of Southeast Asia. This article opens both research questions
by presenting a time-specific assessment of the impact of this international business
contraction on important segments of the economy and society of metropolitan Manila,
the capital and major port-city of the Philippines. In particular, this article focuses
on the depression experience of the large Filipino bureaucratic middle class, of Filipino
manual workers in commodities handling, manufacturing, and construction, and
finally of the Chinese commercial sector. The article provides a first-cut disaggregation
and analysis of relevant statistical data-much of it assembled here for the first
time, as well as commercial reports and the contemporary press. The result is a
picture of selective dislocation and hardship but one that is at once more variegated
and generally less severe than anticipated.
All capitalist and some socialist economies are subject to irregular, alternating
phases of expansion and contraction. Expansions produce opportunities and growth.
Contractions, depending on their severity and duration, produce dislocation and
potential social crisis. These are now understood to be highly complex phenomena
with leading and lagging elements and variable sectoral impacts. Presently called
"recessions," except in their most severe form, business contractions were more typically
labeled "depressions" before World War II. The term "Great Depression"
conventionally refers to the profound decline in production and trade, particularly
Daniel F. Doeppers is Professor of Geography and Southeast Asian Studies at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin-Madison and recently was director of the university's Center for South-
east Asian Studies. A preliminary version of portions of this article was read at the 1986
meetings of the Asian Studies Association of Australia and at a faculty colloquium at the
University of the Philippines. The author thanks participants in both events and Prof. A.
W. McCoy for helpful critical feedback. Research in Manila and in the National Library of
Australia was funded by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Graduate
School of the University of Wisconsin, and the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian
National University. Adam M. Cooper prepared the graphs.
TheJournal of Asian Studies 50, no. 3, (August 1991):511-535.

C) 1991 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
511
512 DANIEL F. DOEPPERS
in the more industrialized countries, during the period from mid- or late 1929
through 1935. In the United States, where the downturn was worse than any known
in the history of the country, the "quantity of production fell by approximately
one-third" during the early 1930s (Temin 1976:xi). More loosely, the term "Great
Depression" is also occasionally used to characterize the entire decade of the 1930s
up to the start of World War II.
The Philippines in the 1930s had a classic commodities export economy-highly
specialized in producing and selling various agricultural, forest, and mineral
commodities to more industrialized trade partners and buying mass-produced
manufactured goods in return. After the establishment of virtual free trade with the
United States in 1909 (trade policy followed the flag with a significant lag), the
booms and busts of the Philippine economy were generated primarily by the fluctuating
levels of demand associated with the cyclical expansions and contractions in the
economy of the industrialized trade partner. Although a rising share of the Philippines'
import trade, particularly the important textile sector, was conducted with Japan
during the 1930s, it was American demand for tropical commodities that drove the
Philippine cash economy. Within this economy, ethnically segmented organizations
based in metropolitan Manila collected, handled, in some cases processed, and exported
the principal commodities; collected or imported and distributed foodstuffs (especially
rice); carried out the manufacture of export cigars and various domestic consumer
goods; arranged the importing and wholesale and retail distribution of foreign
manufactures, and provided both national public administration and high-order
professional services.
What should we expect the impact of and response to the Great Depression
(hereafter simply "the depression") in such an economy and society to have been?
To date, economic studies of Southeast Asia in the 1930s have primarily focused
upon national units and/or the stresses of peasant rather than urban welfare. Birnberg
and Resnick, in a classic econometric study, caution us to remember that as a result
of colonial preferences and protective tariffs most export commodity trade in the
late pre-World War II era was conducted with a single major trading partner, not
with an amorphous industrialized world "core" (1975: esp. pp. 90 and 227). As a
result, we should generally expect that the Philippines-tied to the American
market-should have experienced more serious and long-lasting dislocation than
Taiwan-tied to Japan-or other parts of Southeast Asia. This is because, of the
major industrial nations active in Asian trade, the United States was affected the
most by the contraction and Japan the least. France and Britain fell in between.
Not only was the depression more severe in the United States, but the unprecedented
speed with which American companies reduced their inventories, e.g., of raw materials
on hand, surely magnified the adverse impact of the Philippines and other economies
supplying the U.S. (O'Brien 1988). As a mitigating factor, although the U.S.
substituted domestic production for colonial imports more readily than Britain or
Japan, it nevertheless chose to apply trade restrictions to the Philippines later than
it did to its Latin American trading partners and in more gentle fashion.
Further to the matter of what we should expect to find, Christopher Baker,
in a sweeping overview, observes that interdependence, especially intra-Asian
interdependence, declined sharply after 1928. He points to a falling demand for
industrial raw material exports and a consequent shift from cash crop to subsistence
production, to a consequent decline in the value of rice shipments from the three
mainland river delta areas of surplus production, and to a reversal of normal migration
flows, with a net repatriation of Chinese and Indians from Southeast Asia during
MANILA AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION 513
1929-32 (1981:339). In a case study, Ann Stoler points to the halving of the labor
force employed by the planters of Sumatra's tobacco culturgebied during 1930-33
(1985:87-8), while James Scott cites dramatic incidents of peasant distress and
protest in Annam and Lower Burma (1976:ch. 5). In short, the impact of the
depression in lowland, commercially integrated Southeast Asia is said to have been
highly disruptive. But, in a careful attempt at calibrated measurement, Ian Brown
concludes that
the sharp deflation of the early 1930s brought varying degrees of economic distress
to the major export-oriented rural districts of Southeast Asia . . . [but] that even
in the districts most severely affected by the crisis, the decline in peasant economic
welfare was markedly more modest than has hitherto been widely accepted.
(1986:1022)
Certainly, the decline was less than the years of monsoon failure or war. Brown's
view finds support in Norman Owen's case study (1989) of the collapse of the abaca
export market in Bikol (southern Luzon) where there is considerable evidence of a
rise in incidence of subsistence agriculture but no evidence of demographic catastrophe.
Ingleson's general treatment (1988) of the slump in urban Java also appears to support
Brown's position.
From this primarily rural-focused literature and considering the prevailing social
division of labor, I derive the following expectations for metropolitan Manila:
1. Government. The declining formal economy leads to a falloff in government

revenues-unless the authorities are willing to violate Scott's "moral economy"
ethic and make systematic use of draconian collection methods (as in Romania
in the 1980s). Revenue shortfalls lead to layoffs in the civil service and in the
corps of teachers. The impact is heavily urban, although teachers in the prov-
inces also would have been affected. The impact will fall primarily on the
Filipino bureaucratic middle class.
2. Export Commodities. Sharply decreased demand for export commodities leads to

declining employment of Filipino manual workers in freight transportation,
handling, and processing. The timing and magnitude of the contraction should
closely parallel the pattern of the American economy.
3. Manufacturing. Urban employment in production falls with declining effective
demand for export cigars and for locally manufactured consumer goods. These
demand patterns, in turn, should parallel the course of the depression in the
core economy. The decline directly affects the livelihood opportunities of Fil-
ipino factory workers, many of whom are (and were) female.
4. Construction. Depression related deflation-to say nothing of unemployment-
makes repayment of indebtedness more difficult. This leads to a high foreclo-
sure rate on mortgaged properties, but also to increased incentives for new
construction because of both reduced current peso building costs and the poor
prospects for profit from the normal pattern of investment in commodity pro-
duction.
5. Commerce. Interruption of the employment economy leads to declining formal

sector retail sales. Likewise, declining provincial income from export com-
modities leads to a reallocation of labor and land to subsistence production;
increased loca loals seola f-rsuf c ls t a rise iter ecn a a in
modern sector commercial activity. These situations impact adversely on
and other foreigners active in commerce and commercial credit. Simulta-

