Part 12

Hemp-growing is the least troublesome of the agricultural operations in the Philippines, and gives the best returns for the expense involved. In starting a plantation the colonist chooses forest land, clearing away the smaller growth, but leaving the large trees to shade the plants and the young shoots. Where the soil is virgin, each shoot occupies, at first, a space of ground thirty-six Spanish square feet in extent. When the original plant is felled, the suckers come up anywhere, growing spontaneously from the parent root, and yielding a much denser plantation.

The abacá can be raised from seed; in which case it requires four years to flower. Planters, however, generally transplant the six-months-suckers, which, as I have said, reach maturity in three years. Maturity, for commercial purposes, signifies the flowering stage. In no case is the plant allowed to bear fruit, because fruit-bearing weakens the outer fibre.

Ample capital is necessary for success in hemp-growing, inasmuch as three years or more must pass before any profit can be had. After that, the grower can depend upon an annual yield. But even then, when he is the owner of a flourishing plantation, he has serious difficulties to contend with. The amount of waste is enormous, some thirty per cent. of the fibre being lost through carelessness and negligence. The natives often cut the leaf-stalks before they reach maturity. In other cases, they fail to do so till they have rotted on the plant.

Inefficiency takes still other forms, but, despite this, there is abundant margin for gain, since no agricultural operation is conducted with less risk. The dense protecting forest-growth shields the plants from hurricanes, while the high land on which they grow is safe from inundation. Fire can make no headway among their green leaves and moist stems. Locusts will not touch the hemp plant, and beetles and other insects harm it but little. As the crop comes to maturity at successive periods, it can be leisurely gathered, from time to time, the year round. No ploughing is needed, and therefore there is no live-stock to be purchased, fed, and cared for. There is no expensive machinery, and no highly-priced machinists needed to run it. Weeding must be carefully attended to, but this is the work of the natives, and is done very cheaply. The enemies of the hemp planter are an occasional drought when his plants are in the ground, and the danger of fire to his dried bales before they reach their destination. His greatest annoyance must come from the steady thirty per cent. of what seems like unnecessary waste, due to the causes stated.

Difficulties with Native Labor.

Work on an abacá estate is performed on the co-operative plan. The laborers are paid not in money but in kind, they receiving half the fibre they clean, while the other half goes to the owner of the estate. The workman, however, is not required to take the fibre for his pay, but receives, instead, its current cash value--if not cheated, which he frequently is. The law of the Philippines, however, is cheat for cheat, the native having become quite as tricky as his master. The value of the fibre depends upon its whiteness and its strength, and both are reduced by the indolence and dishonesty of the hands. My experience with the islanders is, I admit, that they are none too fond of work. A laborer on a hemp plantation, who finds himself pressed for money, is likely to take some method like the following to obtain it: he will seek an abacá plant, strip a few of its leaf-stalks, and leave them exposed to the rain and the air. As a result, the bast grows soft and rotten, and is more easily cleaned, but the fibre is weakened and discolored. In cleaning it, he uses a toothed knife,--a form forbidden by the trade, since it adds to the discoloration. As the fibre is sold by weight, the dishonest manipulator is careful to leave some of the pulp to dry upon it and so increase the number of pounds. Carrying his bundle of coarse, partly-cleaned, discolored, and weak fibre, he seeks the dealer at night, that he may be deceived as to the color of the fibre. These tricks are well known to the planter, his manager, and to the acopiadores, or dealers at large, and do not often succeed.

The plantation-owners make every effort to force the natives to use knives without teeth, in order that the fibre may be fine, perfectly clean, and white. The Filipino, though, if not closely watched, persists in using his serrated knife, because if he uses one with a smooth edge he loses in weight. He is too ignorant to perceive that the fibre properly treated is of higher value. It is quite possible, as is often claimed, that there is a difference in plants, some giving a whiter fibre than others. But it is generally conceded that if the natives would cut the plant only at maturity, cleanse the fibre under a toothless knife the same day, place the strips in a clean place, and sun-dry at once, the waste would be materially lessened, and there would be little third-class matter.

In other words, what the hemp-planter needs are honest, reliable hands and an efficient manager.

On some of the islands inspectors are appointed by the Governor, whose duty it is to travel about from place to place, intimidating hemp-laborers in the name of the law. But so far their efforts seem to have met with but little success, the plantations owned by foreigners being large, remote, and difficult to reach; they are, indeed, nearly always on the sides of mountains. In the extraction of the fibre the natives work in couples: one man strips the bast, another draws it under the knife. 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. This is part of their regular work and is not paid for extra. The baling of the fibre is done by means of a press, at which men and boys work, their rate of payment varying from 12-1/2 to 50 cents a day. Transportation from the plantations to the shipping points, such as Manila and Cebú, is also to be considered in estimating the outlay of the planter.

