Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

ECONOMIC SECTION

81

pass through the period of test resulting from our emancipation, a test which will aggravate the unfortunate coincidence
of the restrictions to be placed on our market in America with
the superabundance of tropical products throughout the world.
The period of readjustment would exact of the Filipino
people not the momentary, sporadic, and supreme heroism that
characterizes the sacrifice of life in a battle or of the immediate
surrender of an entire fortune, but of another type of heroism,
more difficult-the slow, sustained, and constant heroism of
every day, of every year, which recognizes no discouragement,
vacillation, or retrogression, and that never forgets that in a
world like ours where struggle for existence has reached the
highly competitive degree now existing, the strong and the
active survive at the cost of the weak and the indolent.
It has been said that it is easier to know how to be rich
than to become rich, and paraphrasing this phrase, we %ould
say that the efforts necessary to preserve 'our freedom will be
greater than the work devoted to its acquisition. Such has
been the history of all subject peoples who have attained their
emancipation, and such will also be our own without any
doubt. The best patriotic work which the delegates to this
Congress can perform is to disseminate among the Filipino
people the idea of the unavoidable necessity of a constant
effort, of constant individual and collective sacrifice and abnegation, of the idea of overcoming that tendency so natural and
so human of "following the line of least resistance" and
awaiting the time when negotiations and taxes will provide
for all of the national needs. In economics as well as in
medicine, there are no panaceas. Tax systems, customs duties.
tariffs, may, at the most, accelerate or retard the rhythm of the
economic life of a country, but they can not propel it. At
the bottom of every type of human production is the intelligence and the work of man, and over and above all the
devices, all the taxes, all the systems, a country that merely
basks in the sunshine of its dreams, will be unprogressive and
poor; in the same way, that in the face of all obstacles and
of all difficulties, a people that studies and works is destined
unquestionably to become prosperous and great.