A pleasant Philippine prospect

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: A pleasant Philippine prospect
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 9 (Issue No. 9) September 1929
Year: 1929
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Fulltext: PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY The American Chamber of Gommerce OF THE Philippine Islands (Member Chamber of Commerce of the United States) ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER May 25, 1921, at the POST OFFICE AT MANILA, P. I. Local Subscription: P4.00 per year Foreign Subscription: $3.00 U. S. Currency, per year Single Copies: 35 Centavos WALTER ROBB, Editor and Manager DIRECTORS AND OFFICERS P. A. Meyer, President H. M. Cavender, Vice-President John W. Haussermann, Vice-President John L. Headington, Treasurer H. L. Heath W. L. Applegate J. C. Rockwell Kenneth B. Day Alf Welhaven ALTERNATE DIRECTORS J. L. Headington A. B. Cresap Frank W. Butler Wm. H. Rennolds John R. Wilson, Secretary E. E. Selph, General Counsel EXECUTIVE P. A. Meyer, Chairman H. M. Cavender H. L. Heath RELIEF W. J. Odom, Chairman Carl Hess John Gordon MANUFACTURING P. A. Meyer, Chairman Alf Welhaven E. A. Seidenspinner LEGISLATIVE P. A. Meyer, Chairman Frank B. Ingersoll J. R. Wilson COMMITTEES FINANCE W. H. Rennolds, Chairman E. M. Gross O. M. Schuman FOREIGN TRADE H. B. Pond, Chairman L. L. Spellman M. M. Saleeby PUBLICATIONS P. A. Meyer, Chairman Roy C. Bennett BANKING AND CURRENCY Stanley Williams, Chair man W. J. Shaw RECEPTION AND ENTERTAINMENT J. L. Headington, Chair man F. W. Butler J. R. Wilson HOUSE -------------------- , Chairman J. R. Wilson LIBRARY John Gordon, Chairman SHIPPING H. M. Cavender, Chairman G. P. Bradford L. E. Nantz INVESTMENTS P. A. Meyer, Chairman H. M. Cavender A Pleasant Philippine Prospect Governor Davis is already able to see the beautiful in the Philippines, which means of course that he is acquiring a genuine liking for the islands and the people living here. In his Rotary speech early in August he sug gested the*desirability of exploiting the islands as a visiting place for tour ists, and he is following up the suggestion with plans coordinating the agen cies most interested in travel, the railway, the Manila and Pines hotels, the steamship lines. To effect what Governor Davis most commendably wishes to effect, here are a few of the things to do: Complete the road into Olongapo giving week-end access to that navr¿ station and to the beach on Subic bay. Complete the road around Laguna de Bay. Complete the road to Silang and Tagaytay ridge. Complete the road from Bangui, Ilokos Norte, to Aparri, making a circle route by motor from Manila through the Ilokos region and up the Cagayan valley. Extend the Manila hotel into a system of first class railway-owned hotels, and have these operating at convenient points where tourists should wish to travel. If necessary, guarantee 4% on the investment. The essential is to have all the hotels under centralized responsible management. Educate some guides, to show off Manila herself; and administer slow poison to any of them (as hopeless cases) who conduct visitors to Bilibid or to cabarets—the one being inevitably depressing, and cabarets inevit ably discovered. Get the Franciscans to train a willing brother to guide parties visiting their churches and monastery in the walled city. Get them to prepare a little pamphlet on the place. Similarly with the Augustinians, similarly with the Recollects, similarly with the Dominicans. Preserve, by all means, the Ayuntamiento from the city-hall crowd. Keep it to become a museum eventually. Have guides there to exhibit the archives, show visitors into Marble Hall and tell them something about it, and provide them with pamphlets giving more details. Fort Santiago is always accessible, thanks to the courtesy of the U. S. army, but a pamphlet on the fort is sadly lacking; an illustrated, instructive pamphlet should be prepared. Arrange with the Ateneo de Manila for guidance through St. Ignatius church, and for a pamphlet on Jesuit architecture in the walled city and an historical sketch of their celebrated school. Preserve the whole walled city, and place it under the special adminis tration of a competent committee. Preserve Sto. Tomás museum. For places outside the walled city, have available a pamphlet with map. Arrange for parties to visit Santa Clara convent, to talk, in the locutorio, with the nuns, and to be furnished pamphlets sketching the history of the place and its sainted foundress. For the entire city have available what is now so lacking, a good guidebook and map. Persuade the Augustinians to remove the wire fence they now have around Guadalupe, and to have a guide available there. No hotel is cGCPE .Ait. «Hi ASH ga) MENTALLY AT EASE... WHEN you drive the New Fprd Car, you are mentally at ease because you are sure of its mechanical performance. No matter