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.

254 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

create a serious problem for the department of Commerce and
Communications. Not being humanely possible to be carried
out at the same time all plans for improvement it does not
matter how excellent and beneficial they might be, we find
ourselves constrained to go to places.
This on one side. On the other are also the contingencies
and vicissitudes which accompany each election with the consequent change of senator or representative and other elective
officials. It thus occurs that when the actual legislator is a
son or resident of the northern part of a district or a province,
all his recommendations tend to the improvement of that part;
but if in the next election brings out a man from the southern
part the most natural thing is for his efforts to tend again to
concentrate on the improvement of that section where he belongs; and if to this fact we add the wishes of the provincial
governor and those of the board who might have come from
different regions, we have as a necessary sequel an infinity of
projects'which would be begun and worked out during the three
succeeding years without finishing in many occasions those that
were initiated by their predecessors. And thus we go on having a kind of continuous rotation in the whole archipelago
without finishing a single unit, a cycle-let us call it-of a
general system of roads and ways of communication for all
the country.
In support of what I say you may see the statistics about
improvements from the funds commonly called the "pork barrel" for the last four years, that is, from 1927 to 1930,
inclusive.
In accordance with these data during that period there was
approved by the Legislature one hundred sixty highway projects in different parts of the Archipelago with the budget of
P32,069,205. In fact the work was undertaken, but as the
assigned funds each year were not sufficient to finish it, the
great majority of the work was abandoned with the consequent
loss of money already invested in it.