Tricks of the Natives.

I have not yet told all the tricks of the natives. They cheat also in the planting, by not making deep enough holes for setting out the shoots. In consequence, planters no longer pay at once for shoots and labor, as formerly, but reserve payment for three years, or until full growth is attained. Then $10 are paid for each hundred of live plants.

In addition to the large planters, many of the Filipinos produce bast in a small way, selling it to Chinese dealers. Or a Chinaman may, for a petty sum, gain the right to work a native plantation for a fixed term of years. With but one thought in mind--that of immediate gain--he strips the plants in their immature stage, producing a white but weak fibre, and returns the plantation to its owner ruined for the time being. The Chinese are, in consequence, held under suspicion, and their bast is severely inspected before purchase.

In fact, the whole process of hemp-production, from the proprietor down to the lowest laborer, seems permeated with fraud; and between efforts to cheat on the one hand, and efforts to escape being cheated on the other, life on a hemp plantation is not a state of beatitude.

Competition with Other Lands.

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. To the various frauds practised in its production may be added another employed by the manufacturers of cordage: the free adulteration of the pure Philippine fibre by the admixture of New Zealand flax and Russian hemp.

The cultivation of the plant has been attempted outside the Philippines, but with no satisfactory result. Abacá planting, it is true, was tried successfully in the botanical gardens at Saigon, Cochin China, but the experiment was abandoned, for some reason unexplained. Abacá has also been planted in British India, and flourished as well there as at Saigon, but the effort to produce hemp from it failed through ignorance of the proper method of the drawing of the fibre.

The mode of extraction tried was that practised with the ordinary hemp of India, excepting that the stems were first passed through a sugar-cane mill, to get rid of the sap. By this means fifty per cent. of the whole weight was squeezed out; the stems were then immersed in water and left to rot for ten or more days; afterward they were washed by hand and dried in the sun. Less than two pounds of fibre were thus gained from one hundred pounds of stems, and this bad in color and lacking in strength.

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 islands of Leyte and Marinduque, and certain districts in the large island of Luzon yield the finest quality of hemp. The province of Albay, the leading hemp-district of Luzon, cannot be surpassed in quantity and quality of yield, its annual hemp-crop averaging about 20,000 tons. Before 1825 the demand was little, and the hemp-yield insignificant. Since then, the growing demand has greatly developed the culture, the crop of 1840 being about 8,500 tons, in 1880 about 50,000 tons. It has been steadily on the increase.

The United States receives the greatest proportion of this product, nearly all the remainder going to Great Britain and her Australian colonies. Manila is the principal port of shipment: the bales are sent thither from the plantations.

Experience of a Planter.

For those that desire statistics, I may repeat the statement made to me in person by an Albay planter. The plantation of this gentleman, in which he had invested a capital of $60,000, embraced 1800 acres, planted at the time of purchase with shoots of two years' growth, and therefore needing one year more before cutting. There was a store-house on the estate capable of holding 5000 piculs, or 695,000 pounds of hemp (a picul is 139 pounds). The purchase also included a bale-press and shed, a plot prepared for sun-drying, two horses, and a vehicle.

The working expenses of this plantation, including the various items of salaries to overseers, clerks, and storekeepers, wages to natives, living and traveling expenses of overseer, fire insurance, office expenses, freight to Manila, loading, commission, storage, and minor items, were $10,000. In this were included some loss by stealing, and several hundred dollars loss by waste.

In one year the planter received in Manila $27,000 for his dried bales of hemp-fibre, making a net profit of thirty per cent. on invested capital. It must be remembered, however, that in Albay province the conditions for the investor in abacá-planting are of the best. Equal results cannot be expected elsewhere.

What the Hemp Is Used For.

Manila hemp is principally used in the manufacture of mats, sail cloth, and cordage. Out of the old ropes the well-known stout brown wrapping-paper is made--the Manila paper of commerce. In Paris the imported hemp-fibre is used in the manufacture of carpets, tapestry, net-work, hammocks; and even in the making of bonnets.

