Editing Manuel L. Quezon (section)

===={{anchor|Agrarian reform}}Land reform====
{{See also|Land reform in the Philippines}}

When the commonwealth government was established, Quezon implemented the Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933 to regulate share-tenancy contracts by establishing minimum standards.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010">{{cite book |last1=Manapat |first1=Carlos L. |title=Economics, Taxation, and Agrarian Reform |date=2010 |publisher=C & E Publishing, Incorporated |isbn=978-971-584-989-0 |url={{GBurl|id=XO27swEACAAJ}} |language=en |access-date=4 April 2023 }}</ref><ref name="ChanRobles-Act4054">{{Cite web |title=Act No. 4054 |url=http://www.chanrobles.com/acts/actsno4054.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180123102708/http://www.chanrobles.com/acts/actsno4054.html |archive-date=23 January 2018 |access-date=25 March 2019 |website=Chan Robles Virtual Law Library}}</ref> The act provided a better tenant-landlord relationship, a 50–50 sharing of the crop, regulation of interest at 10 percent per agricultural year, and protected against arbitrary dismissal by the landlord.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> Because of a major flaw in the act, however, no petition to apply it was ever presented.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" />

The flaw was that it could be used only when the majority of [[Sangguniang Bayan|municipal councils]] in a province petitioned for it.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> Since landowners usually controlled such councils, no province ever asked that the law be applied. Quezon ordered that the act be mandatory in all [[Central Luzon]] provinces.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> However, contracts were good for only one year; by refusing to renew their contract, landlords could eject tenants. Peasant organizations clamored in vain for a law which would make a contract automatically renewable as long as tenants fulfilled their obligations.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> The act was amended to eliminate this loophole in 1936, but it was never carried out; by 1939, thousands of peasants in Central Luzon were threatened with eviction.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> Quezon's desire to placate both landlords and tenants pleased neither. Thousands of tenants in Central Luzon were evicted from their farmlands by the early 1940s, and the rural conflict was more acute than ever.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" />

During the Commonwealth period, agrarian problems persisted.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" /> This motivated the government to incorporate a social-justice principle into the [[Constitution of the Philippines#The 1935 Constitution|1935 Constitution]]. Dictated by the government's social-justice program, expropriation of estates and other landholdings began. The National Land Settlement Administration (NLSA) began an orderly settlement of public agricultural lands. At the outbreak of the Second World War, settlement areas covering over {{convert|65,000|ha|sqmi}} had been established.<ref name="Manapat, Carlos 2010" />