Manila hemp: Abaca - the green gold plant
Media
Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal
- Title
- Manila hemp: Abaca - the green gold plant
- Language
- English
- Source
- The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 6 (No. 7) July 1926
- Year
- 1926
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL July, 1926 Manila Hemp: Abaca—The Green Gold Plant &&&&&& By H. H. Boyle and Walter Robb Taxes derived from the abaca industry by the insular government range perhaps between eight and thirteen million pesos a year. The merchants’ -sales tax alone is around P4,000,000 a year, with a like sum added to purchases of imports in the abaca Since early in the 18th century when the first shipment of Manila hemp, abaca, was made to European markets, the fiber of this invaluable plant has been and at pres ent is the principal product of the Philip pines. It is true that other products have, for a time, displaced abaca in point of ex port value for a year or two. Notwith standing this fact, abaca is the principal means of livelihood for at least half the population of the archipelago; and is, re grettable as the fact may be, one of the principal sources of government revenue. It is a well known fact that this product is the most accurate barometer of Philip pine business. When hemp enjoys a good market all other business in the islands is certain of prosperity. Rice brings high prices, corn too; the domestic sale of to bacco manufactures increases and the im port trade sails on sure waters. But let abaca fiber meet with reverses in the markets of the world. When this oc curs the Philippines commercially are in the dumps. A slump in sugar, even though prolonged, has nowhere near the effect on general business that a slump in abaca has. The plant from which abaca is obtained is a species of Musa botanic-ally known as Musa textilis. In the Philippines the plant and fiber alike are known as abaca; in the markets of the world the fiber is Manila hemp. It is indigenous to the Philippines only; this being true, the fiber is a natural commercial monopoly of the islands. About half the total annual production is con sumed in the United States. Up to the present, abaca is the premier cordage fiber of the world. When properly extracted from the plant the fiber is about fifty per cent superior in tensile strength to any other vegetable fiber known or used in the manufacture of cordage. The elas ticity of abaca is also superior to any struc tural fiber known. Efforts have been made by various enti ties and individuals to have the govern ment lend assistance to this vital industry. The fiber grading act which went into ef fect in 1915 was a step forward. The new fiber board taking over administration of the grading act July 1 may help consider ably to improve the industry; but it will require time for this board to obtain the wherewithal to tackle the tremendous work that is to be accomplished. The government has been exceedingly generous to the sugar industry. More than fifty million pesos of public taxes have been invested, chiefly in one province and on one island, to promote this industry to the point where it might compete with other sugar regions of the- world producing in the ag gregate some fifteen million tons of this staple product. Not one. centavo has been invested in the abaca industry. The fiber grading act in effect since 1915 has been self supporting and has even provided nearly P500,000 for the general funds of the government, free of all expense of col lection. Abaca has never enjoyed any such assistance as sugar, coconuts and tobacco have received from the government. Yet it is the principal agricultural product of the islands and is in such condition in most of the provinces that unless prompt and efficient assistance is rendered it is likely to be damaged permanently. There are districts formerly yielding the rarest qual ity of fiber that have been ruined by para sitic pests since these were discovered in the plantations in 1918. Population of Philippine Hemp Producing Provinces Province (Census of 1918) Population Area in Sq. Miles Per Sq. Mile Bales of Hemp in Last 6 Yrs. Albay ........................ 259,704 975 268 1,119,413 Leyte ......................... 597,950 3,005 199 1,706,926 Ambos Camarines. 270,814 2,851 95 567,672 Sorsogon .................. 178,243 729 245 688,262 Samar ........................ 379,575 5,234 72 599,613 North Mindanao— 714,958 Misamis ................... 198,943 1,030 193 Bukidnon ................. 48,544 3,871 13 Agusan ..................... 44,740 4,294 10 Surigao..................... 122,154 2,889 42 Lanao ......................... 91,459 2,439 37 South Mindanao— 1,022,551 Davao ....................... 108,222 7,486 14 Cotabato .................. 171,978 9,620 18 Zamboanga ........... 147,333 6,383 23 Jolo (Sulu) ............. 172,776 1,082 160 58,410 Cebu .......................... 855,065 1,867 458 52,704 Mindoro ................... 71,931 3,926 18 65,426 Negros— 65,913 Occidental .............. 396,636 3,125 127 Oriental ................... 215,750 1,779 121 Various— 200,793 Cavite, etc. Total .................................. 