neously, the numbers of low-productivity vendors, ambulant hawkers, and scrap
collectors in the "informal" sector increase dramatically.
Finally, on a more general level, Brown suggests that urban dwellers may actually
have benefited from the fall in rice prices during the 1930s. These detailed expectations
inform our review of the evidence for metropolitan Manila.
Macroeconomic Overview: Timing
It is not surprising that the timing of the Philippine downturn parallels that
of the United States given the close trade connections between the two economies.
The heady prosperity of 1922-29 was a prominent fact of Philippine life, as it was
in the United States. In particular, 1929 was a peak year for production and exchange
between the two. In the Philippines, high earnings from commodity exports were
quickly recycled in the form of high levels of import deliveries. The mix of export
demand for 1929 followed the normal pattern of the 1920s: sugar accounted for
just less than one-third of the total value-a position it had held since 1920; coconut
products, especially coconut oil and copra (partially dried coconut pulp), comprised
almost 30 percent; abaca (Manila hemp) was holding on at 17 percent of the total,
having lost its formerly pre-eminent position at the end of World War I; cigars
and embroideries made up much of the remainder.
Following a peak of activity in early to mid- 1929, an increasingly sharp contraction
ensued in the United States during the rest of the year and continued during 1930
and 1931. This slump was simultaneously transmitted to the Philippines in the
form of declining demand for Philippine exports. After falling in unison, the trend
in the aggregate economies of the two trading partners diverged sharply in 1932.
In the United States, the contraction continued to intensify and then, finally, to
stabilize during 1933 at more than two standard deviations below the longer-term
exponential trend. In the Philippines, by contrast, the decline in the export economy
was arrested during 1932 at about half of one standard deviation below the trend-
much less than the slumps of 1906-1907, 1913-1914, or 1920-1921 when calculated
on the basis of real, comparable peso terms (table 1) (Doeppers 1984:fig. 4). As
Richardson writes (1984:208), "the contemporary view in official circles was that
things could have been much worse" -certainly there was a general awareness in
Manila that unemployment was more severe in the United States and parts of Europe
and that the Philippines had largely escaped the financial scare that led to the
American bank holiday of early 1933. 1
This initial slump was followed by the recovery and boom in the value of
Philippine exports during 1933 and 1934-a wholly anomalous event in the history
of U.S.-Philippine economic relations during the 1909-1941 era. There followed
what we conventionally presume to have been the Philippine real export slump of
1935 to 1938. The slump of 1935 was certainly real, but there is abundant evidence
of considerable economic recovery in the Philippines by 1937. The evidence is so
'See also, e.g., "Unemployment Reigns on Earth," Graphic, November 12, 1930:6;
"100,000 Walang Hanap-buhay sa Espafia," Vox Populi, March 7, 1931:10; "[Governor
General T.] Roosevelt Pleads for Laboring Man," Graphic, May 4, 1932:6, and Confesor,
"Rafael Alunan. . ." The Critic, December 1, 1934:10.
Table 1. The U.S. Economy and Philippine Exports
Philippines
Real Exports
United States (after Birnberg
Real GNP and Resnick)
Standard deviation from exponential trend
1929 1.69 1.69

1930 .56 .64
1931 -.35 -.32
1932 - 1.99 -.58
1933 -2.34 .27
1934 - 1.73 1.12
1935 - 1.06 - 1.45
1936 -.06 -.78
1937 .23 - 1.33
1938 -.42 - 1.04*
NOTE: The trend in each case is calculated for the period 1902-38.
*See footnote 2.
SOURCE: Calculated from data given in Birnberg and Resnick 1975:305, including their
Philippine export deflator, and Historical Statistics 1975:1, F 1-9.
strong that one must seriously question the adequacy of Birnberg and Resnick's
econometric calculations for those years-high consumer expenditures for tobacco
products, full recovery of Tagalog newspaper sales, record enrollments in tuition-
based schools in the city, a surge in streetcar and railroad ridership and in electricity
produced, steady growth in the tonnage of overseas freight, high national tax receipts,
excellent collections on commercial credit, record net influx of Chinese, and reports
of "many indicators of a growing general prosperity" (CR, January 30, 1937). And
1938 to 1940 must have been better still, at least in terms of the aggregate value
of exports. I believe that the standard calculations for the late 1930s err in not
adequately incorporating gold commodity exports-the bonanza of the day.2 At the
least, it is clear that these were not the worst years. In sum, from the perspective
of the total Philippine export economy, the Great Depression may be said to have
been significant during the early 1930s, but to have reached its most intensive phase
late, in 1935, after a hiatus, and only after the industrialized economy of the United
States was experiencing some recovery.
The reasons behind this situation are well known. By the 1930s, large operators
in the Philippine commodities trade enjoyed not only duty-free but also protected
access to the American market-as tariffs were placed on the commodities of the
2Specifically, Birnberg and Resnick (1975) appear to have used export data that, after
1931, omit gold bullion. Although gold was exported primarily to settle trade accounts in
earlier years and thus is properly excluded, it became an important and rapidly growing
ordinary commodity export during the mid- 1930s-another in a long string of commodity
bonanzas. Leaving gold out understates the value of raw exports by 5 percent during
1932-34, 8 percent during 1935 and 1936, 9 percent for 1937, and 26 percent for 1938
(Yearbook 1940:409). Incorporating it on a conservative, deflated basis using Birnberg and
Resnick's method significantly reduces the negative standard deviation for only 1938 to
-.62 (versus - 1.04 in table 1). Using this procedure in the case of gold is seriously mis-
leading, i.e., it understates what I believe to have been the real economic impact.
British Empire and, finally, even Cuba. As hard times struck the American economy,
farm and labor interests there began to demand an end to duty-free access for Philippine
products. The creation of the commonwealth arrangement for the Philippines and
the agreement on eventual independence came out of these domestic pressures to
push the colonial territory outside the American tariff umbrella. In anticipation of
a quota system for duty-free access, the Filipino, Spanish, and expatriate American
capitalists behind various modern Philippine sugar mills began to compete with
each other to increase production and gain a larger proportionate share of the total
trade. They did this to be assured of a maximum share of any subsequently imposed
quota. The brief expansion of 1933 and 1934 was wholly led by sugar as that
commodity soared to make up 60 percent of all exports by value (Friend 1963,
1969; Allen 1937; Confesor 1934; Birnberg and Resnick 1975).
The Philippine real-value-of-export crash came in late 1934 with the actual
imposition of the anticipated quota system. As the U.S. economy recovered, briefly,
to near-normal performance in 1936, the real value of Philippine exports was still
depressed. Viewed from the perspective of the export economy, the depression was
interrupted by a sugar boom and achieved its greatest intensity only in 1935. If
Manila had been a one-commodity port such as the sugar ports of Iloilo and Bacolod,
we could confidently predict the major ups and downs of its economy from this
sketch (McCoy 1982, 1984). But Manila was a metropolis with more than 800,000
residents by the end of the 1930s with various well-differentiated segments in its
economic base.
The Filipino Bureaucratic Middle Class
We turn now to the depression experience of some of the more important segment
of Manila's employment economy as measured against the expectations outlined above.
The educationally-based Filipino middle class may be estimated at approximately
18 percent of the urban labor force in the late 1930s. The largest segment of this
was based in the civil service and schools (Doeppers 1984:53). Contrary to our
expectations, the deflation induced by the depression together with the decision not
to cut current peso salaries produced high times for many Filipino bureaucrats and
their legislative allies in the early to mid-1930s. The downturn in the economy did
produce an immediate decline in current peso tax revenues that continued through
1933 (a 33 percent reduction from 1929), and despite sharp reductions in the annual
budgets, large deficits were incurred. Early effects of the shortfall included the
decision to halt the growth of the civil service in 1931 and then to undertake layoffs
and permanent, involuntary separations in 1932 and 1933. (By contrast, layoffs in
business were underway during 1930 and 1931.) Promotions in the bureaucracy
came to a virtual halt during 1932. As a result, the average annual growth rate in
numbers employed fell to less than one percent during 1931-35 as a whole as
opposed to six percent during the previous decade. This policy reduced to near zero
the chances that new college and high school graduates would find work in the
bureaucracy. The lines of the well-qualified unemployed lengthened appreciably-
a new situation.3
3Among many contemporary reports, see: "Education Grads Jobless," Tribune, April 6,
1930:1, 17; "The Employment Situation in the Government," Philippine Monthly, April
1930:12-13, 38; "Intellectual Unemployment," The Independent, May 2, 1931:5; "The Thing
Is to Reduce ('a badly bloated bureaucracy')-But How?," Graphic, june 1, 1932:10. and
Expansion in the number of public school teaching positions in the city actually
slackened even earlier, in the mid-1920s, well before the onset of the depression.
Fewer than 300 were added between 1925 and 1933, to reach a total of almost
1,600. This compounded the middle-class employment problem, especially for women,
during the early depression. Growth of employment in the public teacher corps
finally picked up again during 1937-39 when 550 new positions were added. During
the same years, the average annual expansion in the number of positions exceeded
5 percent for the first time since 1925 (Doeppers 1984:fig. 9). Lack of data obscure
a similar, delayed expansion in administrative employment under the policies of the
new commonwealth led by Manuel L. Quezon.
From the point of view of those who were laid off or who were attempting to
secure a middle-income position in the civil service or in teaching, the early 1930s
was a disaster. For those who retained their positions, however, these were not hard
times. In the absence of sophisticated cost-of-living indicators, only one 10 percent
reduction was made in the nominal rates of pay for active civil servants, and apparently
none in the pension income of retired public school teachers, government Health
Service professionals, and constabulary officers. This reduction was much less than
the gain in purchasing power due to deflation. Lest we err in overblaming Filipino
politicians and bureaucrats for their failure to reduce cash salaries before the
inauguration of the commonwealth in late 1935, let us recall that large American
firms also adopted the same historically unusual policy of maintaining cash wage
rates despite deflation. These firms provided a model for colonial authorities. Further,
however problematical, a high-wage approach was New Deal policy in the U.S.
during 1933-37. As a result, the buying power of fixed salaries fairly soared. Using
the cost of food as a guide to value, the real income of an average civil servant rose
from circa 750 (1913) pesos in 1927-29 to a peak of more than 1,500 pesos in
1932 and was still above 1,100 pesos in 1935 (Doeppers 1984:figs. 5, 11, 12;
O'Brien 1988; Temin 1990). One outlet for this windfall was housing. The doubled
real income of the bureaucratic middle class may well have helped to fuel the
construction boom of 1931 and 1932.
For the securely employed who absorbed only one modest nominal salary cut,
the first half of the 1930s saw an explosion in purchasing power. No wonder the
widows of 1930s bureaucrats interviewed by the author in San Juan district, Metro
Manila, in 1985 replied that they hardly felt the Great Depression. For good reason,
they remembered the low prices ("mura lang"), and had no personal memories of
hard times during the prewar era. Real salaries declined in the later 1930s, but
remained high by the standards of the 1920s. Under the new commonwealth
government, employment and the rate of promotions in the civil service began to
climb again, and an expanded Government Service Insurance System was established
to fund a broad program of civil service pensions. Little wonder that the bureaucracy
was so stable, the turnover of its personnel so low, during the 1930s.4
"Handed a Diploma But Not a Position," PFP, March 25, 1933: 16, 53. On the fall in
tax revenues, see ARCIR, January-June 1939:112. On layoffs in business, see CR, February
10, 1930:364 and El Debate, January 6, 193 1: 1.
Voluntary separation rates from the civil service averaged 6 percent per year during
1922-28, then declined to 2.5 percent during 1932 and 1933, finally rising again to 4
percent in 1937, but information is lacking for most years after 1933 (Doeppers 1984:fig.
11). On demands that pension systems be extended to lower-ranking public employees and
placed on a sound financial footing, see Pagkakaisa, April 24, 1929; PFP, April 1, 1933;
and Celeste 1936. On Quezon's creation of a consolidated Government Service Insurance
System, see Tribune, October 9-November 15, 1936.
One manifestation of the lack of financial stress on the Filipino middle class is
seen in the continued strength of the motion picture entertainment business right
through the depression. Following exhibition of the first talking pictures in Manila
in August 1929, investment in sound film projectioni equipment grew rapidly. By
the end of 1930, sixty theaters nationally were operating such equipment (140 by
1936), including twenty-six first- and second-run movie theaters in Manila. And
although a majority of films continued to come from the United States, local
commercial filmmaking expanded rapidly in the later 1930s-doubling from 1936
to 1937 and again in 1938 (CR, October 27, 1930, April 27, 1931; Carpio 1931;
ARCIR).
Much more affluent than the securely employed urban middle class were some
of the provincial-cum-national elites. Most notable among these in the 1930s were
the owners of the great sugar mills, many of whom maintained a residence in the
metropolis. They formed a class of affluent families who did very well during the
sugar boom. To ease the imposition of sugar and other commodity quotas, many
of these same individuals received shares of the tariffs collected and continued to
do well. In the words of the American trade commissioner:
Payment of P-30,000,000 in sugar benefits in the latter part of 1935 and early
1936, largely to a class of people who were already in good financial condition
and who had no incentive to expand their productive capacity due to the sugar
limitation, created a pool of funds available for investment, which found its way
mainly into the mining share market.5
(Cornejo 1939:608)
The boom in minerals exploration and gold shares was on. This was primarily another
export commodity boom. It produced a great deal of activity in the stock exchanges,
office space leasing, and mining supplies and a considerable gain in gold exports,
but relatively little in the way of industrial infrastructure. It is another indication
that many of those who were already well off were also doing well during the
depression.
Filipino Manual Workers and Proletarians
We focus here on three large employment sectors for urban manual workers:
the handling and processing of export commodities, manufacturing, and construction.
Export Commodities Handling and Processing
Handling. It is important to recognize that Manila's share of the total Philippine

