Manila hemp

“ Manila hemp never fails of a market, particularly in the United States, where it is most largely used. No other fibre known is so valuable for cordage, and the production might be greatly increased without overstocking the market. ”

“ The Philippine people are absolutely one people, as to race, color, and previous condition. Again, American sugar and tobacco interests will never permit the competitive Philippine sugar and tobacco industries to grow as Nature and Nature’s God intended; and the American importers of Manila hemp—which is to the Philippines what cotton is to the South—have, through special Congressional legislation still standing on our statute books—to the shame of the nation—so depressed the hemp industry of the islands that the market price it brings to-day is just one half what it brought ten years ago. ”

“ Fortunately for the Filipinos, “Manila hemp” being a speciality of this region as a fibre of unrivalled quality and utility, there cannot be foreseen any difficulty in obtaining a price for it which will compensate the producer to-day as well as it did in former times. Seeing that buffaloes can be dispensed with in the cultivation of hemp and coprah, which, moreover, are products requiring no expensive and complicated machinery and are free of duty into the United States, they are becoming the favourite crops of the future. ”

“ The manila hemp, or abacá plant, is a nearer cousin of the banana palm. You [24] cannot make a sail or tie up a bag of potatoes, without using our manila hemp, or abacá. It is the strongest fiber known; it does not weaken in water. The great hawsers that are used to pull the great ships, are made out of it. ”

“ This method is very unlike that employed in the Philippines, and the natives of the islands need have no fear of Indian competition under such conditions. The fibre will not bear the pressure of cylinders without damage in color, while the soaking of the stems is sure to weaken it. The experiments in India failed to distinguish between the Indian hemp and Manila hemp plants, which belong to different families, and require radically different treatment. ”

“ The foregoing unmasks, in all its contemptible falsehood, the pretence that the presence of a few wild tribes in the Philippines is a reason for withholding independence from 7,000,000 of Christian people in order that a greedy little set of American importers of Manila hemp may fatten thereon. True, hemp is not edible, but it is convertible into edibles—and also into campaign funds. ”

“ The Philippines have a monopoly of this very important plant, as it has never been successfully cultivated elsewhere. So it will be seen at the start that the user of Manila hemp is dependent entirely upon our foreign possessions in the far East for his supply. Like most monopolists, the Filipino is not particularly susceptible to the wishes of his customers, and the procuring of hemp produced and prepared in the way to make it most valuable for rope-making is attended with some difficulty. ”

“ Tobacco—The Manila cigar.—The Manila cigar is just as well known to the world as the Manila hemp. It is among the few manufacturing enterprises that have developed factory conditions in the Islands.
History For generations the Spaniards conducted the tobacco business in the Philippines on the basis of Government monopoly. The monopoly came to an end in 1882 when the Filipino workers defied both the Spanish government and those directing the work in the factories because of the harsh and cruel treatment they were getting. ”

“ Many native men and women and numbers of Chinese coolies are employed in Manila, Ilo-ilo, and Cebú in preparing produce for shipment.
The hemp used to come up from the provinces loose or merely twisted into rolls to be pressed into bales at the shipping ports, but of late years several presses have been erected at the hemp ports in Southern Luzon and on the smaller islands. ”

“ There are only two important tropic products imported into the United States that are not already largely produced on this continent. They are Manila hemp and tea, and it would appear that the reason they come from the East is because of present labor conditions there. Manila hemp is a sort of half-wild product that may yet have an introduction to our rich tropics just as the potato was introduced into Europe, and many of our crops have been introduced from Europe. Even the tea plant thrives in the warm regions of America as far north as Tennessee. ”

“ Peculiar to the Philippines.The great profit which the Manila hemp has yielded in the few years since its production, however, has given encouragement to still further experiments; so that, indeed, it will shortly be shown whether the cultivation of abacá is to be confined to its present limited area, while the edible species of banana has spread itself over the whole surface of the earth within the tropics. On the volcanic mountains of Western Java a species of the Musaceae grows in great luxuriance. ”

“ It is indeed curious that a city of a third of a million people—capital of a group of islands as large as New England, New York, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, which have long furnished the whole world with its entire supply of Manila hemp, which have exported some 160,000 tons of sugar in a single year and which to-day produce as excellent tobacco as that coming from the West Indies—it is curious, I say, that a city of this size should have gone so long unnoticed and misspelt. ”

“ The most important manufactures are the products of the tobacco works. The largest tobacco factory in Manila has over 10,000 employees. Most of the natives smoke home-made cigars, and over 150,000,000 cigars are annually exported. The leaf is cured and manufactured by means of modern machinery, many of the cigarette machines are worked by steam, and Manila is the chief centre of all tobacco products. Fabrics of Manila hemp, wool, cotton, silk, and piña fibre are woven on hand looms ”

“ The export trade has always been insignificant, as [197] compared with European countries. In 1889 it aggregated $165,903; in 1897 it was only $94,567. During the same period the exports of Spain to the islands increased from $890,000 to $7,972,583. These were principally cotton fabrics. The exports from the United States embraced mineral oil, bread stuffs, cotton goods, chemicals, iron and steel goods. Of the imports, the most important were Manila hemp and sugar; other imports include cigars, tobacco, woods, hides, shells, indigo, and coffee. ”

“ There are still thousands of acres suitable for its culture in the Philippines, but the extraction of the fiber awaits some inventive genius who will make a machine for that purpose. Many have tried, but so far the primitive scratching out by natives is the only method in use and it is admitted that it wastes nearly one-third of the fiber. The so-called Manila or brown paper is often made from old and worn-out ropes of Manila hemp, but, as in the case of cordage itself, adulteration with cheaper fibers is common. ”

