Lilio a model Municipality

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Lilio a model Municipality
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 9 (Issue No. 9) September 1929
Year: 1929
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Fulltext: September, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 5 Lilio: A Model Municipality Nestled upon one of the spurs of legendary Mount Banahaw, the town of Lilio commands a magnificent view of the surrounding country. From the old church tower, crumbling with age, but that has stood the test of time, defying typhoons and earthquakes, one cannot help but exult with pride upon seeing in all directions the products of industry of the inhabitants of the region. Without any other crop to mar the view, one can see the magnificent coconut groves stretching from the shores of Laguna de Bay up the steep mountain sides. Only the tops of the houses, with their galvanized iron or cabo-negro roofs, break the green of the coconut fronds. Towards the northwest is the lake, from the heart of which rises Talim island, exhibiting as with pride its virgin pinnacle, the Susong Dalaga. The town itself dates back to the very first year of the Spanish occupation of Luzon, having been visited by Juan de Salcedo in 1570. At the beginning, the town was a barrio of Nagcarlan and it was not till 1604 that it was made an independent municipality. The town is reached by two principal routes: by way of Pila, or by way of San Pablo, with excellent macadamized and asphalt roads. The layout of the town will not suffer by comparison with a modern one, with its wide straight streets and curbs on either side. There is excellent drainage. From an early beginning, a mountain stream was diverted in order to serve as an open sewer for the whole community, and lately a modern water system was installed, supplying the in habitants with excellent potable water. At the street intersections, fire hydrants were placed. The streets are clean and what is more pleasing to the eyes of a sanitarian is the absence of the common scavengers, found in many other muni cipalities of the Islands: omnivorous, omnipres ent, unkempt and underfed pigs. Pigs are raised,—pork being one of the principal meats consumed in the locality,—but they are raised where they ought to be, outside of the población. A water-power electric plant furnishes excellent fight. The houses are well built, the great majority being of the strong-material type, with galvan ized iron roofs, although some of the older ones are still thatched with cabo-negro mossy-grown from age. Wealth appears to be evenly divided; outside of farm labor, no personal labor is hired. Lilio does not to this date know the servant problem. So self-sufficient do they feel themselves that not a single Chinese tienda is found within the town’s limits, and yet its inhabitants are famed through out the province for their hospitality. So solici tous are they of their visitors’ comforts that during the first days of American occupation, when the roads were bad and vehicles of no avail, they constructed special palanquins for the comfort of the then Governor Taft and his wife. The presidencia occupies the greater part of a block not far from the old church. It is of strong-material construction, with a cement base. The offices of the municipal treasurer, the postmaster, and the chief of police occupy the ground floor, while those of the municipal presi dent, the municipal secretary, the court of the justice of the peace and the council hall are on the top floor. The offices are neat, with plenty of light and ventilation. The building is pro vided with toilets of the modern type. The public schools, where intermediate, pri mary, and domestic classes are held, occupy a The Church at Taal By Gilbert S. Perez A calm between the June typhoon And the steady drip, drop, drip Of September rain, And the glow of sunset reds Seeking their evening rest In the cobalt blue of balmy Balayan Bay. Silently beckons the ancient pile Of dull gray stone As it rears aloft its craggy Lichen-covered walls, A massive man-made mound of stone On a God-made hill of clay. It stands a grim memorial Of a sacerdotal dream, Of tongues that were wet with hunger And of lips that were parched with thirst, Of the silent drip of women’s tears And of sweatdrops on mortar and stone. On the footworn floor of checkered tile Two roughly nailed death boxes Silently await the incense wafted Priestly benediction; Two black robed groups Of mourners, widows and orphans Heartsick but tearless Await the toll of the bell In the massive limestone Belfry, And the bats Flutter and flitter Under the arches and over the burnished Silver altars And gather On the dark and littered Canvas ceiling. A spatter of sacramental drops; A funeral minor chant is heard; Now the cortege slowly wends its way To the town below, to the graveyard By the sea, As the brief southern twilight Hastily merges into tropical night. But at ten, the heavens Send moonbeams and stardust To the high-buttressed walls, To the shadowland of fancy In the angles and in the corners Of the grim old church of Taal. commanding position in a sloping portion of the town. Like other school buildings, they are ample, with adequate light and ventilation. The domestic science building, which is sufficiently large, was built almost entirely from private funds. The buildings are cleanly kept and at tractively painted. In common with many other municipalities of the present date, it is the school buildings that attract the attention of the visitors in contrast with the church and convent of Spanish days. This is but the reflection of the present-day attitude towards education, in con trast with the old, in which religious instruction and other pious activities were emphasized. Here, then, we have two distinct features of the two cultures—the Spanish and the American. It seems that a blending of the two cultures is the ideal goal to be pursued. Already, we are beginning to feel the sad consequences of the lack of a proper