export trade had been declining since the early 1920s. Although it struggled back
from the nadir of 1920-1921, the real value of exports handled in Manila failed to
grow appreciably during 1922-28 (over the levels reached during World War I);
1929 recorded the interwar peak in value of exports handled followed by a pro-
nounced slump, a momentary recovery in 1934, and a return to no growth (fig. 1).
If one reads this graph as an indicator of employment opportunities in Manila for
5See also "Sugar Barons Becoming Gold Magnates," IMJ, September 1936:18 and "Mon-
tilla Interests ." Tribune, October 14, 1936:2.
40 eal Exports without .

Gold, Philippines 1 . l
(tens of millions '
30 of 1913 pesos)
Real Exports, Manila

(tens of millions of 1913 pesos)
a 9 Real Construction, Strong

O Materials, Manila _0
8 (millionsof 1913
5 .04
.-'Population,
4 Greater Manila
( ihundreds of thousands)
3
1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Figure 1. Real Exports, Construction, and Population

Manila, 1920-1940
SOURCE: Doeppers 1984:145-46
Filipino stevedores, warehousemen, and freight transportation workers, then

was a good year, but 1930-33 (particularly 1931 and 1932) would not have seen
enough port-related activity to provide steady income opportunity given normal
growth in the workforce. These years would have witnessed a crisis of periodic
unemployment.
The reasons for Manila's relatively poor performance were two. First, its effective
export hinterland included primarily Luzon, Mindoro, and, to a lesser extent, Samar
and northeastern Leyte-roughly the north-northeast third of the land. At the same
time, considerable pioneer agricultural development was taking place in the south,
outside Manila's direct export service zone. Second, changes in the export mix also
favored areas outside Manila's export zone. As demand for abaca declined after World
War I, its production fell off markedly in Bikol and Samar-Leyte. Increasingly,
abaca production was concentrated under the Japanese plantation system around the
port of Davao in southern Mindanao. And as sugar output entered its frenzied stage
in the early 1930s, the greatest part of the expansion came in the Western Visayas,
chiefly Negros, rather than in Luzon. During 1932-34, the total value of exports
from Iloilo and the tiny Negros ports together nearly equaled that of Manila. So,
accustomed to long-term low growth, the worst of the depression for Manila's
stevedores, warehousemen, and freight transportation workers followed the conventional
timing, with 1931 and 1932 the most acute phase. Virtually all of these manual
workers were Filipinos-gangs of Chinese coolies having been displaced in the first
years of American suzerainty. Despite strong recovery in exports handled by the
metropolis in 1934, work opportunity in cargo handling failed to keep pace with
the trend in population growth. Career mobility in stevedoring ranks virtually came
to a halt (Netzorg 1981; Doeppers 1984:105).
For the most part, the employment effects of all this must be inferred, but as
the tonnage of cash crops and other freight and the distance carried plummeted, as
the number of passengers fell off, and as rates were lowered to meet growing
competition from trucks and buses, so too did the levels of employment recede for
the daily workers of the Manila Railroad Company-down 17 percent (739 positions)
by 1933 from the 1930 level of 4,300. Most of these would have been urban workers
(RGM 1930-33).
Processing. Coconut products formed an important portion of Manila's export
cargoes. Although a considerable proportion of Philippine copra exports was eventually
pressed in order to extract the oil content, the practice of doing the crushing/
extraction in the Philippines before shipment did not gain currency until World
War I. Then a shortage of freighters and abnormally high marine insurance rates
made it essential to raise the value-to-bulk ratio in oceanic commodity shipments.
By the end of 1918, 24 new oil mills were in operation in lighterage sites along
the Pasig River in Manila. With the end of the war, many of the mills closed
permanently, and employment in extraction fell from more than 3,000 to
approximately half that number.6 Nevertheless, export commodity processing in the
form of coconut oil extraction remained an important part of Manila's economic
base and an important employer of Filipino workers living in upriver districts (e.g.,
Pandacan and Nagtahan). It was also one of the few forms of production reported
as economic intelligence on a weekly basis. Commerce Reports consistently reported
the number of Manila mills in operation; I will interpret these data as rough surrogates
for the number of workers employed.
The results, averaged by semiannual periods, present a complex picture of
alternating higher and lower production/employment phases (table 2) rather than
a simple U-shaped decline and recovery or the decline-boom-retreat pattern that
characterized sugar. Good periods may be defined as those when five or all six mills
were reported to be in operation (32 of 81 months reported for 1930-36). Five
semesters-early 1929, the last four months of 1932, late 1933, and all 1935
fit this definition. Low periods are considered to be those when fewer than two-
thirds (four) of the mills were active (31 of 81 months). Seven separate semiannual
periods fit this definition; most severely all of 1930 and the first eight months of
1932, then early 1933, late 1934, and all of 1936. Interspersed were periods of
medium employment opportunity. So the depression's impact on employment in
export commodity processing in the city, as judged by the coconut oil mill data,
defies simple characterization. It was transmitted as an irregular series of slowdowns
and speedups.
6See Doeppers (1984:24-25, 43) on the rise and decline of coconut oil milling in Manil
during World War I and Stanley (1974:232-48) on the privileged use of Philippine Na-
tional Bank credits to finance this oil bonanza. This event has much in common with the
scandal of first-class hotel construction in Manila during the mid- 1970s.
Table 2. Average Number of Manila Coconut Oil Mills