4,332,017 3,421 117 6,824,333 The average yearly production of the provinces for which it is possible to obtain the population records was 1,102,924 bales, which excludes the 200,793 bales produced in various provinces, Cavite, Laguna, Tayabas, etc., not specified in the baling reports and therefore not possible to trace in the census. Fiber Board at Work Commencing July 1 the Fiber Standardization Board and its subsidiary, the Philippine Fiber Inspection Service, superseded, under the law, the fiber division of the bureau of agriculture in the administration of the fiber grading act. Offices of the board and the inspection service are on the second floor of the Pacific Building. On June 30 the fiber division at the bureau of agri culture closed shop permanently. Under the new act the govern ment has more adequately provided for fiber inspection. There is likely to be ample revenue and competent personnel. Fiber offered for export will be inspected and graded by the fiber inspection service of which W. G. Stevenson has been ap pointed manager. Dr. Stanton Youngberg, acting director of agri culture, is chairman and executive officer of the Fiber Standardiza tion Board. Fiber producers are represented on the board by Ma riano Garchitorena and S. F. Gaches; exporters by H. T. Fox and L. L. Spellman, respectively managers of Smith, Bell and Company and Macleod and Company; dealers by Juan Camahort, of E. Diaz y Cia.; manufacturers by Captain H. L. Heath, president of the American Chamber of Commerce and representative of a group of Pacific coast cordage mills as well as the Manila Cordage Com pany, manufacturing cordage in Manila. July, 1926 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL districts. “All the traffic will bear” seems to be the government dictum. The full rate, 1% per cent, is universally applied to sales of abaca, whereas the highest rate on sugar is 1 per cent and half of this, the planters’ share, does not even pay the 1 per cent. Though the result of litigation may force payment from the planters, they will still be greatly favored to the prejudice of abaca planters. The government will have no more than 1 per cent from sugar, while it takes no less than 6 per cent from abaca. Why not, for an industry so important to the public revenues as well as general business, establish some safeguards? It is more than time that this be done. It might be done. An abaca institute ad equately manned with competent scientific personnel is needed and has been needed for many years. Dr. Penoyer L. Sherman is engaged as a chemist in chemical re search at the bureau of science for the Cordage Institute of America. He is doing an excellent work, but it doesn’t cover the required field. By turning back to the in dustry a small fraction of the revenue it provides, there could be established an in stitute with plant pathologists, botanists, chemists and horticulturists who would all be constantly on the alert to eradicate diseases, improve varieties, better cultiva tion and generally promote the industry. In this the example of other agricultural countries could be followed with assurance of success. Instead of producing 1,200,000 bales a year of abaca, the Philippines might well produce four million bales and profitably compete with Yucatan and Africa, each marketing fibers inferior to our abaca. Abaca may be mechanically stripped. This much is proved and the practice should be rapidly extended to all fiber districts. Abaca may also be kept free of diseases to a great degree at least simply by cultiva tion. This also is proved and might be demonstrated by stations at Silang, where disease has, in seven years, wiped out the choicest fiber in the islands. What has been done in Davao can be done in the Bicol region as well as Leyte and Samar and northern Mindanao. In Davao abaca is not grown wild. It is planted, cultivated for eight to twelve years, then rooted out and the fields re plowed and planted again. It is where cultivation is neglected and abaca grows wild, the fiber extracted by tenants on shares, that the varieties and the quality of fiber decline. Two of the most successful Davao plant ers were taken to Silang last year to in spect the ruined abaca fields there. “This could have been prevented by cultivation,” they said. The moribund practice of utter neglect of abaca fields over so wide an area of our producing regions must in some way be broken up. Davao tenants too work on the share basis, but with greater advantage to themselves as well as the landlords. They are associated and have regulations for their mutual protection. They sell the fiber at weekly auctions, getting the highest prices, often by exporters’ agents. Adul teration of parcels is prohibited. For a first offense the fine is P50, for a second the penalty is confiscation and for a third deportation. The tenants are Japanese, who have devised these rigid rules of business. It is perfectly safe to do business with them, hence the abaca industry of Davao is ad vancing not only by the energy and abil ity Americans devote to it, but by the enterprise of the farmers themselves. Captain Stanford Reporting on Dewey Drydock ** ** ** ** ** «« «« Seven Sites Within the Bay Are Proposed The naval drydock Dewey brought across the