So many were the problems to be met and dealt with that in the beginning the Commissioners were each given a set of subjects for investigation and study, their findings being submitted for debate and consideration in the general meetings.

Taxation, civil service, provincial and municipal organisations, currency and finance, police, harbour improvements, roads and railways, customs, postal service, education, health, public lands, an honest judiciary and the revision of the code of laws; these were some of the vital problems, but underlying them all was the immediate necessity for the establishment of tranquillity and confidence throughout the archipelago.

In order to make clear, in any degree, the Philippine situation as we found it, it is essential that, briefly, the position of the Catholic Church and its representatives, the Friars, be explained. For the first time in its history the American government found itself compelled to adjust a seemingly insurmountable difficulty between a church and its people.

With us the Church is so completely separate from the State that it is difficult to imagine cases in which the policy of a church in the selection of its ministers, and the assignment of them to duty could be regarded as of political moment, or as a proper subject of comment in the report of a public officer, but in the first reports of the Philippine Commission to Washington this subject had to be introduced with emphasis.