Adroit Address

The outstanding feature of the opening address of Governor-General Henry L. Stimson to the Philippine Legislature, published last week by the U. S. War Department, was a long quotation from a survey-report of the Islands by Vice President Lyman P. Hammond of the Electric Bond & Share Co. (part of the so-called U. S. "Power Trust"). The Stimson-Hammond point: Let the Filipinos revise their land and corporation laws so as to permit the introduction of U. S. capital and management. Contrary to custom, even the brashest U. S. liberals were slow to cry "Wall Street" on this occasion. Reason: Statesman Stimson adroitly emphasized the truism that political independence which Filipinos so crave is nowadays synonymous with economic independence.

Leader Sergio Osmena of the Philippine Senate, long an agitator for Island independence and an old-time opponent of "foreign" capital in the Philippines, applauded the Stimson document; said that the law changes suggested should not be difficult to effect. This was good news to such outreaching U. S. interests as the Firestones of Ohio (rubber) and doubtless Surveyor Hammond's Electric Bond & Share Co.