Historical spots in Manila

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Historical spots in Manila
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 9 (No. 6) June 1929
Year: 1929
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Fulltext: 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER UECOMMtítUJt. J uu kin AL. june, authority hitherto pertaining to the auditor’s office. Seemingly it is considered a matter of little importance that this is done; but, in such a situation as that prevailing in the Philippines, too much is seeming that appears on the surface, and too little is hard actuality. A deliberate policy of laissez faire, such as is only too evident ly being pursued, will make no furore over anyone’s depriving an auditor of his blue pencil. For when confusion becomes worse confounded, special agents will arrive in Manila with the bond money from the United States; they Will control expendi tures. That gesture may well be the first intimation that the trap has been sprung, the quarry seized upon. Now there is op posed to all this loose ness of administra tion, an objective; for it is elemental that men do not voluntar ily forfeit power, rather they seek its aggrandizement. Giving ground in one quarter, where is ground being taken in another? It is being taken in the field of organized capital mobilized to exploit both the industries and the lands of these islands, which languish for the impetus of such an agency—the agency of big money. For the California Packers Association’s ambition to grow pineapples, there has been made a reservation of more than 14,000 hectares of land in Bukidnon in accordance with the Alunan plan (as set forth in this review last month). Rubber desires to pass the ex perimental and small-capital stage; it could absorb its hundreds of millions of dollars. It is presently discouraged by the restrictive land laws and the amendments to which Colonel Stimson was belatedly converted, but the nat ural conditions invite it. (The land-law amend ments, by the way, are one of the acts of the Stimson administration which received no local publicity and were, perhaps inadvertently, omitted from at least some of the published lists of acts of the legislature approved by the gov ernor general. Usually, in an agricultural country, land legislation is considered important). Ma chinery has been successfully introduced, and it is more than probable that the modern ex ploitation of the islands’ fiber resources will claim its millions of agricultural capital and its kingdoms of public domain. A few intimate lines from the war department’s bureau of in sular affairs (where administration of the Philip pines is centered) under Colonel Davis may be appropriate here: “The talk everywhere is of the Philippines. They point to the four hundred millions in China across the way who could be made available by a very slight modification of our immigration laws.” What is affecting government here is this new influence, that of the concessionist, who is es sentially indifferent to the quality of local gov ernment, be it good or bad. He, with his large interests, producing staples and necessities for the homeland, will always have quick re course to ample protection; and his primary interest in the country will be its soil. He will sell overseas, buy overseas; his local outlay will be only to labor, and his influence will naturally be exerted toward securing immigration. He is destined, it goes without saying, to have his From Review of Reviews Kellogg in a double-breasted, President Hoover in a plain sack coat, and Stimson in formal cut-away But he is no altruist, his business is to turn a profit with the enormous sums entrusted to his management. In his behalf the government has traded away so much, for him there is so much seeming autonomy, ^ut he is largely a law unto himself. For his rubber, his pineap ples, his fiber, navies move. Things are let go, until it is time to better them. Then there is peremptory reformation. Have the Philip pines unwittingly undergone caribbeanization? Possibly, or one may say partly, perhaps. This article is prompted by the frequent criticisms of governmental irregularities, the demeanor of the executive, the alleged preva’ence of squeeze. As if such conditions were strange, or subject to improvement. It is all, essentially, quite the other way. A new norm prevails in Philip pine public affairs. Government, especially its impeccability, is not the primary objective of administration now adays: pride in the oldtime civil service goes out with the past. Colonel Stimson proclaimed himself the harbinger of a new era. So, truly, he was—the era of the concessionist, of him whose crops crown a thousand hills. But Colonel Stimson was but the messenger of the luscious gods. Ceres had ordered that crops be sown, and the era was as sure to dawn as common knowledge of the fertility of the islands’ idle acres was to spread throughout the world. Now it is to deal with. (Concluded on page 18) Historical Spots in Manila Philip II in 1565, and the copy bears Philip’s rubrica or signet mark. With the rise of aca demic interest in orientalia of every sort, among the progressive universities