moral standard in many of the youths of the country; and, while the situation appears to be gloomy, it is still opportune to take the necessary steps to remedy the evil. The school playground is large and well kept, with ornamental fountains and a monument of Rizal in a conspicuous place to serve as an ex ample to the aspiring youth of the land. The churchyard which occupies parts of two entire blocks may also be used as a playground for the children of the town, although it is not so used at the present time, possibly because of its grue some association. Calachuches centuries old, still tower proudly to the skies, but not far from them several men and women, suspected of being spies, were executed during the trouble some days of the Revolution. The principal crop is the coconut and its by products. At the present time, there is a copra drying plant within the confines of the muni cipality, where fresh copra is sent and better products are obtained. It will be remembered that there is no waste in a coconut palm. The leaves may be woven into mats and the midribs converted into brooms. Coconut husks find many uses. Rope may be made from them, although their chief use is for door mats. The shell itself may be made into cups, ladles, money boxes, and other articles of ornamental character. Fine scrapings from the shell are used as a healing powder for the umbilical cord and in circum cision wounds. The chief use of the shells during the World War was for charcoal powder for gas masks, which was found to be the most effective and the best agent for neutralizing the poisonous effects of War gas. The /anzon is another important product of the municipality, and shares fame with the lanzon of Paete for its fine flavor. Cacao beans and bananas are minor products of no mean import ance, although they are mostly grown in house lots, in association with flowering and other ornamental plants. Another minor product which has given fame to the. region is arrowroot flour from which fine biscuits are made. The cañabojo attains here a diameter as large as 8 or more inches and is used in the same ways as ordinary bamboo in other places. Lilio, in common with other towns hoary with age, may feel proud to have produced some per sonalities that not o.nly made n^mes for them selves but also served the town with patriotic endeavor. The Dimaguilas, the Misticas, and the Parfans are well known. The Misticas have been prominent in town affairs since the middle of the last century, and one of the Parfans, Don Máximo, served as executive of the town under Importers American DrUe „ v BOTICA BOIE ‘ MANILA Wholesale Agents Heavy Chemicals—Fertilizer—Manufacturers We have been selling drugs for 98 years A TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL September, 1929 three regimes: the Spanish, the Filipino, and the American. Don Maximo Parfan, especially, in spite of his more than three score years and ten, is still intellectually active and in fact is a living chronicler of the town, past and present. The town of Lilio had an estimated population of 7,332 in 1928. The total mortality for the year was 160 or 21.82 per thousand inhabitants. The birth rate is high, there being a total of 234 This is the first of a series of articles on Your Newspaper, another series interpretative of our environment in the Philippines. It will run until the subject has been briefly canvassed in all its departments. Newspapers are associated with constitutional government. They are dependent for their existence upon one particular product, paper; and it is one of the ironical cir cumstances of history that in Spain, the country to which the modern world is indebted for paper, the notion of a free press has never taken hold upon the government and the business of talking to the people through the medium of the news paper remains closely supervised by a censorship. Out of paper, of course, the first material cheap enough to be utilized in printing matter to be sold to the people, came the reforms of the modern era and the spread of education. Para doxically, the movement has prospered every where else more than in Spain. But the art of paper-making survives in Spain, and the skill of her artisans in the mysterious craft is unexcelled. The Chinese seem to have been the inventors of paper. They were making paper long before the Christian era; through them, by way of the Arabs, the art reached Spain. In 751, Chinese invaded Samarkand. They were repulsed by the Arab governor, whose troops captured many Chinese prisoners—among them some who were paper-makers, who imparted the secrets of the craft to their Arabian captors. The Arabs then began manufacturing paper throughout their dominions, and notably in Spain whence there was access to Italy and all Europe. The Arabian kingdom in Spain was finally overcome by the medieval Christians of that country, but the arts of the Arabians, in cluding that of paper-making, were happily pre served—to serve in time to come, who knows, as the basis of a revival of commerce and in dustry in that irrepressible country. No doubt Spain lost the paper trade because of her sales tax, the alcabala, the deciding factor in her eco nomic decay; the imposition of this tax enabled rival countries making paper to deliver their product at lower prices; at least it soon turned out that Spain had the renown of mothering the industry, her lot in so many instances, and other countries had the paper business. For more than ten centuries, or until the period of popular education and of newspapers, the material used for making paper was linen— ■old linen rags. The Arabs were supposed to have used wool or other fiber, but the Encyclo pedia Britannica reaches the conclusion that their raw material too was flax fiber. Even after the advent of newspapers, linen was so widely used, that linen rags supplied enough fiber for all the paper the printing presses required; but linen gradually declined, and the use of cotton for cloth came up, and cotton fiber is not so well adapted to the making of paper