HARVARD Magazine May-June 1981 FACING PAGE: The first leaves of spring appear on Mill Street, which divides Volume 83, Number 5 Lowell House from John Winthrop House. Lowell's lesser tower is at left. The photograph is by Michael Nagy. ROUNDTABLE --------------------- Essays: The oilman cometh. The scars that remain. Last words. 4 The Science Watch: William Bennett on new cancer research. 16 Letters: The eclipse of 1780, nonsense DNA, Harvard on the edge. 19. ARTICLES ----------------------- PRESIDENT'S REPORT Business and the academy 23 A re-examination of the use and abuse of professorial talent. By Derek C. Bok. AMERICAN The manongs of California 36 CIVILIZATION Migrant farm workers from the Philippines reaped discrimination and poverty in America. By Peter W. Stanley, with photographs by Bill Ravanesi. LITERATURE Historian of the present 47 Daniel Aaron has a massive editing project in hand-' 'the most completely frank, revealing diary in all of American history." By George Howe Colt. EDUCATION "Taking blocks out of women's paths" 54 At Radcliffe's Bunting Institute, founded two decades ago, the scholarly enterprise has many faces. Written and photographed by Georgia Litwack. VITA Joan of Arc 59 A brief life of the virgin warrior (1412-1431) on the 550th anniversary of her martyrdom. By Deborah Fraioli. PHOTOGRAPHY Manufacturing, marketing, and modernism 60 Harvard's photographic archives document a hidden aesthetic from the Industrial Revolution. Fifteenth in a series by Christopher S. Johnson. DISCOVERY The senses are for survival 64A We may be oblivious to many, but a host of sensory cues allow living beings to cope with their environment. By Lorus J. Milne and Margery Milne. (DISCOVERY is bound in to subscribers' and donors' copies only.) POETRY-----------------------­ By Lloyd Schwartz, Richard Eberhart, Jenny Joseph, Robert Dana, Robert Bly. Pages 9, 10, 12, 18,53. DEPARTMENTS This issue 4 ... Chapter and verse 13 ... Puzzle 20 ... Extra credit 64 ... Classified 65 ... Any questions? 72 Cover photograph by Bill Ravanesi. Other picture credits, page 22. MAy-JUNE 1981 3 ew international relationships of pines an economic and strategic liabil­ the twentieth century have been ity, Congress moved quickly to rid itself F as poignant as that between the of the burden. The Tydings-McDuffie United States and the Philippines. Hav­ Act of 1934 established an internally ing traded extensively in the archipel­ autonomous Philippine Co'mmon­ ago in the nineteenth century, ruled it wealth, promised independence within from 1899 to 1946, and supported its a decade, and took steps to reduce the government economically and strate­ competition of Philippine agricultural gically since then, the United States has exports and Filipino immigrants in the been the most important outside influ­ American t;:conomy. Themanongs ence on Philippine life. The enormous Few have suffered more from Amer­ disparity between the wealth and power ica's indifference to the Philippines than of the two peoples, along with the rel­ the Filipinos who migrated to the United of California atively libertarian character of u.s. rule State~. As "American nationals"-their in the islands, dazzled many Filipinos status until the 1934 act reclassified and drew them toward a deferential them ~s aliens-Filipinos could migrate Tens ofthousands ofFilipino friendship for Americans. Filipinos be­ freely to this country, but could not men immigrated to the United came, in the condescending but kindly become citizens. Fired by the images States during the 1920s and intentioned words of William Howard of wealth, progress, and freedom in early 1930s, seeking a better Taft, our "little brown brothers," and their American-designed textbooks and life as farm laborers. Taken for have remained more or less in that re­ enticed by labor contractors for Ha­ lationship ever since. Japanese schol­ waiian and Californian agricultural in­ granted, victimized, they ars, preparing for their country's oc­ terests, tens of thousands came here in quickly sank almost to the cupation of the archipelago in World the 1920s and early 1930s, seeking a bottom of American society. War II, noted a psychological depen­ better life. By 1930 more than l08,OOO But they survived. Now old dence upon America among Filipinos, lived here. "Birds of passage," as men, alone together, they call a phenomenon that modern intellectuals Americans called them,· they were in the islands denounce as "bination­ mostly young Ilocanos-residents of themselves manongs-older alism." Even now, though American the northwestern part of the island of brothers. naval and air bases have become flash Luzon-hoping to make enough money points for Filipinos' n~tionalism, most to support and eventually rejoin families still regard the United States affection­ they had left behind. The idea was to ately as the historical source of schools, return home after a few years, buy land, roads, public-health