in Operation (by semesters), 1929-36
1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936
Jan.-June 5.0* 3.2* 4.6 2.8 3.7 4.4* 4.8 3.6

July-Dec. 4.3* 2.7 4.7 4.31 5.3 3.6 5.1 3.9*
Calculated from monthly averages of data reported in CR 1929-1936.

*Data available for five months only.
5.0 for September to December 1932 only, 2.8 for January to August.
Although more complex, urban coconut mill employment generally paralleled

overall commodity export handling from the heights of early 1929 through the
decline of the early 1930s to the upturn in 1933. In that sense, it tended to magnify
the unemployment crisis transmitted from the city's export handling sector. But
thereafter it was countercyclical to the sugar-driven overall pattern of exports-
dampening the boom with average to very low activity in 1934, soaring in November
1934-35 and helpfully offsetting some of the export slump-related unemployment,
and low again in 1936. The lesson is that in a complex economy there is always
the possibility that not all of the segments will decline at once.
Manufacturing
Export. Cigar manufacture was the leading sector of factory employment in the
city and country until World War II-continuing a position established more than
a century earlier under the former Spanish tobacco monopoly which ended in 1882.
Although cigar exports did not equal ten percent of Philippine exports by value
during the twentieth century, they were extremely important to the level of
employment in the city because of the labor-intensive, handicraft methods of
production. Cigar manufacturing also was important because most of its product
was exported-a significant exception from the prevailing pattern of exporting
commodities.
For cigar workers, the Great Depression began in December 1920, or perhaps
1924, not in late 1929 (fig. 2). Foreign demand for Philippine cigars expanded
rapidly in the late 1910s because of wartime dislocations. From an average annual
demand of 150-200 million cigars in 1906-16, exports rose to circa 400 million
in both 1919 and 1920. Urban employment in the industry expanded accordingly
to a peak of more than 15,000 workers. About 12,000 of these were laid off at the
end of 1920. Exports in 1921 were again at the level of 150 million. The industry
staged a significant recovery in 1922 and 1923. Exports recovered to 330 million,
but thereafter declined almost every year through 1929, finally stabilizing during
the early depression just below 190 million (Doeppers 1984:20-22). During the
long decline from the 1923 export peak to the nadir in 1930, cigar exports to the
United States fell from 220 to 154 million. More than half of the overall decline
then was due to the loss of other foreign markets.
The decline in the 1920s had a classic set of causes. A combination of style,
technological, and marketing changes combined to undercut the mass appeal of
Philippine cigars among American consumers. First, as American women took up
smoking in the 1920s, they preferred the aromatic tobaccos available in cigarettes
to the stronger-smelling cigars. Men increasingly switched from cigars to cigarettes
66
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as well. Philippine tobacco companies also manufactured cigarettes with modern