of America, these records will be valuable source material; but it is a fact that they are carelessly handled, and, piled helterskelter in the passageways of the courts, of which there are two spacious ones, at the time of the American occupation they were subject to unwitting vandalism—the soldiers using them as old paper, apparently worthless, for one purpose and another. The kitchen police resorted to them for fuel! The old records, however, are parchment bound, on handmade paper known as Catalan, and inscribed in the faultless script which the friars taught the native scriveners employed by the Spanish government. Types of this escribiente, or scrivener, are still found in some of the government offices, including the archives bureau. They are like characters out of Dick ens. One charm of Manila is its blending of the new and the old. This writing of which we have just been speaking is, for example, plainly in fluenced by the chirography of the Chinese— hence, in part, its preciseness. Room after room in the archives, by the way, is wholly devoted to records of the Chinese, who always formed a special community under Spain— were limited in privileges, but specially taxed. La Fuerza Santiago—Fort Santiago: Citadel of Manila. Here, of course, has been American army headquarters from the outset, and an American contribution to the old fort is its ex cellent reference library—accessible by special permission. Fort Santiago dates from the founding of Manila, May 19, 1571, and work upon it and upon the city’s walls and bulwarks continued almost throughout the entire Spanish period. The dungeons, the black hole of Manila, a windowless strongroom where prisoners round ed up in one of the disturbances incident to the Bonifacio revolt (of 1896' were suffocated, the little guardroom where Rizal, martyr and pam phleteer of reform, spent his last night on earth— these and many other details are points of in terest. There should be a guidebook to the fort, and encouragement to the tourist to visit it. It was not in later Spanish times, as it was made under America, general military headquarters. It was a school for cadets, and headquarters were at the Estado Mayor on calle Arroceros, as the name indicates. The superstructure of the fort, for offices, is an American addition. The name of Governor Dasmariñas, of the 16th century, is troubles. He is no less destined to be a factor in the game, and not very much concerned with what happens to the local resident and the inhabitants—except as his interests are directly involved. He is only one force, but a powerful well organized one which, very properly, for its own good, means to wield influence where influence really counts. He is an expert fellow who can, with his millions, make fallow lands flourish and the marts of the islands hum with industry. The Ayuntamiento.—In Spanish times this building was the city hall. * In this building, over the front veranda, General Wesley Mer ritt’s flag was flung to the breezes August 13, 1898, a confirmation of the American oc cupation of the city. On a rostrom built for the ceremony, facing the Ayuntamien to and the old Plaza de Armas, renam ed Plaza de McKinley, Taft took the oath of office as Civil Governor of the Islands July 1, 1901. He was the first and only civil gov ernor, succeeding the last of the military gov ernors, Major General Arthur MacArthur. Taft’s audience, down in the plaza, were the regulars and volunteers of the army who were throwing in their lot with the country they were helping, or had helped, in pacifying, who were ready to assume the responsibilities of peace by entering the insular civil service, provided for in the first act of the Taft commission, sitting in the Ayuntamiento September 19, 1900. *It is still a municipal property, and one which should be converted into a museum and art gallery and pre served carefully for its historical interest in Spanish and American times. Taft was followed in the Ayuntamiento by Luke E. Wright (the first chief executive of the islands bearing the title governor general, which Taft arranged for as secretary of war), Henry C. Ide, James F. Smith, W. Cameron Forbes and Francis B. Harrison; and under General Wood, after Harrison, the executive offices were re moved to the new executive building at Malacañang. Taft had been preceded by military governors from Merritt and Otis to MacArthur, father of our present distinguished department commander, and this military interim between war and the beginning of peace—that Pax Romana which America seems so deft in es tablishing—has never received the critical at tention it deserves. It remains a thrilling chapter, unwritten, in the national annals and those of the nation’s land forces. cently, two major laws promulgated in this interim, the marriage act and the code of crim inal procedure, remained on the insular sta tutes as written; the first was modified, not with entire success, two years ago, and the other still remains the law of the land. The first act of the Americansoldiers who took quarters in the Ayuntamiento, was to distribute rations from their knapsacks to the caretakers and their families, who were terrified by the un wonted