programs, artesian and finish life as a small freeholding by Peter w. Smoley wells, democratic political institutions, farmer. American employers, .finding and' the most gregariously informal, transient laborers cheaper and less likely backslapping imperialist rulers known to unionize, encouraged this aspiration. to history. In Hawaii, the standard labor contract Ironically, however, the Philippines for Filipinos actually guaranteed return and the Filipinos have never attracted passage after completion of an agreed comparable interest or devotion from amount of work. Americans. Like a small spot on the Although Filipinos proved to be ex­ periphery of our vision, they have been cellent tann laborers, they quickly fell hard to see clearly, and therefore easy victim to a variety of forces beyond to take for granted. This has be,en so their control and sank almost to the from.the very beginning. President Wil­ bottom of American society. Succes­ liam McKinley, who ordered Hit: an­ sors to the Chinese and Japanese farm­ nexation of the islands following workers of the past, and forerunners of Dewey's famous victory in 'Ma~ila Bay, the Mexican migrant workers of today, said that he could not have gue~sep t~eir the Filipinos harvested mainly poverty actual location within two thousand and discrimination. Although American miles! Then as now, China and'Japan wages were high by Philippine stan­ were our principal interests in Asi'l; and dards, so was the cost of living. During even as an American colony, the Phil­ the mid 1920s, the going wage in Hawaii ippines seemed to many little rrior~ than was $2.25 a day; in California, it was a 'cluster of "island stepping stones" 'off less than twenty cents an hour. Obli­ the coast of China. Such good works gations to family, perhaps the d.eepest as the American-instituted pUblic-school social value for Filipinos, required that system, celebrated to this day'by I'ili­ some of this be sent home to the Phil­ pinos, were all P'lid for by Philippine ippines. Even with primitive housing taxes. And when, during the' Great anq Some other benefits thrown in, daily Depression, American protectioni§ts expenses took most of the rest. Unable and isolationists branqed the' ~hil!p- (continued on page 44) 36 HARVARD MAGAZINE "Through them we may at last see Filipinos as they saw themselves ..." Photographs by Bill Ravanesi. MAY-JUNE 1981 37 38 HARVARD MAGAZINE MAY-JUNE 1981 39 1'·i L 40 HARVARD MAGAZINE MAY-JUNE 1981 41 42 HARVARD MAGAZINE MAy-JUNE 1981 43 PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT © 1981. BILL RAVANESI THE MANONGS in 1934, they tempor~rily lost even their (continued from page 36) right to public assistance, a major con­ cern during the Depression. To add in­ to accumulate the savings they had once sult to injury, a 1940 ruling by the fed­ dreamed of, the workers faced the hu­ eral government required all Filipino miliating choice of returning home as residents of the country to register and failures or resigning themselves to a life­ be fingerprinted, even though their time of poverty in America. homeland was still American territory. Those who stayed faced social and Many found, moreover, that laws and legal constraints at least as painful as official regulations were the least of their economic plight. Ineligible for cit­ their problems. Ever since the Louisi­ izenship and therefore unable to protect ana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis their interests at the ballot box, Filipi­ in 1904, to which the American govern­ nos were forbidden by various state ment of the Philippines sent an ethno­ laws to own land, marry white women, graphic exhibit of primitive tribesmen, or enter certain professions. (These many Americans had thought of Fili­ laws lasted, in most cases, until the pinos as dog-eating savages. This, plus 1940s.) After their designation as aliens their racial difference from most Amer- 44 HARVARD MAGAZINE icans, intensified and emotionalized op­ of most of the agricultural workers was manongs (older brothers). At the time, position to Filipinos' immigration. Even a major obstacle. Typically, the men they were making a little over a dollar in the mid Twenties, when their labor would work as waiters, bellmen, do­ an hour, plus five cents per box, in the was greatly needed in the fields of mestic servants, and the like in West grape fields. They wanted a union to Hawaii and California, Filipinos were Coast cities during the winter, and then better their wages, and to support and denounced for stealing American jobs set out in March to follow the crops or protect them when they would no longer and reducing the standard of living of head for Alaska's canneries. Though be able to work. Their answer was to American workers. The American Fed­ some with luck or special skills made organize the Agricultural Workers Or­ eration of Labor demanded a 'ban on a success of this, others remained mired ganizing Committee, in 1959.