imported machinery, but no local supply of aromatic tobacco was developed until
after World War II. Second, machinery for mass producing cigars was invented in
the United States. Finally, the American tobacco companies increasingly made intensive
use of the mass media to advertise standard brands. These developments left Manila's
cigar companies with a comparative advantage only at the low end of the scale-
in producing the best cheap cigar. This advantage, facilitated by the Philippine's
inclusion within the U.S. tariff umbrella, saved most Manila cigar factories from
collapse. But the result was a prolonged crisis in the industry and for its
overwhelmingly Tagalog and Kapampangan laborers during the 1920s, as available
work declined and relentless cost-cutting centered on wages took its toll. It is a
strong comment on the lack of more remunerative alternative work, especially for
the poorly educated women who increasingly predominated in the industry, that
12,000-15,000 were still employed in the cigar and cigarette factories during the
1930s. Most of these had only part-time work. This squeeze resulted in a declining
price per 1,000 cigars shipped to the United States, from -P-49-52 in 1922 and
1923 to +-40 in 1929-a period of little change in the prices Manila workers paid
for food.
The general deflation of the depression resulted in further price cuts for cigar
exports, stabilizing at +-30 per 1,000 during 1933-39. Owners were quick to slash
wages further. That, combined with the availability of only part-time work, produced
real hardship at the outset of the slump. The relatively moderate Tagalog labor
periodical Ang Manggagawa [The Worker] carried the following account in its February
28, 1930, edition:
Thousands of Laborers Are Without Work
They are asking for the help of the government in the solution of intense hardships
being experienced by their families. The slowdown in the operation of cigar factories
and the drop in trade and industry account for the ever-increasing number of
unemployed.
In the streets of Manila, people looking for work are a familiar sight. Those who
could no longer stand [the difficult life in the city] are forced to return to their
towns and farm and plant camote. Others work in the different factories despite the
meagre pay.
In Manila, approximately 20,000 workers are out of work.. . . Due to the high
unemployment rate, gambling and robberies are rampant. Many are unable to pay
the annual "cedula personal" [capitation tax] and their house rents. The government
is deaf and blind when it concerns assistance for the thousands of unemployed poor,
but it is industrious and active if it concerns the capitalists-imperialists. [Most
factory owners were foreigners.]
In the face of this problem, the workers still hope that someday the government
will undertake even minor measures to uplift the conditions of the poor and the
workers. . . when the cries of thousands of starving families can be heard even in
heaven.7
Cigarmakers were among the first Philippine workers to use the srike effectively
in the context of union organization and clearly articulated demands. As employment
7Translation by Loreto Seguido and the author.
conditions worsened during the 1920s, large-scale strikes became more common.
The reductions in cash wages that swept the industry in 1930 coincident with the
general wave of deflation provided an occasion for further dispute. But in the face
of widespread underemployment and unemployment, it was difficult to develop and
sustain solidarity. The achievement of worker unity was made still more difficult
by ideological and personal conflicts that, beginning in May 1929, resulted in a
dual union presence in the factories. In this setting, 1934 brought the first sustained
gain in overall export orders for cigars in years-nearly 15 percent-as growing
demand for cheap Philippine cigars in the U.S. finally offset the progressive loss
of other foreign markets (fig. 2). This newfound leverage resulted in the launching
of a general strike in the industry, easily the largest strike of the prewar era. Begun
by radicals, the strike swept up workers and unionists of all political shades and
shut down most of the industry from mid-August to early October 1934. The strike
expressed the felt grievances of workers whose cash wages per unit of work had been
slashed for a decade and whose opportunity to work had been steadily eroded.
Unfortunately, exports declined again after 1935, this time due to a quota on duty-
free access to the U.S. market, and sharply rising food prices again increased the
squeeze on Manila's cigar workers (Doeppers 1984:ch. 4; Kerkvliet 1989).
The Great Depression was coincident with poor times in the cigar industry,
but it was the end phase of a product cycle rather than the slump as an independent
cause that brought on the agony for cigar workers. Further, it was the autonomous
decision of the workers to opt for work-sharing and shared poverty for the many
rather than full employment for some and unemployment for others. This also served
the need of the owners to keep skilled cigarmakers available in case of an upturn
in orders.
Like cigars, abaca cordage was manufactured for export in factories located in
the metropolis. The 1,000 workers employed in this industry in 1937 were roughly
double the number supported at the industry's nadir in 1932. In this case the
pattern was an increasingly steep decline after 1930 to a low point in 1932 (down
42 percent from 1928) and an abrupt recovery and boom peaking in 1934 (at 126.5
percent of the 1928 production total) and again in 1939 and 1940. Since Philippine
cordage receiving duty-free entry to the United States after 1935 was cut back
sharply, the continued prosperity of the industry was due to the successful development
of markets in Latin America and elsewhere (Dept. of State 1938:68-71; Yearbook
1940:156).
Domestic. Whereas the largest market for Philippine-made cigars was abroad,
cigarettes were manufactured almost solely for domestic consumption. Philippine
cigarette production, strongly concentrated in the metropolitan area, peaked at five
billion per year in 1919 and 1920 and again during 1926-29. After 1930, reported
production plunged wildly before finally stabilizing at 3.0 billion in 1934 and 1935
(fig. 2). Obviously this drop made more acute the long-term decline in employment
in the city's tobacco industry. Some of this decline was due to a depression-induced
fall in total calculated cigarette consumption (from 6.0 billion in 1929 and 1930
to a nadir of 4.7 billion in 1932 to 34). But the larger reason was that American
"blue seal" cigarettes, benefiting from both aromatic blends and massive advertising,
were now~ beating Philippine cigarettes, such as the brown paper, native tobacco
"chorritos," out of the more stylish and affluent portion of their own market. As
total consumption reached 6.6 billion in 1938, sales of American cigarettes now
exceeded those of domestic brands. The gap widened dramatically in 1940 (fig. 2).
Little of this loss of employment for Filipino cigarette-makers was made up until
the 1950s, and from 1934 onwards, the Philippines absorbed more than half of
all American cigarette exports (Dept. of State 1938:99; Doeppers 1984:22 and
152-53; Gutierrez 1952; Gallego 1937; PJC 1935).
The timing and general pattern of declining output in the cigarette industry
was almost exactly mirrored in distillery employment. Excise tax records reveal that
the volume of Philippine-made distilled spirits (mostly rum) removed for domestic
consumption also declined precipitously, from 12-13 million proof-liters annually
in 1925-29 to 5.0 and 4.8 million liters in 1934 and 1935, respectively, and
recovered to only 6-7 million liters in 1937 and 1938 (ARCIR). It is likely there
was an increasing propensity to underreport production to avoid excise taxes, which
were raised substantially during the 1930s, but in this case the implied decline of
employment in Manila was not due to an explosion of imports. Presumably it was
due in part to a lack of cash income for the families of the nation as a whole.
Despite this general pattern of decline in urban production for domestic
consumption, there were exceptions. The modern Philippine Match Company factory
(with 250 workers in 1933) recovered under new ownership from supplying less
than 1 percent of the country's needs in 1925 to an 80 percent market share in
both 1936 and 1937. Production expanded every year except 1934-and at the
expense of imports (ACCJ 1933; ARCIR). A tiny triumph.
The Construction Sector and Countercyclical

Employment
A striking feature of Manila's economy throughout the four decades ending in

1941 was the tendency of intense value-of-construction booms to be exactly
countercyclical to the export economy. As export production and related cargo handling
declined or remained at a low level in 1931 and 1932, the construction industry
in the metropolis was enjoying a great boom (fig. 1). The same phenomenon occurred
in 1920 and 1921 and in 1913 as well. A great deal of Philippine capital was
invested on an annual basis in export crop production rather than in fixed assets.
When the prospects for profit in commodity exports were poor, large blocs of capital
tended to be deposited in banks precipitating a general lowering of interest rates
and an accordant scramble for building loans on attractive terms (Doeppers 1981,
1983b).8 A general lowering of building costs with the systemic deflation of 1921
and the early 1930s had the same effect. Assuming a relatively open labor market at
the lower skill levels, employment opportunity in construction would materially have
helped to ameliorate the impact of the early depression on the urban labor force.
In reality, this cushioning impact was muted because construction activity also
tended to be overconcentrated in the dry season, and thus part of the building trades
labor force was routinely composed of circular migrant villagers who were also rice
farmers during the wet season. As the price of palay plunged during 1930-32 and
cash became scarce in the nearby Tagalog and Kapampangan rice-growing regions,
greater than usual numbers of circular migrants would have been led to the city to
try to secure work in the construction sector, thereby increasing the already substantial
competition for manual employment. In January 1932, the Central Committee of
the new proletarian Communist Party (PKP) lamented the phenomenon of peasants
becoming the rivals of workers in the city (Richardson 1984:209-10). (Similar
complaints concerning displaced plantation workers were heard in urban Surabaya
on Java [Ingleson 1988:3061.)
8This pronounced countercyclicality of construction activity was not typical of the U.S.
economy.
Conversely, when the export decline of late 1934 hit the city, construction was
already profoundly depressed-a situation that continued through 1935. In this
case, a decline in exports and a bust in construction coincided, exacerbating an
already difficult employment situation. Aside from possible pessimism engendered
among potential investors by the prolonged depression, the construction slump can
be traced to the sharp deflation passed along from the U.S. economy. Deflation
brought the current peso value of many homes and buildings below the amounts
for which they were mortgaged. Small nominal pay cuts and greatly increased peso
value made payments more dear. The result during 1933 and 1934 was a great
wave of defaults and foreclosures. As the real estate market was loaded with foreclose
properties for sale, current property values were further depressed. Small wonder
that the Manila building and loan societies that had financed the construction boom
of the late 1920s and early 1930s now found themselves in difficult financial condition
(Doeppers 1983a, b; PJC 1939; Tribune October 31, 1936:4). The shattering bust
in new construction during 1934 and 1935 was replaced by a steep recovery and
modest boom peaking in 1938 and 1939 as the economic expansion led by gold
mining and export led to a rapid expansion of demand for office and upscale residential
space (fig. 1). Like employment in manufacturing and coconut oil processing, only
more so, the availability of construction work during the 1930s defies simple
characterization and must be approached with a fine diachronic net.
Commerce in Textiles and

the Chinese Commercial Ethno-Class
Manila completely predominated in the hierarchically organized commercial system