Pacific in 1906 and moored at Olongapo naval station since that time will be even tually “removed to a point within Manila bay,” when decision has been made in Washington upon the technical report on the problem now being prepared by Captain Homer Reed Stanford, C. E. C., U. S. N., who arrived in Manila on the navy trans port Chaumont July 2 and has set about his duties. Captain Stanford is living at the Army and Navy club, where he may usually be seen during the morning up to 11 o’clock. Where the drydock Dewey shall be per manently anchored is a matter of much importance to the shipping community. The capacity of the largest privately owned docking and slipway works in the islands is understood to be around 1500 or 2000 tons. For vessels of greater tonnage no privately owned facilities are available, and under such conditions the navy will under take overhauling and repairing commercial ships during periods when the dock is not required for navy work. These periods seem to aggregate about six months each year. For the removal of the dock from Olongapo, a step definitely determined upon in 1922, there is a fund of $400,000. The question of funds gives the navy far less concern than the feasibility of a site at which the dock may be placed. The Man Who Makes the Buttons For Manhattan Shirts & & & & & & Headington, J. L., An Ohio Product Manila has its distinctive type of business man. It is the type that cut school and college in 1898, volunteered for America’s first overseas expedition ary force, shoul dered a Springfield, learned the manual of arms, subsisted on execrable rations and fought guerilla campaigns in the East and West Indies in revenge for the Maine and for the sake of adventure. It is the type that ranked it self on conquered Spanish plazas—the old Plaza Real, now Plaza McKinley, for ex ample—and pledged to do in civil life, in the civil service of a civil government, all that it had done with the rifle in the field. Victory and hard campaigning and ex perience had prepared the young adventqrous volunteers for soberer duties. Of this type is John Labon Headington, a son of Ohio and the manager of the Phil ippine Button Corporation since its success ful reorganization in 1922 by New York capital that directed the rebuilding and reequipment of the plant so that the out put is greatly increased and it has become one of the important manufactories of Ma nila. It makes pearl buttons for the Uni ted States market. All is done with Phil ippine marine products and Filipino labor, which is taught to be skilled labor. A sub Seven different sites have been variously suggested. They are Mariveles, Corregidor, north of Cavite station, south of it, Sangley point, the middle of the bay, or within the harbor. The shoreline of the bay approximates 100 miles; it is 30 miles to Mariveles, which is about half the dis tance to Olongapo. Shops, workmen and workmen’s quarters are vital desiderata; but most vital of all is a sufficient depth of water, which cannot be less than 65 feet and really should be 70 feet. Such depths are not found along the bay shore, nor at Cavite or Sangley point, nor within the harbor, where the fairway has a depth of about 35 feet only. With ample funds a site and channel could be dredged to the required depth, and with additional ample funds might be kept at the required depth. It may be seen how extensive and comprehensive Captain Standford’s report must be, and how knotty a problem the armament treaties put up to the depart ment in Washington. Under the treaties the dock may be removed to “a point within Manila bay” because this will be no new construction; and it must be removed be cause away out there at Olongapo, a station no longer kept up, it is not rendering the service it is capable of at a station suf ficiently equipped and manned. stantial volume of new wealth is thus ad ded to the islands’ mobilized resources every year. Headington has made his own place in Manila’s business circles. He was born in Mount Vernon, Knox County, Ohio, in 1879. He had been graduated from the Mount Vernon High School, had attended Kenyon Military Academy, and was, at nineteen, attending Kenyon College when McKinley called for volunteers in 1898. Heading ton’s outfit went first to Porto Rico, and he later, in 1899, came to the Philippines with the United States Signal Corps. In 1900 he participated with the American forces in the international expedition to Peking and the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in China. He returned with his outfit to Manila when the unpleasantness in China had terminated, and at the expiration of his enlistment became a disbursing clerk in the Philippine civil government under Civil Governor Wm. Howard Taft. In 1904 he was assigned to the bureau of audits as an examiner. He remained there until 1915, rising meanwhile from examiner to a dis trict auditor in the Bicol region, to chief of a division in the Manila office, and served as acting assistant auditor for over two years. When he left the government service he was a special agent. He had now devoted 17 years of his youth and early manhood to his country. Embarking upon his career in business life, he became associated with the Shanghai