The natives obtain small quantities of very fine hemp-fibre from the carefully-selected edges of the petiole, or leaf-stalk, and from this they weave an exquisite, fine, silky material, suitable for gowns. This fibre is worth twice as much as first-class cordage hemp. The difficulties with the weave lie in the fragility, and, consequently, the frequent breakages of the thread; hence the expense of the material. On one of the islands a fabric is made from fine hemp and pine-leaf fibre. This the natives endeavor to sell to foreigners for pure piña, which is as fine and soft as Bengal muslin. The fraud is detected by the lack of flexibility in the material, it having a horse-hair stiffness. Any one that has ever touched a soft, silky, pine-leaf fibre handkerchief, for instance, would easily distinguish the difference.

Lastly, in enumerating the valuable qualities of manila hemp, I may state that the poorer classes of the natives of the Philippine Islands wear clothes that they manufacture from the ordinary fibre; and that even the bags in which the fresh coffee-beans are sent from the islands to foreign markets are made from the same material.

I may say, in concluding this subject, that hemp is the most important article of Philippine product, and that its production is capable of being greatly increased. The official documents that I have examined in Manila show that within the last decade the United States has received fully forty per cent. of all the hemp-product of the islands. In the ten years previous to 1898 a single firm in Boston bought 79,000 tons of hemp, paying for it an average price of 3 cents a pound in the Manila market. During this period the total export of hemp was 914,100 tons. The import to the United States during the same time averaged in value $2,400,000 a year. A liberal and progressive administration will soon increase this tenfold.

CULTURE AND USE OF TOBACCO.

The Cultivation of Tobacco, a State Monopoly.

The seed of the tobacco plant was introduced into the Philippines from Mexico by Spanish missionaries. It is an annual, grows to the height of five or six feet, and varies greatly in flavor, not only in different provinces, but in different places in the same province. Luzon has always been more directly under the control of the Spaniards than any other part of the Archipelago. As it contains the capitol--literally the seat of Government--it is from this island that every unjust and cruel edict has proceeded since the time of the conquest. Indeed, Spain has never tried to govern more than half a dozen of the islands; and while all of the Philippines are nominally under her suzerainty, there are at least two hundred of them filled with fierce and intractable tribes--and these she has not even explored. But it is Luzon that, from first to last, has felt most heavily the weight of her iron hand. On that island, in 1781, the cultivation of tobacco was formally declared a State monopoly.

This lasted just a year and a century. The Government, after long debate on the subject, decided that, on the whole, it would be more profitable and less troublesome to demand a high license, and place the enterprise in the hands of private dealers.

The monopoly was accordingly abolished, December 31st, 1882. The natives fought against this. They had suffered horribly from State regulations. They feared to suffer more from private persecution. The friars, however, the real rulers of the Philippines, decided against the monopoly; and, notwithstanding that it was the largest source of public revenue on the islands, it was abolished.

Oppressive Conditions in Luzon.

From 1781 to 1882, then, in Luzon the following conditions prevailed: First, in the Philippines natives were never allowed to own land,--the property of the State. By paying for the privilege they might receive permission to cultivate the soil. During the continuance of the monopoly, in certain districts in northern Luzon, only tobacco plants were permitted to be placed in the ground. Not one foot of his poor little plot could the native use for his own subsistence. Moreover, he was forced to contract with the Government to raise 4000 plants a year; not one leaf of which could he call his own.

Every family was bound to produce a given quantity annually; while a shortage in returns was punished with beating, fines, confiscation, or imprisonment.

In some of the districts selected the islanders were too wild and insubordinate to follow directions in the planting, the preparing, and in the drying of the leaf. Emigrants were therefore sent from the vicinity of Manila, and were provided with land, homes, food, and clothing.

Their subsequent fate was pitiable. Spies of the Government visited the native houses at all hours, in search of concealed tobacco. Every nook and corner of the little dwelling would be ransacked time and again, and the women of the family subjected to rude and insulting personal inspection.

And these harassing visits were made at disquieting intervals; sometimes two or three days in succession; so that the easy and indolent Filipino was kept in haunting terror of incursions.

At the Government headquarters of the district, the dried leaves were carefully examined by the Inspector. Those that he approved he paid for; the rest were burned.

If an Indian were caught smoking one of his own cigars, within a few steps of his own airing-sheds, he was seized and fined. The offence, arrest, and conviction cost him dear: about $8.00 if he were smoking a cigar; about $2.00, if a cigarette.

In a country where the monotony of life is mitigated by the soothing effects of the leaf, and where men and women smoke as inevitably--and almost as naturally--as they eat, these constant and harassing exactions became maddening. The burning of the rejected bundles was felt to be especially cruel and unnecessary. But the Inspector was inexorable.

All these combined causes, and particularly the insults to women, frequently brought about bloody encounters between the people and the servants of the State.