of the Philippines. And within the social structure of Manila labor markets, Chinese
sojourners and immigrants predominated at many of the higher and medium levels
of commerce in 1929. Manila handled the lion's share of imports, whether
manufactured goods or rice. In this role, and as the chief center of factory manufac
it handled the national distribution of consumer goods, including imported textiles,
hardware, flour, canned milk, and automobiles as well as domestically produced
shoes, cigars and cigarettes, beer, rum, and soft drinks. It was the national center
for wholesale distribution and the only major center for high-order retailing. It was
the principal locus for obtaining large-scale commercial credit. And it supported
large numbers of printers and writers in a publications industry that was heavily
subsidized by modern advertising revenues.
Textiles were the single most important nonfood item of consumer demand.
Almost all textiles sold in the Philippines during 1923-38 were imported and most
were imported during 1939-41. Indeed, before 1939, there was only one small
cotton mill in the country, and it produced less than 2 percent of national needs.
Textiles routinely equaled or approached one-fifth of all reported imports by value-
higher in 1932-34 and lower in 1940. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the internal
distribution of textiles was primarily directed from a highly specialized section of
the Manila Central Business District (CBD), principally Rosario and adjacent streets,
by business organizations led and staffed by Hokkien-speaking migrants from the
Amoy City trade area in Fujian, China (Doeppers 1984:17-19, 140).
The important commerce in textiles was a leading sector in the downturn, one
of the first to which the label "depression" was applied. Perhaps propelled by the
tight geographic agglomeration of Manila's purveyors, hypercompetition characterized
the textile trade well before the onset of the slump. At the end of 1928, easy credit
and miscalculation had led many dealers to become overstocked. Smaller establishments
reported poor profits for the year. By February 1929, Chinese textile merchants
nationwide were overstocked and selling below cost in the face of light demand.
Meanwhile, textile arrivals continued to pile up as a result of orders placed in late
1928. Business in June 1929 was 50 percent below sales of a year earlier. In July
and September, collections on credit advances in the textile trade were reported to
be "difficult." During the same third quarter, banks adopted a more cautious policy
of restricting commercial credit. Concerning September performance, Commerce Reports
said "Depression . . . continues in the textile market, all factors are unsatisfactory
and there is no definite expectation of recovery" (November 4, 1929).
The cotton goods market continued to be unsatisfactory in 1930. In January,
commercial collections were difficult in most districts of the country due to plunging
commodity prices; cash was especially scarce in the rice-growing areas (notably Central
Luzon). While provincial textile stocks were slowly sold off, this was not enough
to generate a normal flow of orders. Several Manila dry-goods businesses had failed
by May. So had one of the oldest Chinese commercial newspapers. In July, both
collections and new credits were reported to be more difficult than in any month
since the deflation and export crash of 1921. Late in 1930, several "fairly important
operators closed their Rosario Street establishments" in the CBD and began operating
from their residences in an attempt to lower overhead costs to survival levels. Others
were said to be contemplating liquidation of their businesses until conditions improved
(Hester 1931:10, also Tribune, May 8, 1930; CR, September 1, 1930).
The combination of large carryover stocks valued at predeflation levels, a surge
of competition from Japanese importers, together with reduced consumer demand,
meant that 1930 was a year of business losses for the Hokkien Chinese who had
dominated the Philippine textile trade for more than 50 years. Because there was
a growing tendency for Japanese-made goods to be handled through a nascent parallel
network of Japanese-owned department and dry-goods stores (and in any case had
been boycotted during 1928-29 by Chinese dealers), the strength of Japanese goods
in the early 1930s further damaged the trade handled by Chinese. The same was
true in the Dutch East Indies as well. In the Philippines, the Japanese were competitive
in cotton goods even before devaluing the yen in 1931, but it was in the expansion
of rayon sales that they truly excelled. Rayon imports rose against the trend from
less than 3 million square meters in 1928 to more than 7 million in 1930 (to 25
million in 1936). Total Philippine demand for wearing apparel in 1930 was down
22 percent from the average of 1927 and 1928, and weaker Chinese textile dealers
were forced out (CR, February 2 and July 20, 1931).9
The following year saw only modest improvement, and the combined yardage
of cotton textile and rayon imports reported for 1931 was still only 88 percent of
the levels experienced in the late 1920s (table 3). Not coincidentally, the same year
also witnessed a continuing series of disasters for the Chinese commercial class.
These included the only commercial bank failure in Manila during the depression
(a Philippine-Chinese institution located on Rosario Street and active in financing
textile dealers and importers),10 continued bankruptcies of smaller commercial
90n Chinese boycotts of Japanese-made goods in 1928-29 and again from late 1931
onward, see Tan 1972:272-89 and 367-71 and CR, January 28, 1929:187.
'0The Mercantile Bank of China was brought down by rumors and back-to-back run
August and September. Half of the bank's directors were actively involved in the textile
trade. Officers and directors also granted each other large undersecured loans and incurred
substantial losses in speculative foreign exchange transactions. The bank's failure is reviewed
Table 3. Philippine Textile Imports
Cotton & Rayon Cotton

Import &
Epoch Index Cotton Rayon Rayon
_~~~~~
(million meters2
1920- 1924 ave. 84.3

1925-1929 ave. 115.4
1927-1928 ave. 100 113.9 2.8 116.7
1929 103.8 116.9 4.3 121.2
1930 78.2 84.0 7.2 91.2
1931 87.8 94.7 7.8 102.5
1932 110.3 122.4 6.3* 128.7
1933 91.4 100.9 5.8 106.7
1934 98.9 107.2 8.1 115.4
1935 109.5 113.3 14.4 127.8
1936 107.2 99.9 25.2 125.1
1937 105.7 100.7 22.6 123.3
1938 123.1 128.5 15.2@ 143.7
1939 120.1 130.0# 10.2 140.2
1940 96.5 99.3 13.3 112.6
*Calculation based on percen

@Cited as Japan only.
#Cited as "approximately."
SOURCES: Harrington 1930; Commerce Yearbook 1930:659, 1932; CR, February 22,
1932:424-26; Richards 1935:7; PSR 1934:178-79, 1935:259 and 277-78, 1937:475;
Manila Daily Bulletin, February 4, 1939:1; FCW, February 15, 1941:297.
operators, and both heavy unemployment among and a rare net outflow of more
than 4,000 Chinese from the archipelago. By early 1932, provincial sales of general
merchandise were said to be the lowest on record (CR, March 28, April 8, May 2,
1932; May 27, 1933). Clearly the early depression experience was severe in the
wholesale-retail distribution sector in which the Chinese had long found (and been
confined to) a special niche.
The turnaround came at last in late 1932 as textile merchants restocked at
deflated prices. This change became decisive with the initiation of "heavy speculative
purchases" by importers and large Chinese dealers and by renewed consumer demand.
By the rainy season in July 1933, normally an off season for sales, textile prices
had nonetheless risen by 10 percent. There were two reasons for this turnaround:
an anomalous boom in Philippine sugar exports to the U.S., and a halt to deflation,
making investment in inventory much less risky. End-of-the-year department store
sales in Manila were good, and improved sales continued through 1934 (CR, July
1, July 29, December 3, 1933; April 28, 1934). Cotton and rayon imports for
1934 approached the average volume for 1927-1928 and rose well above that level
thereafter. The sugar export surge of 1933-1934 was on, and it was reflected
immediately in consumer demand.
in the "Annual Report of the Bureau of Banking" (typescript), 1931, pp. 9-10 and 1932,
pp. 10-13; "Examiner's Report of Condition" as of August 5, 1931, U.S. Bureau of Insular
Affairs (BIA) file "with" 28121-1, U.S. National Archives, RG 350; Philippines Herald,
August 8 and 10, 1931; La Opinion, September 16 and October 5, 7, and 19, 1931, and
Tribune, December 8, 1931.
Improved conditions in domestic commerce are also revealed in the record of

