Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1920 — POLYGAMY IS DROPPED [ARTICLE]

POLYGAMY IS DROPPED

Giris in the Philippines Are Abandoning Old Ideas. Uplift Through Education and Association With Christians Affecting Even Sultan of Sulu's Domains. Manila, P. I. —Practice of polygamy in the Philippine Islands Is being reduced through education of girls of the leading families of the outlying provinces, according to Frank W. Carpenter, retiring governor of the department of Mindanao and Sulu. Mr. Carpenter Is here to turn over administration of his office to the secretary of the Interior, who will act through the bureau of non-Chrlstlan tribes, in accordance with a new territorial law. This law leaves in effect a treaty under which the sultan of Sulu renounced all pretensions to temporal sovereignty, but gained recognition as ecclesiastical head of the Mohammedan church In the Sulu archipelago. The treaty guarantees to the sultan and his people “the same religious freedom had by all adherents of all other religious creeds, the practice of which is not in violation of the basic principles of the laws of the United States.” “It is Important to note,” said Carpenter in one of his messages written as governor, “that this includes a limitation as to religious practice which necessarily includes the abandonment of polygamy. “An effort to Impose upon the people of the sultan at this time the invalidation of polygamous marriages

heretofore contracted, the prohibition at this time of polygamy or the discontinuance of divorce, must unavoidably result in the active resistance of a people Imbued with fanatic determination to die rather than submit to a privation of their religious liberty in matters they believe to be fundamental and sanctioned by divine authority.” Mr. Carpenter said that girls of prominent families in Mindanao and Sulu are being sent to Manila public schools where they associate with Christian girls and gradually become imbued with the monogamous ideas held by the Christians. When they return to their own people their influence tends to eliminate plural marriages, according to Carpenter, who predicted that the practice will be virtually wiped out in the course of a few years.