many other government corporations and agencies. He also served as a brigadier general in the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), was a recognized guerrilla leader and military leader of the Philippine Commonwealth Army. Roxas became one of the leaders of the Nacionalista Party, which was dominated by the hacendado class who owned the vast hacienda estates that made up most of the cultivated land in the Philippines. The same hacendado elite who dominated the Philippines under Spanish rule continued to be the dominant social element under American rule. Roxas himself was a hacendado, who had used his wealth to further his political ambitions. The politics of the Philippines were characterized by a clientistic system under which politicians would use their offices to create patronage networks, and personal differences between politicians were far greater than any ideological differences. With the Great Depression, the Philippines started to be seen as a liability in the United States as demands were made to end Filipino immigration to the United States and end the tariff free importation of Filipino agriculture into the American market as many American farmers complained they could not compete with Filipino farmers. To end Filipino immigration and access to the American market, many U.S. congressional leaders favored granting immediate independence to the Philippines. At the same time that the U.S. Congress was debating granting independence to the Philippines, many Filipino leaders were worried by the increasing assertive claims being made by Japan that all of East Asia was its sphere of influence. In a role reversal, it was the Filipinos who were opposed to immediate independence, which was proposed in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill being debated within the halls of Congress. In early 1930, Roxas flew to the United States with Sergio Osmeña to lobby the U.S. Congress to go slow on the granting of independence in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Bill. Aside from the fear of Japan, many Filipinos were deeply worried about the plans to impose heavy tariffs on Filipino agriculture after independence, which provided another reason to go slowly with independence. In Washington, Roxas lobbied U.S. government leaders such as Secretary of State Henry Stimson and Secretary of War Patrick Hurley. Roxas testified before the U.S. Congress that he favored Philippine independence, saying the Filipinos had fulfilled the "stable government" provision of the Jones Act of 1916, which mandated that independence be granted when Filipinos proved that