collections on commercial credit. In the last quarter of 1934 and the first half of
1935, collections were reportedly "good" in Manila, fair to difficult in the provinces.
By July 1935, collections were said to be "excellent" in Manila, slow now in the
sugar-producing areas with the export downturn, and fair in Cebu and Mindanao.
Domestic collections in Manila continued to be characterized as "excellent" throughout
1935 and 1936 (CR, September 29, 1934-August 29, 1936).
The recovery of the commerce in textiles in late 1932 coincided with a renewal
of the anti-Japanese boycott movement and thus particularly benefited the Chinese
dealers who handled American goods. American exports of cotton piece goods to
the Philippine market jumped 90 percent in 1932, while Japanese exports were off
sharply. But the Japanese were now the world's leading exporters of cotton goods
and were underselling American rayon as well. As Japanese business combines opened
textile mills in China, an enormous quantity of cloth produced in the home islands
was redirected to Southeast Asia. Exports to the large Indonesian market doubled
between 1931 and 1934 (Dick 1989). In early 1933, the Japanese were providing
only a quarter of Philippine imports, but in December they claimed a 58 percent
share. The Japanese continued to lead in the Philippine market for printed and
dyed textiles, both favored by urban middle-class consumers, and later in the
unbleached category as well. They achieved this lead in both the Philippines and
Java, despite periodic boycotts by Chinese dealers, by developing networks of Japanese
wholesalers and distributors supported by Japanese branch banks, shipping lines,
and local services. Increasingly the old Chinese shops on Manila's Rosario Street
were replaced by Japanese stores in a new section of the CBD. The American Trade
Commissioner in the Philippines reported that Japanese retailers handled 25 percent
of the "total volume of business" in 1933 and perhaps 35 percent in 1935 (CR,
December 21, 1935:45 1; January 11, 1936:35-36)."1
In mid-1935, Commerce Reports related that "the Japanese appear to have
overestimated the market requirements and are now attempting to lower stocks by
drastic price reductions" (CR, August 31, 1935). Despite this overstocking of cotton
goods, the total volume of textile imports in 1935, 1936, and 1937 dropped only
slightly (table 3)-a good sign that hard times had abated. At the same time, both
tariffs and the import quotas negotiated in 1935, on the one hand, and more
particularly the growing commitment of Japanese industry to the war in China after
1937, on the other, had the effect of eventually restoring a larger share of the market
to American manufacturers and Chinese distributors. 12 The volume of U.S. cotton
textile exports to the Philippines in 1938 was the largest since 1932 and on a
yardage basis amounted to almost 73 percent of the total (up from 41 percent a
year earlier). In response to this sudden commercial opportunity, and also to the
war at home, the net influx of Chinese to Manila and the Philippines set modern
records, topping 10,000 in both 1937 and 1938. Finally, the Philippine
Commonwealth's National Development Company textile factory opened on the site
"On the renewed anti-Japanese boycotts, see Tan 1972; CR, February 29, 1932:475,
May 30, 1932:501, December 21, 1935:45 1, and January 11, 1936:35-36, and Sakdal,
October 2, 1937. Following the Japanese occupation of Manila in January 1942, the seven
principal Chinese leaders of the boycott movement were killed (Chin Ben See, personal
communication, May 1986).
12Reports on the U.S.-Japan negotiations over "gentlemen's agreements" specifying limits
on Japanese cloth exports to the Philippines are in BIA files 6023-51 and 6023-48. The
Dutch attempted to negotiate with Japan on import quotas and on the question of which
network would handle the import trade for colonial Indonesia (Dick 1989).
of a defunct coconut oil mill in Santa Mesa district in mid-1939. By 1941, it was
producing piece goods equal to about 9 percent of national needs. Two Japanese
textile mills also opened in the city at this time. Increased local production accounts
for much of the drop in textile imports in 1940 (table 3). 13
For Hokkien Chinese merchants and commercial workers, particularly those in
the textile trade, the early depression was a disaster. A number of smaller operators
were bankrupted and many were unemployed. After a brief recovery, the Japanese
were successful in taking over a considerable part of the business. At the end of
the decade, as Japanese market penetration receded, the new commonwealth
government set out to encourage Filipino commercial participation of all kinds at
the expense of the Chinese and to nationalize commerce in rice and corn. Ironically,
this was most completely achieved during the subsequent Japanese Occupation. During
the same decade, small-scale informal sector vending, transporting, recycling, and
scavaging formed an increasingly important part of the employment economy (Doeppers
1984:133-34). Unfortunately, fluctuation in such activities continues to elude
quantitative measurement.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the early and mid-1930s were not normal or generally
prosperous times in Manila, but the city's economic complexity was such that there
were offsetting conditions that mitigated the impact of the depression in most years.
When exports were down in 1931 and 1932, employment in construction was up.
When construction was at a low level in 1934, exports were up. When these were
off together in 1935, female employment in cigarmaking was up, and the coconut
oil mills were near peak production. And while some did very well because of
deflation, others were bankrupted by the same phenomenon. The first conclusion,
then, is that a unitary approach, such as those suggested by dependency theory and
simple class analysis, would likely have missed much of the nuance discovered here
by employment sector and ethno-class. An allied interpretive question suggested
(but not answered) here is, if metropolitan Manila was protected to some degree by
the complexity of its employment economy, then was the impact of the depression
relatively greater in urban Java where some of the major functions concentrated in
the Philippine capital were effectively split between Batavia/Jakarta and Surabaya?
In other words, the much-maligned fact of primacy within the hierarchy of urban
centers-the phenomenon of one city being several times larger than the size of
the second and third largest cities combined-turned out to be a saving grace in
this particular situation.
In terms of the expectations set forth at the outset of this article concerning
who was most likely to be hurt by the depression, during what part of the cycle,
and how severely, the results are mixed:
1. For the would-be Filipino bureaucrats, a considerable loss was sustained by

those low-to-moderate income Filipino families who sacrificed to invest in
"3Domestic production per year in 1940 and 1941 included 9.6 mil. m2 from the new
NDC factory, circa 1.8 mil. m2 from the old Tondo mill reopened in 1930 by Vicente
Madrigal, and unknown quantities from the two new Japanese owned mills. PJC, November
1940:43; Yearbook, 1946:270-7 1; CR,June 11, 1932:91, and FotoNews, 4(January 1, 1939):
30-32. For the debate among Filipinos on the merits of policy action to promote indus-
trialization through an import substitution strategy, see Doeppers 1984:25-31.
education in hopes of winning upward mobility into secure employment in the

bureaucratic middle class for their offspring during the first half of the 1930s.
This route had become increasingly costly as the entrance requirements escalated
throughout the 1920s, but the first half of the 1930s witnessed near total
closure of these ladders as a result of plunging tax collections and the failure
to keep real salaries level during the deflation. Those white-collar workers who
were discharged from government (or private) employment in the early 1930s
found few alternative opportunities and likewise suffered. Conversely, the great
majority of the active Filipino civil service and teacher corps and numerous
retirees actually prospered from a windfall increase in purchasing power.
2. Filipino manual workers in both export handling and processing suffered as a
result of the declining opportunity for regular employment during the early
depression. Certainly 1930 and the first eight months of 1932 were disastrous
for many coconut oil workers. This loss was partially offset by the predictable
counter-cyclical expansion of work in building construction. But, unlike our
prediction, the pattern of employment intensity in export commodity handling
does not continuously parallel the gross pattern of the American core economy
because of the unusual sugar boom that came while the U.S. economy was at
its worst and because of the new export quotas that dislocated this expansion
during 1935.
3. The record of urban manufacturing employment is even more complex, since
the greatest decline in both real wages and opportunity to work in cigar
manufacturing came during the decade before the depression as a result of
developments in the cigar-product cycle. Indeed, quite against expectations,
there occurred a temporary increase in cigar piecework employment during the
middle 1930s as a result of a Philippine low-wage advantage. Employment in
cigarette making did decline sharply as predicted, but not primarily because
of a general downturn in the cash economy. Rather, it was the first phase of
the still ongoing American cigarette exporters' invasion of the Pacific Rim
featuring aromatic tobaccos and intensive use of brand name, lifestyle advertising
techniques. In this less labor-intensive industry, the decline had a conventional
timing, but there was no recovery during the prewar era.
4. Filipino employment in construction at first followed the prediction-expanding

dramatically as exports fell off in 1931 and 1932. But here urban workers faced
increased competition from peasants disadvantaged by the plunging market
demand for rice. There followed a severe diminution in the opportunity to work
during the construction slump of 1934 and 1935. The urban impact of this
was mitigated by the unknowable percentage of construction workers who were
circular migrant rice farmers who suffered at home during these years. The
latter year was unusual because exports and construction hit bottom
simultaneously. Likewise, the late 1930s construction boom came together wi
rapidly expanding gold exports.
5. Finally, severe loss appears to have been suffered by Chinese merchants, particularly
the smaller-scale textile merchants and their employees during the early years,
peaking in 1931 and moderating when deflation finally stopped. Survivors may
have recouped somewhat during late 1932 and 1933, but many were bankrupted
or otherwise left unemployed. And from the peak of the sugar boom in 1934
through 1937, the expanding parallel Japanese distribution system-one that
was not seriously burdened by losses sustained during the deflation-seriously
undercut the Chinese position. Again, this was reversed briefly at the end of
the period as Japanese production was placed on a wartime footing. Informal