how long the trip or rough the roadway, you know it will bring you safely, quickly and comfortably to the journey’s end. BUY WISELY—BUY A NEW FORD! Easy Terms May Be Arranged “After We Sell We Serve" MANILA TRADING & SUPPLY COMPANY MANILA Iloilo Cebu Bacolod IN ERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 4 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL September, 1929 needed, but a good refreshment stand is; and again pamphlets and postcards should be pro curable. Begin on Luzon. With success there, extend activities to other islands when inviting inter island ships become available. Quote fixed times and charges, always with first-class accommodations: a week in Manila, so much; Provincial Trip No. 1, Baguio and return, so many days, so much money; and so on. This implies an adequate travel folder. Not one folder, but a series, is needed; they should not copy Hawaii but be distinctively Philippine. Have the railway really undertake the ex ploitation of Legaspi and Tabaco as visiting points. Let the baths at Tiwi-tiwi be improved, a good hotel be operated at a suitable beach point, or high up the slopes of Mayon. Reestablish a hotel at Los Baños, and exploit those springs. Establish a hotel at Sibul, and install more baths. The springs at Los Baños are boiling, curative of rheumatism, etc.; and those at Sibul arejquite cool, their sulphurous waters are unex celled for disorders of the alimentary tract. Sibul certainly, and Los Baños possibly, may be made world-renowned. Tiwi-tiwi should draw patrons even from Manila; with excursions re gularly advertised and good hotels provided, no doubt they would. The trip to Taal to view the bubbling lava, the chínese chapel and the church, should be broken for the night (or for lunch, if the start were early enough) at a hotel at Balayan or Nasugbu, by the sea. The trip to Pagsanhan could be best broken at a hotel in Lilio, several thousand feet up Mount Banahaw, about mid way between San Pablo and Pagsanhan. The culture of Lilio is quite purely Malayan, in fluenced only by the Spanish church. Chinese don’t live there. The same hotel would be patronized by travelers making the circuit of Laguna de Bay. Many Americans may reasonably be expected to winter in Manila, when they learn of the place, and Manila now lacks an attractive beach. This convenience, with golf course and tennis courts, should be developed at Caridad, Cavite, both for travelers and Manilans. Road im provements should continue until Caridad is easily within half an hour’s motoring distance from Manila. A beachside hotel should be maintained at Caridad. Begin advertising, but with discretion; re gularly, the Post, Collier's, the Atlantic and Harper's are enough among the magazines, these to be supplemented with some newspaper ad vertising when such publications in large cities are getting out their seasonal travel editions. In the Post and Collier’s, columns; in the Atlantic and Harper's, pages. Sunset, a good west-coast magazine, should be patronized. Advertise just what is to be had by comfortable travel; let every visitor feel that he has had more than was advertised, and above all, be sure that he has been comfortable. Advertise in the dead of winter, the time when a tropical prospect ap peals. Telling people in America in July or August to hie away to the Philippines, keep cool at old Cavite, bask in Baguio, would not pay. It is only desirable to have people come to the islands when they are sure of pleasant weather, that is, from November to February inclusive. But as Governor Davis has said, Baguio should attract year-round patronage from the orient; it has its perennial advantages as a health and recreation resort for this part of the world. Were the government to carry out Governor Davis’s plans, and were it to be begin spending something with the American magazines on ad vertising, it would soon remark a changed at titude in editorial circles toward the Philip pines. Thus, the free publicity it would soon begetting would far outvalue the paid advertise ments, for editors would no longer be slow to accept Philippine manuscripts. It is true that, in judging manuscripts, editors have no direct regard to what advertising may be in their magazine. But they do have direct regard to public interest. Advertising presupposes this interest, and no advertising, or only very limited advertising, proclaims the absence of public interest; and if an editor, whatever his own interest in a piece may be, feels that his public is not interested, he pins on a rejection slip and sends the piece back to oblivion. There is nothing strange or occult in the fact that these islands, charmingly beautiful as they are, are little written about; the whole explana tion is that they are little advertised. When the Philippines are liberally advertised they will be copiously written about, never fear; and editors will then be willing to feature what is