The man who makes the buttons for Manhattan

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: The man who makes the buttons for Manhattan
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 6 (No. 7) July 1926
Year: 1926
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Fulltext: 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 10 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL July, 1926 Life Insurance Company and spent three years as resident secretary for the com pany in Siam and Burma, having charge of payment of claims, the making of loans, handling of litigation—the usual and im portant executive duties of the resident secretaries. The European War was on. When America got into it, Headington naturally tried to go. He wasn’t successful in this, his youth was a good way behind him, but he gained connection with the defense forces of the nation, for he was given the rank of captain in the quartermaster re serve corps. Headington is a Past Com mander, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Commander of Stotsenberg Post No. 2, Uni ted States War Veterans, of which Carmi Aiderman Thompson, sent to the Philip pines to make an intensive survey in be half of President Coolidge, is the national head. America’s Forfeiture of Far Eastern Lands **** ' It*** Might Have Territory From Formosa to Fiji If, seeking the grotesque in statecraft, one sits down to thumbing the old records of America in eastern Asia—and what remark able records they are!—one finds that im perialism and altruism, as the terms are nowadays applied to the Philippines ques tion, are of no recent birth: they are old, they antedate steam upon the Pacific by more than a decade. Avowing altruism, imperialism has in general been practiced; that is to say, altruism, however sternly espoused, has not been altogether capable of arresting the natural and necessary ex pansion of the United States in the far east. It has, however, succeeded in bringing about national sacrifices in the far east of colossal magnitudeIt is hardly arresting to the attention to recall that in 1898 Commodore George De wey left Hongkong before 4 p. m. April 25, as the British government, having determin ed upon neutrality in the struggle between Spain and America, requested he should. Everybody knows this. Dressed Up But it is arresting to the But Nowhere attention to recall that To Go! when he left Hongkong he had absolutely no place to go but to Manila; and there, to make a place for his fleet, it would be neces sary first to destroy the Spanish fleet, for we had not a naval rendezvous in the whole far east! Our far eastern fleet measured 18,000 tons; England’s, Germany’s and Japan’s each three times that. We had commercial interests in Manila; our with drawal from far eastern waters, in time of war, would have been the signal for these interests to be attacked and annihilated. The providence, so-called, of the situation lias been romanticised upon and still finds bombastic utterance upon formal and in formal occasions. Yet the hand of provid ence was not at the helm. Compulsion drove Dewey to Manila. It was either that or show the white feather on the high seas. This was due to the fact that for fifty years we had been forfeiting territory in the far east, until we had none: Honolulu would have been Dewey’s first available ren dezvous, the first station at which he might legally bunker his ships. The explanation is that our state depart ment had, as it still does, consistently re fused to view political policy and commer cial policy in the far east as a single unit. It therefore falls out that America owes far more to the vision and enterprise of half a dozen distinguished naval officers When Headington returned to Manila from India and Siam he became treasurer of the Manila Trading and Supply Com pany, one of the wealthier American cor porations of the islands, and when the San Juan Heights Company organized to pioneer in selling suburban homes to Manila’s mid dle class, Headington was chosen treasurer of that company and retired from the Ma nila Trading and Supply Company. He is a certified public accountant. Baseball and boxing benefit from his patronage as a fan. He is an Elk, a Shriner, member of the University Club and the Golf Club, and of the Chamber of Commerce, where he represents the active membership of the Philippine Button Corporation and is an Alternate Director. He enjoys a wide and influential acquaintance in the islands and has always received the cooperation of bus iness people and government officials, who appreciate his character and frank methods of business. than to forty congresses and sixteen pres idents. We reproduce with this comment a copy of the first treaty America ever made in the fair east. It was with the sultan of Sulu and was effected by Commodore Charles Wilkes, commanding the first United . States naval exploring expeAn Early . dition, sent out during the Demacratic administration of President Move Van Buren. It will be seen that this treaty was for the purpose of fostering commerce. It was agreed, too, that at least three ships of ours would call