sector vending undoubtedly increased during the worst years of the depression,
but such activities continue to elude measurement.
Much of the broader literature on the Great Depression focuses on acts of resistance
and rebellion by plantation workers and peasants adversely affected by the lack of
market for their commodity of specialization and/or by government attempts to
collect taxes in bad times. Rarely are urban workers mentioned in these accounts,
but these kinds of events also punctuated the life of the metropolis, either because
the attacks on authority originating in rural grievances actually spilled over into
the capital or because highly charged accounts carried in the urban press caused
panic. Such events in Manila included the December 1931 preventative arrests of
members of a secret society called Tanggulan (defender, i.e., of the Filipino nation),
led by a Manila newspaperman and allied with a peasant brotherhood (Kapatiran
Magsasaka). The arrests were focused on several poorer sections of Manila (Tondo
and San Nicolas) and on the nearby rice-growing provinces of Nueva Ecija and
Bulacan. The action was taken on the hypothesis that the Tanggulans were about
to attack the city and government. Also allied with this movement was the Sakdal
(to accuse) organization of Benigno Ramos, an author and discharged Senate clerk.
Ramos gave eloquent articulation to the economic and political grievances of ordinary
Filipinos-grievances that were clearly exacerbated by the unconscionable rise in
the visible real income of politicians and government white-collar workers while
many ordinary folk were suffering hardship. On May 2, 1935, the Sakdal Party
initiated an ill-fated attempt by barrio folk to seize several municipal halls and to
promote a new Philippine republic in the Tagalog provinces around the capital.
Much of Sakdal wrath was directed at affluent indigenous officials, and the result
was a high state of alarm in the city including patrols of Tondo and guards stationed
at the approaches to the urban area and around the homes of high officials. Finally
in October 1936, a principal water main of the city was blown up and several
firebombs set off. Subsequently, a number of Sakdals were arrested as suspects in
suburban San Juan and Caloocan. Again, high concern in the city lasted for weeks.
All of these alarms over real and, perhaps, some imaginary threats to the city
were caused by poorly thought-out calls to action growing out of largely agrarian
populist discontent. But the greatest civil disruption of the everyday life and economy
of the city was the mass proletarian cigarmakers' strike of August to October 1934.
This was a classic struggle between a highly mobilized, impoverished Filipino workforce
composed of skilled and unskilled male and female manual workers on the one hand
and foreign capitalists and their indigenous managerial personnel on the other. Largely
nonviolent mass marches as well as speeches by the strikers and their supporters,
including a few rural radicals, went on in the city for six weeks. These actions were
possible in 1934 because of the civil libertarian policy of then Governor General
Frank Murphy; similar protests would have been unimaginable in, say, the cities
of Vietnam or Indonesia, where Dutch colonial authorities suppressed overt union
activities after the 1920s. The strike finally ended with some fleeting monetary
gains following a clash between marchers determined to enter a downtown factory
in order to convince some workers to rejoin the strike and a small detachment of
police who autonomously changed the rules of engagement by using lethal force.
The capitalists maintained command of the industrial process, and elite Filipino
control was safeguarded by enacting compulsory arbitration, lest such a mass action
get out of their control again.
On balance, it appears that the metropolis fared better than most commercially
integrated provincial areas, although not in every year. In 1933, as the sugar provinces
came out of the doldrums, for example, there was an unusually sharp decline in
the number of Manila residents paying the capitation tax (cedula personal). The same
year saw more than 1,000 unemployed given free transportation back to their provinces
of origin. 14 But the very fact that the city's economy was highly differentiated worked
against all sectors turning sour at once. Further, as we have seen, the Filipino
bureaucratic middle class, supported by the redistributive economy it operated, was
heavily concentrated in the city. This class did very well during the depression and
thus generated service and production employment in the city to serve its needs.
The same can be said of the plutocracy. Food, especially rice, was cheap and the
percentage of a bureaucratic family salary that could be spent on other things, such
as housing, increased dramatically during the first half of the 1930s.
We conclude at the personal level. It is striking that of more than 100 elderly
individuals and married couples interviewed by the author in Manila in 1985-
including many former manual workers-not one recalled forsaking the metropolis
for rural residence during any part of the 1930s.15 But many admitted doing so
during the real subsistence crisis of 1944-45. And.despite the fact that these were
difficult times for many, almost no one, rich or poor, mayaman o mahirap, now
remembers the 1930s as a time of want, kapos. Employment was a recurrent problem,
particularly for manual workers and, for example, a then newly graduated engineer,
but food was exceedingly cheap, they recall. The starvation of late World War II
and the crisis of inflation combined with high unemployment during the last three
years of the Marcos dictatorship seem muclh worse by contrast.
List of References
ALLEN, JAMES B. (Sol Auerbach). 1937. "Who Owns the Philippines?" The Nation
144 (April 24):463-65.
American Chamber of CommerceJournal (ACCJ). 1933a. "Philippine Match Manufactur
Expands during Depression." 12 (May):8.
1933b. "Tondo: Red Cross Makes Social Survey There." 13 (November): 19.
Annual Report of the Collector of Internal Revenue (ARCIR). Commonwealth of the
Philippines.
BAKER, CHRISTOPHER. 1981. "Economic Reorganization and the Slump in South
and Southeast Asia." Comparative Studies in Society and History 23:325-49.
BIRNBERG, THOMAS B. and STEVEN A. RESNICK. 1975. Colonial Development.
An Econometric Study. New Haven: Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
14 During the period from August 25 to December 31, 1933, 848 registered unemployed
received free maritime passage from Manila to their home provinces-overwhelmingly to
the Visayas. Uncounted others were relocated to places in Luzon by the Manila Railroad
Company on the recommendation of the Associated Charities. Philippine Islands, "Annual
Report of the Bureau of Labor, 1933" (typescript), p. 43. Another report had it that 1,000
"families" were aided in returning to the provinces (ACCJ 1933b).
'5Although some urban Filipinos did return to rural areas, there was apparently less back-
and-forth from city factory to village farm than was reported under the much more extreme
conditions of Shanghai during the same years. Honig 1986:195-97.
BROWN, IAN. 1986. "Rural Distress in Southeast Asia during the World Depression
of the Early 1930s; A Preliminary Reexamination." Journal of Asian Studies 45
(November): 995-1026.
, ed. 1989. The Economies of Africa and Asia in the Inter-War Depress
Routledge.
Bulletin of Philippine Statistics (BPS).
CARPIO, JOSE A. 193 1. "The Philippine Motion-Picture Industry." Commerce and
Industry Journal 7 (October):6.
CELESTE, JOSE L. 1936. "The Pension Funds." National Review (January 31 and
April 3).
Commerce Reports (CR). Compiled from field staff reports by the U.S. Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce.
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DICK, HOWARD. 1989. "Japan's Economic Expansion in the Netherlands Indies
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20 (September):244-72.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, UNITED STATES. 1938. Joint Preparatory Committee on
Philippine Affairs, Report of May 20, 1938. Conference Series No. 36.
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EconomicJournal 20:44-57.
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Metropolitan Manila in the Great Depression: Crisis for Whom?

Author(s): Daniel F. Doeppers

TheJournal of Asian Studies 50, no. 3, (August 1991):511-535.

1. Government. The declining formal economy leads to a falloff in government

2. Export Commodities. Sharply decreased demand for export commodities leads to

5. Commerce. Interruption of the employment economy leads to declining formal

and other foreigners active in commerce and commercial credit. Simulta-

Macroeconomic Overview: Timing

Table 1. The U.S. Economy and Philippine Exports

Standard deviation from exponential trend

1929 1.69 1.69

The Filipino Bureaucratic Middle Class

Filipino Manual Workers and Proletarians

Export Commodities Handling and Processing

Handling. It is important to recognize that Manila's share of the total Philippine

40 eal Exports without .

Real Exports, Manila

a 9 Real Construction, Strong

1920 1925 1930 1935 1940

Figure 1. Real Exports, Construction, and Population

Filipino stevedores, warehousemen, and freight transportation workers, then

Table 2. Average Number of Manila Coconut Oil Mills

1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936

Jan.-June 5.0* 3.2* 4.6 2.8 3.7 4.4* 4.8 3.6

Calculated from monthly averages of data reported in CR 1929-1936.

Although more complex, urban coconut mill employment generally paralleled

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as well. Philippine tobacco companies also manufactured cigarettes with modern

Thousands of Laborers Are Without Work

7Translation by Loreto Seguido and the author.

The Construction Sector and Countercyclical

A striking feature of Manila's economy throughout the four decades ending in

Commerce in Textiles and

Manila completely predominated in the hierarchically organized commercial system

Table 3. Philippine Textile Imports

Cotton & Rayon Cotton

1920- 1924 ave. 84.3

*Calculation based on percen

Improved conditions in domestic commerce are also revealed in the record of

1. For the would-be Filipino bureaucrats, a considerable loss was sustained by

education in hopes of winning upward mobility into secure employment in the

4. Filipino employment in construction at first followed the prediction-expanding

the period as Japanese production was placed on a wartime footing. Informal

KERKVLIET, MELINDA TRIA. 1989. "Manila Workers' Unions, 1900-1950."

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