written, they will respond to the public in terest the advertising will be substantial evi dence of. Governor Davis has a capital idea, which we are heartily in favor of capitalizing. Incidentally, Malacañang should be accessible to visitors. Permission to drive through the grounds, a brief how-d’-y-do and glad-to-see-you\ well, it may be a little bother, but it never fails to please the Manila ticket-buyer, and it gets right into letters home and from them into the papers. Davis Greets Judge Jones In Manila So says the El Dorado Buncombe, quoting at length the local jurist’s pleasant impressions of the Philippines—impressed by that moment of executive goodwill—but scores of other papers in other towns give severally their local globe trotter as the hero of the welcome at Malaca ñang, and quote at length his letter. When all these men return home, they give club and radio talks and interviews; their wives address women’s meetings. Advertising begins to pull, as is said. Philippine bookings increase. July’s unceasing rains continued well into August. Tile roofs on Escolta buildings sprout ed, and Stimson’s annual report as governor general came out. Omnipotence itself, says Pliny, has no power but obivion over the past. El Debate came out too, with a story that Gov ernor Davis will be leaving us in January. Davis said he couldn’t give time to denying fool rumors. Everyone knows now, of course, that he will be here for considerable time—he has said he will rid the government of graft. The offending paper evidently did not grasp the full purport of this statement. There was an incipient outbreak of feature articles on The Manuel Quezon I Know, as one of the pieces was titled, but it stopped before the versatility of the senate president’s character was fully canvassed. The gentleman the authors flattered ceased debating with Emilio Agui naldo and had a birthday, his fifty-first. He gave out a birthday statement explaining that the functions of government and the respon sibility of the cabinet now all center in the le gislature, by which means the legislative and executive branches are nicely independent of each other. The other achievement of his fiftyfirst year was postponement of the time when our products will be subject to American duties, a boon for which he is grateful to the United States—in common with us all. Don Mariano Yulo, doctor, sugar planter and capitalist of Negros, died in Hinigaran from an automobile accident in which his skull was frac tured. He was a senator. The funeral, for which six horses and a hearse were imported from Manila, took place in the afternoon, about 4:30 o’clock, and the convention nominating Judge Manuel Zulueta his successor immediately followed it. By sundown honor had been done the quick and the dead. Dr. Yulo had been governor of his province three times, going out the third time in 1916 when Matias Hilado defeated him in the popular election. Hilado, quixotically enough, in aris tocratic Negros where men are men usually only when they have haciendas, is a son of the people, whom Negros knew first as a humble circus performer—a daring contortionist. But he had the gift of gab and the grit and native sense to make himself a lawyer; and in 1916, with his election over Yulo, he made himself dictator of Negros and compelled the salaams of those who considered themselves his betters. With him, the star of the Hilados rose; we now have an Hilado as lands director. Let’s get back, however, to the house of pain and mourning at Hinigaran, to the deathbed of one of the best of his type to be found anywhere. The fatal accident occurred on a night trip over a flooded road, the driver missing a culvert and the machine turning turtle and being carried downstream. The law might have held cul pable the chauffeur, who survived. Dr. Yulo knew this, and in his conscious moments until his death he kept repeating, to impress it upon everyone, that the chauffeur was not to blame, that the accident was unavoidable. Yulo’s wealth is counted in millions, yet he never used a bank. He had a big safe in his residence and was, in effect, a bank in himself. Yulo was much of a type with your oldtime country squire in England, bound by quite a strict code to those dependent upon him. Yulo’s was an expansive, generous, honest character; he was a man of quiet force and dignity, ap preciative above all of goodwill—to which he unfailingly responded. George Vargas, by the way, under secretary of agriculture and natural resources, is a close surviving relative by mar riage; Mrs. Vargas is a surviving niece, and her deceased uncle was a bachelor. The fortune will not undergo wide division. Much of it is in sugar-cane lands. SOCDNY LONG LIFE OILS ft* SOCON Y Lorié life oils do every thing claimed for them, and do it well “Look for the blue tin” STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW YORK IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL