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CHAPTER XIII

magnate. In most of these men the proportion of Chinese blood is large.

Generalizing, we are justified in saying that the cross between Chinese and Filipinos produces progeny superior to the Filipinos. It must be remembered that it is not a very wide cross, the Malayans, who include most of the Filipinos, being closely related to the Chinese.

It appears that even a small infusion of Chinese blood may produce long-continued favorable results, if the case of the Ilocanos is correctly described. This tribe, in Northern Luzon, furnishes perhaps the most industrious workers of any tribe in the islands; foremen and overseers of Filipinos are quite commonly found to be Ilocanos, while the members of the tribe are credited with accomplishing more steady work than any other element of the population. The current explanation of this is that they are Chinese mestizos: their coast was constantly exposed the raids of Chinese pirates, a certain number of whom settled there and took Ilocano women as wives. From these unions, the whole tribe in the course of time is thought to have benefited.37

The history of the Chinese in the Philippines fails to corroborate the idea that he never loses his racial identity. It must be borne in mind that nearly all the Chinese in the United States are of the lowest working class, and from the vicinity of Canton; while those in the Philippines are of a higher class, and largely from the neighborhood of Amoy. They have usually married Filipino women of good families, so their offspring had exceptional advantages, and stand high in the estimation of the community. The requirement of the Spanish government was that a Chinese must embrace Christianity and become a citizen, before he could marry a Filipino. Usually he assumed his wife's name, so the children were brought

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