because it is not so strong. The intermediate step in paper-making was, of course, to mix cotton and linen together; and paper of this type continues to be made for purposes which wood-pulp or other material will not serve. The rise of the German state founded by Fre derick the Great, the liberalization of French institutions, the success of the British colonies in America (which made themselves into the United States of America), the expansion of maritime commerce which was the making of modern England, the progress of democracy in Scandinavia and Italy—in a word, the popular ization of political institutions and privileges in Europe and America, followed by the Restora tion and the modern era in Japan—all this re sulted in the daily newspaper and such demands for paper upon which to print it as the decreasing quantity of old linen could not supply. There was a long period of anxious experimenlive births in 1928, representing a rate of 31.91 per thousand inhabitants, thus showing a sub stantial increase in population from year to year. The town has been reputed so healthy and the quality of its waters so excellent, that the late Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera frequently spent short vacations there whenever the labors of an active political, scientific, and literary life permitted. Your Newspaper tation with other vegetable fibers during the second quarter of the 19th century. England turned to esparto grass, France to grain straw, Germany to straw and wood-pulp, and Scandi navia, the United States and Canada to woodpulp. This material, wood-pulp, is for the pre sent the most dependable fiber supply, hence Scandinavia, the United States and Canada have world-wide commerce in paper/and Ger many, getting her wood-pulp from Norway, is in the business too. Japan imports large quantities of paper and makes a great deal from straw and from Manila hemp (it is believed). Manila hemp, obtained from old cordage, was one of the first linen substitutes used in the United States for making paper, and on this account America, pioneer buyer of this Philippine fiber, imported a great deal of it during the twenty years just prior to the Civil War. Again we turn back to China and the ingenious Chinese, who had always known how to extract wood-pulp, especially the fiber of the mulberry tree, and to utilize it for paper. But it must be remarked that their manner of printing makes lesser demands on paper than ours, and that they do not require paper of such firm and uniform texture as we must have for printing purposes. The observations of western paper-makers were of the wasp, which lines its nest with wood fiber, and the secrets of this process were those to be discovered. The mulberry was tried in Amer ica, it is true, because it had been imported from China and widely planted with a view to the introduction of silk culture in New England. Basswood made paper; in fact, all plants run 75% to 78% cellulose, or fiber, and all this fiber will make up into paper. Economy determines what fiber shall be used. It is necessary to free the fiber from foreign substances, the resins, etc., making up the por tion of vegetable matter which is not fiber, and methods were found in Europe and America for doing this chemically at about the period 1850. Caustic soda was first used, and is still one Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Co. OF MANILA ENGINEERS MANUFACTURERS 71-77 Muelle de la Industria MANILA, P. I. method; that is, the pulp, either ground or chip ped, is boiled under high pressure in a caustic solution. The sulphite method later discovered, employing sulphuric acid as the reducing agent, has proved more satisfactory for extracting pulp for ordinary papers, including news print. Hugh Burgess and Charles Watt made wood pulp by a chemical process, the soda process, in Reading, England, in 1851, patented their pro cess in 1852, and Burgess took it to the United States in 1854, securing an American patent the same year. Milton D. Whipple of Charlestown, Mass., patented a method in 1855 for preparing wood for pulp by grinding it on a stone. Chipping was patented later; the chips and sawdust which are waste or boiler fuel at a sawmill are suitable for making paper, as the object of the pulp maker is to get the wood into pieces small enough for the chemicals to act upon it quickly. After ways were known for laboring the wood and extracting the pulp, knowledge which appeared in Europe and America at about the same time, still there was speculation as to what woods to use. But economy soon dictated the wisdom of backing pulp and paper mills close up to a fir or a hemlock or a spruce forest; for there is the material in abundance. Then came the expansion of the American west, the maximum period of European immigra tion into the United States, the rapid increase of the population, the establishment of thou sands of new communities throughout the west ern states and territories—all of them having schools and newspapers and demands for paper —and the hogging of the forests followed. In looking up the data for this article, resort was had to illustrated books and periodicals; among the illustrations are photographs of many men identified with the paper industry in America now and during the past century, and all of these faces are hard; there is no doubt that the game itself has been a hard one, and that it has fash ioned the men engaged in it to its necessities. Few communities have had, in the past, more forlorn histories than those built up by and dependent upon the paper and lumber mills. Where there was virgin forest, there the mills were placed and towns established. While the woods were nearby, everything flourished: prop erty had value, trade was brisk and money plentiful from the large payrolls. But ruthlessly the timber line receded, until economy forced the closing down of the mills and their removal to new locations. And the towns perished, wanting anything to sustain them; desolation' CONTRACTORS IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL