The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

MORAL REFORMS

403

one tenth of the improved land. They wanted their subjects
to work during week days and to come into the poblacion to
early mass on Sunday morning, and spend the remainder of the
day at the cockpit, gambling away all the money they had;
getting themselves deeper into debt to the Spanish overlords.
Nothing has done more to foster the habit of improvidence
among the Filipino people than this vice.
The Protestant churches have waged incessant warfare on
the cockpit. The public schools have been equally effective with
their ridicule, though they have not been so open in their attacks. The young generation is ashamed of the cockpit and
determined to abolish it at the earliest possible moment. Each
year a bill, with this as its object, is presented in one or the
other of the Houses of the Legislature, and only the fear of
the old generation of voters prevents its passage. It is significant that the framers of these bills for the past few years
have been Protestants. Camilo Osias, while assistant director
of education, wrote a masterly article against the cockpit which
was published in Ilocano under the auspices of the National
Civic League, of which Mr. Osias was President. Mr. Osias
shows that the cockpit robs men of their money, and thus
tempts them to steal. Many a thief confesses that the cockpit was his undoing. Lying among cock-fighters is the rule
rather than the exception. Laziness, poverty, and neglect of
families follow in the wake of this vice. Tuberculosis and
other diseases are spread in the cockpit, for hundreds of men
expectorate on the ground and then raise a dust as they crowd
about the pit in which the roosters are fighting. The sabbath
is desecrated; religion is flouted; men's hearts grow hard from
making merry over suffering; brutality, family quarrels, and
misery are unfailing attendants of the cockpit. It is the enemy
of education and by education it will be destroyed.
Gambling is not by any means confined to the cockpit, but is
almost equally common with cards, dominoes, billiards, "juiting" (a Chinese form of lottery), horse-racing and various
other games, European, Filipino, and Chinese. The laws regarding these forms of gambling are as absurd and chaotic
as they are regarding the cockpit. One may play only one