There are numberless cases where Indians live on the land cultivated by their ancestors, and cling to it; and, in their ignorance, feel it to be their own. The Government, however, with its usual treachery, finally took advantage of this attachment, and, while exacting full returns from the natives, paid them only in part, or in depreciated currency.

How Speculators Take Advantage of the Natives.

Sharpers from Manila made their way into the tobacco districts as soon as this was known, buying large sums in Treasury notes for small quantities of specie; and so needy were the natives, and so rooted their distrust of Spain, that they made the exchange eagerly, glad to get into their hands the smallest quantity of the money they were familiar with--genuine gold.

Every effort was made to confine the growth of tobacco to certain selected districts controlled by the State, but, in spite of this, concealed plantations were continually being cultivated in remote provinces, and a large body of picked men and many revenue cutters were constantly in the employ of the Government. It was their duty to discover and destroy these plantations, punish the growers, confiscate the leaf, and break up the smuggling.

But, despite these precautions and drastic measures, the initiated always knew where to obtain a good cigar for about one-fourth of what was paid for it in a Manila shop. Expedition after expedition was sent to distant islands, to discover and punish the growers and manufacturers of illicit tobacco, and stubborn fights ensued, the friars invariably being on the side of the natives.

These were the abuses and revolts that finally led to the abolition of the monopoly.

Private enterprise in the islands has its own hard ways to accomplish its own unscrupulous ends, and whether Company, individual, or Government is in power, the result is always the same--the native is cheated, suffers, is pushed to the wall.

The Quality of Manila Tobacco.

Since 1882 it is a matter of common complaint that there is not so much care taken in the preparing of the leaf: this requires great skill and unwearied attention to detail, inasmuch, as if overheated, or left too long in the airing-sheds, something precious is lost in quality and in aroma.

Cuban cigars are not sold in the colony, and the old residents believe the flavor of their own tobacco incomparable. The outside world, however, gives the preference to the Cuban brand. Indeed, at one time the Government tried to introduce seed from Cuba, but, owing to mismanagement, the scheme failed. Such an inferior quality of leaf sometimes finds its way into Manila, and is sold for such low prices, that one wonders what profit there can be in cultivating it. This is, of course, worked off on the poorer natives.

The tobacco trade is still a monopoly in Spain, and the Philippines are under contract to provide the home factories with 98,000 cwt. of dried leaf per annum. Enormous fortunes are made in a short time in this product.

When the infamous Weyler was Governor-General of the Philippines, his two brothers were in this business in Binondo. They went back to Madrid in a few years, and lived like princes.

The fact remains, however, that while a very superior article of cigar and cigarette is made in the factories of Manila and its vicinity, if the colony wishes to compete with other countries, the tobacco planters must raise the standard of quality all along the line.

Methods of Preparing the Tobacco Leaf.

There are several large tobacco factories in Binondo, the trading centre of Manila; one in particular employing 15,000 men, women, and children, at an average wage of 15 cents a day. The working hours are from seven to twelve in the morning, and from two to five in the afternoon. Just at sunset, I have often seen the operatives leave this factory in droves, and thousands of them immediately plunge into the waters of Manila Bay, where they swam about in the surf, rolling, tumbling, and shouting like children.

I have repeatedly gone through the factories, following the leaf from bale to finish; and it is an interesting sight. Color and quality are decided by a lightning expert, and quick and thorough is the whole process, till the finished cigars are packed in cedar boxes, labeled for the market. Cedar-wood seems part of the charm.

Innumerable efforts have been made to use other and less expensive woods in packing, but without avail: either the cedar conserves the aroma better, or, more likely, it adds a special quality of its own, which, through long habit, the confirmed smoker finds indispensable to his enjoyment.

The Escalante region is noted for the fine tobacco grown there, though sugar, of course, is the most important crop. The tobacco is rich-flavored, and by many experts is deemed the most desirable leaf in all the Visayas.

But it is generally agreed that the best quality of Island tobacco is that grown in the provinces of northern Luzon, the most valued coming from Cagayan and La Isabela.

Old residents invariably prefer Island tobacco; but the English, as the Americans, and the peninsular Spaniard choose, instead, the famous Vuelto Abajo of Cuba, and think they get it. Millions of "Havana" cigars, made of Philippine leaf, are sold in Manila under the name of this brand. In fact, the two styles--Manila and Cuban--are manufactured in almost equal quantities, differing in size and shape, but not in quality. The expert, at the selecting table, divides his heap into many different colors. Only five, however, are known to the trade. They are: Maduro, Colorado Maduro, Colorado, Colorado Claro, and Claro.