Dean Conant Worcester

American zoologist and ornithologist

Dean Conant Worcester
Philippine Secretary of the Interior
In office 1901–1913
Appointed by	William Howard Taft
Preceded by	Severino de las Alas
Succeeded by	Winfred T. Denison
Personal details
Born	(1866-10-01)October 1, 1866 Public official Businessman
Institutions	University of Michigan, Philippine Insular Government
Notes
Dean C. Worcester Papers at University of Michigan

Dean Conant Worcester, D.Sc.,

FRGS (October 1, 1866 – May 2, 1924) was an American zoologist, public official, and authority on the Philippines. He was born at Thetford, Vermont, and educated at the University of Michigan (A.B., 1889). Worcester's involvement with the Philippines began in 1887 when he joined a scientific expedition to the region as a junior member. This experience laid the groundwork for his controversial career in the early American colonial government, which commenced in 1899. He held firm beliefs in the colonial mission and vehemently opposed Philippine independence.^[1] Worcester's influence extended as he served as the Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands until 1913. Afterward, he shifted his focus to business endeavors, particularly in coconut farming and processing, cattle raising, and maritime shipping lines. He died in the Philippines, leaving behind a legacy of both public service and entrepreneurial success.^[2]

Early life and education

Joseph B. Steere (bottom row center) and his students including Worcester (top, 2nd from left) prior to their 1887 Philippine expedition

Dean Conant Worcester was born 1 October 1866 in Thetford, Vermont to Ezra Carter Worcester (1816-1887) and Ellen Hunt (Conant) Worcester (1826–1902), the youngest of nine children. He attended public schools in Vermont. He attended high school in Newton, Massachusetts.^[3]

Worcester entered the University of Michigan in October 1884, and he was part of the 1887–1888 zoological expedition to the Philippines organized by Joseph Beal Steere in which they collected over 300 zoological specimens, of which 53 were deemed new to science. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1889.^[2] Shortly thereafter in September 1890, Worcester and fellow zoologist Frank Swift Bourns returned to the Philippines on a two-year zoological expedition funded by Louis F. Menage, a wealthy Minneapolis businessman who was the major benefactor of the Minnesota Academy of Natural Sciences.^[4][5]

Public service in the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands

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When the Spanish–American War broke out in 1898, Worcester was very quick to capitalize on his first-hand knowledge of the Philippines by engaging in public lectures and establishing himself as a leading authority on the country with the October 1898 publication of his Philippine Islands and their People.^[2] Worcester was an avid photographer during his time in the Philippines and his published photographs had a profound influence in shaping public opinion in the United States about the "exotic" Filipinos.^[6]

On 20 January 1899, Worcester was appointed by President

On October 30, 1908, El Renacimiento, a daily newspaper in Spanish, published an editorial written by Fidel A. Reyes (1878–1967), its city editor, titled "Aves de Rapiña" ("Birds of Prey"), which denounced an American official for using his office to exploit the resources of the country for his personal gains.^[11] The article dealt with corruption in the colonial government.^[12] Worcester was alleged to have used his anthropological research to seek out gold in Benguet and exploit untapped natural resources in Mindoro and Mindanao. He was also alleged to have profited from the illegal sale of diseased cattle meat and from the sale of overpriced land concessions on government property.^[13]

According to historian Ambeth Ocampo, Worcester objected to "insinuation(s) that he was like a rapacious eagle that plundered his fellow men. He was offended by the line that said he had: 'the characteristics of the vulture, the owl and the vampire.'"^[13] Although the editorial did not mention names, Worcester felt that he was the public official referred to and filed a libel case against Reyes, as well as editor Teodoro Kalaw and publisher Martin Ocampo, among several others.

The lower court sentenced Ocampo to six months imprisonment and a fine of ₱2,000 and Kalaw to twelve months imprisonment and ₱3,000 fine and a verdict for moral and punitive damages for ₱25,000. The defendants appealed to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which affirmed the decision of the lower court^[14] and to the Supreme Court of the United States, which sustained the decision of the Philippine tribunals.^[15]

Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison pardoned Ocampo and Kalaw in 1914 after Worcester left public office in September 1913.^[2] Nevertheless, the fines forced El Renacimiento to shut down.^[12]

Post-government and business career

In 1911, while serving as Secretary of the Interior, Worcester published a monograph Coconut Growing in the Philippine Islands in which he analysed the farming technology and economics of plantation culture of coconuts for production of copra and oil.^[16] By 1914, this publication had become a standard reference for investors interested in coconut products, and the passage of the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act (1909) and the opening of the Panama Canal (1914) made for a favorable economic climate for importation of Philippine products, including coconut oil, to the industrial centers of the East Coast of the United States. Beginning in 1908, in his capacity as Secretary of Interior, Worcester acquired large tracts of lands in Bukidnon for the use by large-scale agribusinesses. After resignation from public service, he became more involved in the operations of the American-Philippine Company (AMPHILCO) and its three subsidiaries in which he was an investor: the Insular Transportation Company, the Bukidnon Plantation Company and the Visayan Refining Company. Considerable American investments were being made in these companies.^[2]

Despite Worcester's resignation from public office, Worcester remained as a focus of Filipino animosity largely for his unfavorable depiction of Filipinos in The Philippine Islands and Their People and his high-profile public opposition of the 1912 and 1914 "Jones Bills" that were eventually passed by the United States Congress as the Jones Act of 1916 that restructured the Insular Government and began a process for full Philippine independence. On 24 July 1915, a popular protest broke out in Cebu in which Worcester was denounced as the coconut agribusiness company manager, demanding his replacement. And in early 1916, Philippine nationalist Maximo M. Kalaw wrote an editorial in the Cebu newspaper El Precursor titled "Mr. Worcester and the Filipinos must part forever" in which he asserted that the Cebu protests were like the protests against George III if early Americans were presented to the British public as mostly Indian savages that were incapable of self-government.^[17] At issue according to Kalaw was that Worcester had published in 1914 The Philippines Past and Present in which he again used the power of his photography to depict "primitive" Filipinos juxtaposed with photos of the modern infrastructure brought by the Americans, particularly during his own tenure as Secretary of the Interior. But the protests against Worcester subsided in late 1916 once the Jones Act was passed into law and the coconut oil exports were beginning to substantially fuel the local economy in Cebu.^[2] Historians Rodney J. Sullivan and Michael Culinane have both pointed out that this later muted response toward American businesses in Cebu was largely because some of the leading families such as the Osmeñas and the Kalaws themselves were major beneficiaries of the economic development brought by Worcester and the other Americans.^[2][18]

In 1914, Worcester also had become involved in the cattle ranching operations at the Diklum Ranch (another subsidiary of AMPHILCO), a 10,000 hectare tract of grasslands on the Bukidnon Plateau in

Further reading

• Worcester, Dean C. (1898). The Philippine Islands and their People. New York.
• Rice, Mark (2014). Dean Worcester's Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film, and the Colonial Philippines. University of Michigan Press.
  ISBN 978-0-472-05218-9
  .

External links

Wikisource has the text of The New Student's Reference Work article about "Dean Conant Worcester".

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dean Conant Worcester.

• Works by Dean Conant Worcester at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Dean Conant Worcester at Internet Archive
• American-Philippine Relations: A Guide to the Resources in the Michigan Historical Collections (Article with Dean Conant Worcester) by Thomas Powers
• Dean C, Worcester Collection of Philippine Photographs at Newberry Library
• Dean Conant Worcester at Find a Grave
• "Worcester, Dean Conant" .
  New International Encyclopedia
  . 1905.