“ After the pulpy leaves are stripped from the stalk, the pulp is squeezed out of them and the fibres are left in the sun to dry. The best fibre is as soft and fine as silk. Some of it is used in making a fine cloth; the coarser fibre is used for rope and hawsers. More than fifteen million dollars worth of Manila hemp is sold yearly.
In the treaty with Spain, by which Uncle Sam acquired the islands, twenty million dollars was paid to Spain. But the exports from the Philippines have averaged nearly thirty million dollars a year ever since. ”

“ Luzon provides 1⁄10th, and Cuba 1⁄12th of the entire production of tobacco on the earth, which amounts to 4,000,000 cwt. [96] There are indeed two countries which produce a far 321larger quantity of tobacco than either Luzon or Cuba, [97] but in no other country does the tobacco leaf attain such superior quality, owing to favourable climate and congenial soil, as in the Spanish possessions already named.
Another chief product of the Philippines, which first found its way into the markets of the world from these islands, is what is called Manila hemp. ”

“ The fiber of these plants is utilized in some coarse manufactures. The maguey, or Agave, is used in the manufacture of fine roping. Manila hemp is made from a species. The species whose dried stalks are used by the woodpeckers for their winter storage was cultivated at Key West, Florida, during several years before 1858. ”

“ Chief among these are of course Manila hemp and tobacco. These were followed by sugar and coffee culture, the latter plant enriching the province of Batangas, while the planting of [260] new cocoanut groves yearly made of greater importance the yield of that excellent product, copra. These rich merchandises had entered very little into commerce during the early decades of the century.
Increase in Exports.—In 1810 the entire imports of the Philippines amounted in value to 5,329,000 dollars, but more than half of this consisted of silver sent from Mexico. ”

“ The land is the mainstay of the Philippines, and farming is the native occupation. Manufacture is a diversion to which the natives do not take kindly. The only industrial art that has made any progress is the rolling of tobacco into cigars and cigarettes. Many thousands of people are engaged in this occupation at Manila, but, otherwise, manufacture is almost at a standstill. A little cordage is made; some straw or split-bamboo hats are fashioned and shipped; in some provinces split-cane and Neto hats and straw mats are made. Iloilo yields a rough cloth,—sinamay, made from selected hemp fibre. ”

“ This favored tobacco region supplies most of the leaf sent to foreign lands or manufactured in Manila. The inferior, though good, tobacco grown in the more southern islands is chiefly consumed at home, but the leaf of North Luzon is famous throughout Southeastern Asia and many Western countries. Sugar-cane, grown in all the islands, is of great importance, and though it is cultivated with little intelligence, and raw sugar is produced by the crudest methods, its value for export is second only to that of hemp. ”

“ Its commercial value is about double that of ordinary first-class cordage hemp. The stuff made from this fine fibre (in Bicol dialect, Lúpis) suits admirably for ladiesʼ dresses. Ordinary hemp fibre is used for the manufacture of coarse native stuff, known in Manila as Sinamay, much worn by the poorer classes of natives; large quantities of it come from Yloilo. In Panay Island a kind of texture called Husi is made of a mixture of fine hemp (lúpis) and pine-apple leaf fibre. ”

“ The rice imported into Manila is largely shipped to the tobacco and hemp provinces, Cagayan and Albay, where the people are exclusively employed in the cultivation and preparation of those valuable products, and are far richer, and on a higher grade of civilisation than the rice-growers of Cochin China.
In the Philippines themselves, the people of the rice-growing districts are the poorest and most backward of all. ”

“ The world needs hemp—and areas where it can be cultivated are rare. Three years ago a little stampede occurred into Davao; the pioneers are a mixed lot—about sixty Americans, a few Britishers, a scattering of Moros and Filipinos and nearly two hundred Japs. The Japs are quiet—you will seldom see them: they stay on their places and 'saw wood'; they're backed by some syndicate—probably their government. But the others are lone handers, working on their own 'shoe-strings' or financed by the contributions of optimistic shareholders in Manila. ”

“ Outside of Cuba and Porto Rico, the Philippines are Spain's only colonial possessions of value, and I have heard it stated that the Philippines are among the richest islands in the world, being, on account of their volcanic origin, full of precious minerals. Besides this, large quantities of hemp are grown here, out of which manila rope and manila paper are made. ”

“ One thousand bales of linen which is shipped from Sevilla in each trading fleet always finds a sale, and no more can be carried [to Nueva España] —because that would create a lack in España, and it would, moreover, be too advantageous to the foreigners, to whom almost all this commodity belongs.60 Two thousand bales of cotton textiles exported from Manila are also consumed [there] ; and the fact that there is less or more does not cause any considerable loss in the linen made from flax and hemp, nor does it involve much money ”

“ A fair week’s work for the two, including selection and felling of plants, and cleansing and drying of bast, is 2 ​1⁄7​ piculs—about 300 pounds. First-quality fibre brings in Manila $8.50 a picul, and third-quality $7.25; but while the former price remains firm, the latter falls as the poor quality increases. Nevertheless, as may be seen, the native gets good wages even for a poor quality of hemp.
The work of the laborers is by no means confined to treating the fibre, they being expected to devote some time every day to weeding the plants, and clearing out brushwood. ”

“ Trade and Industry.—Manila is important chiefly for its commerce, and to make it the chief distributing point for American goods consigned to Eastern markets the American government undertook the harbour improvements, and abolished the tonnage dues levied under Spanish rule. Manila is the greatest hemp market in the world; 110,399 tons, valued at $19,444,769, were exported from the archipelago in 1906, almost all being shipped from Manila. Other important exports are sugar, copra and tobacco. The imports represent a great variety of food stuffs and manufactured articles. ”