yearly in Sulu; there were well defined obligations upon our part as we'l as upon the sultan’s. This was in 1842. In 1840, Wilkes had effected a survey of the Fiji islands, which became a British colony in 1874. They are on the route be tween Australia and Panama. They ex tend from 15 degrees to 20 degrees south latitude, lie along the 180 meridian, the international date line, comprise 250 islands, 80 of which are inhabited, have an area of 7,435 square miles and are "the most im portant archipelago in Polynesia—” that is, in the Pacific islands from the American coast north and south of the equator as far as the 180 meridian. Wilkes reported faith fully upon the advisability of securing them; they were thrown at our head in the middle fifties of the last century, and at England’s as well. We dodged, England didn’t. Kipling reminds us that— "Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm trees an English flag was flown.” It is not a little surprising to learn how like the English the American flag has been in this respect, but the enterprise of our sailors has been less appreciated in Wash ington than the enterprise of British sailors has always been appreciated in Downing St reet... It is so much better, of course, for our parlor societies to believe that the Fiiians, swept into the stream of modern events whether they would or no, are better off under another nation than under ours. It only happens that it isn’t, true: altruism is a notorious misnomer. Fiji might have been our southern outpost in the Asiatic Pa cific. It isn’t. Move forward twelve years. Perry goes to Japan, he effects a treaty with her. Ap parently it is not so advantageous as the one Caleb Cushing and Dr. Peter Parker have effected with China in 1844, but it is based upon the fundamental truth that our commercial and political interests are one; and so it gets, in time, much farther . than the Cushing Unity of Political treaty. Visiting And Commercial Yedo, Perry makes Interests rendezvous in a har bor of the largest of the Lew Chew islands, which he proposes to hold for the United States—by force if need be. He finds himself so well received in Japan that belligerency is not required; the Lew Chew harbor could be held. It isn’t. Washington declines the responsibi lity. Perry chafes, but is impotent. Move forward 17 years. Events have progressed in China as well as Japan. China has never conformed to her treaty agreements, made one after another; our navy has been at various times employed; Taiwan, Formosa, is the wild habitat ot' savages and renegade Chinese, warring upon one another and upon all who touch the miserable coasts—often driven there by storms; so that every man of one of our ships has been wantonly and brutally murderec-. Our flag goes up at Takau, stays there for one year. Commodore Armstrong is on the job. Coal is required for the new steamship line across the Pacific, and For mosa has coal superior to that brought out in the clippers. Six thousand tons a year are contracted for, at $7 a ton, and only 300 tons secured, ere China, by a gesture curious enough in a friendly nation, stops delivery. China has committed excesses enough, and Formosa is naught but a no-man’s land in the midst of treacherous seas and pillaged by treacherous men. Portugal has had it, Spain has had it, Holland has had it, and since 1682, it has been nominally under China, which gives it no attention and will not be responsible for repeated violations of international law. Yet we do not hold Formosa, in one year our flag comes down —by order of Washington. When some shipwrecked Japanese are murdered, Japan overruns Formosa in 1874 and keeps the island until China salves the hurt with a half million taels. In 1895 Japan comes again, and her Japanese sovereignty is permanently Procedure established. It is much betDifferent ter’ *s f°r Formosa to be under other rule than ours? "A more debased population could scarcely be conceived. The aborigines, Sheng-fan, or wild savages, deserved the appellation in some respects, for they lived by the chase and had little knowledge even of husbandry; while the Chinese themselves, uneducated laborers, acknowledged no right except that of might.” It is possible, nevertheless, for some per sons’to contend that God gave Formosa to such people. Would it be sacrilegious to remark that if He did, the devil has trium phed, for Japan has certainly taken For mosa away from them; and what part of it they shall finally retain they will retain by changing their ways. The Financial and Economic Annual of Japan, for 1925, lists the following Formo san minerals now yielding millions of wc-alth to the world yearly: gold, silver, coal, copper, petroleum. The Formosan sugar crop in 1924 was 452,210 metric tons, exceeding any sugar crop ever grown in the Philippines. Even the jute crop was nearly 4,000 tons. The revenue from tax ation was Yen 87,008,171. The expenditure for education was Yen 2,818,512. The ex penditure for communications was Yen 13,426,224, only slightly in excess of the value cf the tea crop alone. America was, of course, the chief purchaser of the tea!