History of Philippine press / Carson Taylor.

.1- STUN^
seco 5Ac'T s! - I '- JS INTRODUCTION
It is a pleasure to contribute a prefatory comment on
the excellent and painstaking brochure Mr. Carson Taylor
has prepared on newspapers in the Philippines. The universal use of the Arabic characters by twelve million people
in the Far East, and the existence of this foundation for
the establishment of English as a universal medium throughout the leading archipelago of the world, is not something
that merely happened. It is, on the contrary, one of Spain's
principal achievements here in the extreme Orient; and it
exhibits the quality of endurance, like so much of Spain's
work does. The Arabic character upon movable type
reached Japan and India, at Nagasaki and Goa, before they
reached the Philippines; and were brought to those places,
as they were to the Philippines, by Catholic missionaries.
But there they fell into disuse, shared the eclipse of the
mission work; while in the Philippines, under the Lions
and Towers of Spain, no eclipse occurred. Instead, there
was, as there continues to be, the light of a civilization
more and more luminous.
Before the close of the sixteenth century, the torch of
learning had been lighted in academies and at least one
higher school soon converted by royal decree into an endowed university. All that Spain herself saw, was given
freely for others to see. With the establishment of a daily
press under the rule of free speech, a broader and deeper
effulgence merely fell upon what had already been illumined
by the press of the missions.
There is reason to believe that the first printing done
in the Philippines was in the sixteenth century, the work
of the Augustinians, who, having accompanied Legaspi to
Cebu in 1565, were therefore the first Order in the Islands.
But no examples of these early works exist. They were,
of course, religious publications and possibly texts upon the
native languages.
Upon existing records, the introduction of printing is,
however, dated somewhat later. It is credited to the Dominicans and two of their early converts, a Chinese merchant
by name of Juan de Vera-his baptismal name, of courseand a Filipino, Tomas Pinpin. Calle T. Pinpin, in the
downtown Manila district, has been named in memory of
this first Filipino printer, while his monument stands on
Plaza Cervantes, not far from the spot where he worked
in the Dominican printshop. The famous shop was on Calle