proceedings and, fearful of going out to market, half starved. The bureau of archives, housed in the Ayun tamiento, has unbroken records dating back to Legaspi’s commission as an adelantado from Until re JUAlílt, 174 7 me. ñlYlLKl^ñH hnAlVlbLK ut IAJIVIJV111K.U& JUUKD/AL 7 connected with the building of the fort and the walls, but dozens of his successors had a hand in the work. Legend says that when Philip was told that the walls of Manila were complet ed, he stood upon the council table and strained his vision toward the city, saying that they had cost so much that he supposed they should be visible from his capital! The walls served the republic, such was the community designated, well on many an oc casion; and at least once they served to preserve the city from annihilation at the hands of the Chinese, who had either been scared into revolt or had plotted the city’s destruction. The of ficers of the engineering corps of the American army, who wrote a detailed report on Fort Santiago and the walls of Manila, opined that the defenses were then, in 1900, by no means obsolute; and that there might be occasions when their protection would even yet be a blessing to the city. Only the part of the walls from the Dominican church (of the Rosary, a first rate example of Gothic cathedral architecture) to the ordnance section of the fort was demolished by the Amer icans, when peremptory word came from Wash ington to desist. This timely intervention by some thoughtful authority has preserved to posterity old Manila almost intact as in medieval times, and reputed by learned travelers to be unique, in being so preserved, among the cities of its period. In other words, in old Manila, with miles of bulwarked walls, casual observer and scholar alike behold the best existing ex ample of the medieval citadel and town. Every thoughtful person, reflecting upon the relative evanescence of the work of human hands, should lend his influence to the perpetuation of this heroic heritage from the golden age of Spain. The architecture of Manila is as yet amor phous, partaking of all forms and none, with notable exceptions. One conspicuous excep tion is the.residence of E. A. Perkins on Dewey boulevard, planned by Mrs. Perkins and meti culously adhering to the Spanish mission style. This single example, and there may be others less noteworthy, indicates the valuable esthetic influence the old city is to have upon our ar chitecture when our journeymen in the pro fession grow weary of copying and set them selves the task of creating and adapting. When THE YOKOHAMA SPECIE BANK — LTD. - ----(ESTABLISHED 1880) HEAD OFFICE: YOKOHAMA, JAPAN Yen Capital (Paid Up) • - - - 100,000,000.00 Reserve Fund - 105,500,000.00 Undivided Profits - - - . 9,346,622.43 MANILA BRANCH 600 DASMARIÑAS, MANILA K. YABUKI Manager PHONE 2-37-59—MANAGER PHO ' “ 7..:. . Edward Price Bell, world-famed journalist who knows his England and his Europe well, visited Manila a few years ago, one evening at sunset we motored from downtown over the Jones bridge, along Magallanes drive and out through the wajled city to Bonifacio drive, the oldtime Malecón. Thence he had a view btck toward the city, and he exclaimed with rapture: “Now I know why you love Manila—for her character! The city has a character of its own, distinct, recognizable, seductive in its peculiar charm!’’ Of how many cities may that be truthfully Review of Reviews photo A NEW “DOLLAR” IN U. S. Paul W. Chapman, an investment banker of Chicago» was not known to newspapers nor to JF/io’s Who in America when he bought the eleven ships of the United States Lines recently—the Leviathan and ten other liners —for $16,500,000. He is 48 years old. He owns the dock railway at Hoboken, the connecting link between ocean ships and nine trunk-line U. S. railways. He manufactures an airplane having a cruising capacity of 4,000 miles with 25 passengers aboard, and he plans com bining airplane traffic with the speed of his new ships to cut the voyage time between America and Europe.— John F. Sinclair writes about him in the May Review of Reviews. said, especially American cities? One may feel it in New York; one senses the growing pains of a Chicago or a Detroit, and looks for ward to their maturity; and in San Francisco, another metropolis with a mission background, he feels more than the ephemeral and the ex pedient round about him. Boston certainly purveys the culture of New England; and there is Baltimore, and there are smaller cities that are not all middletowns. But even so, there is no Manila among them all—none rivaling her, imbued as she is with the nobility of four cen turies of proselyting and indefatigable civiliza tion, impinging stubbornly upon a paganism that will not altogether be put down. Out of this, of course, in architecture, in everything, one does not always obtain beauty; he does, however, discern distinctiveness. The Hubbell Monument. At the west end of plaza Cervantes, in front of the Bank of the Philippine Islands, stands the monument to George Hubbell, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, an American consul who died in Manila, the inscription says, in 1831. This is one of the oldest records of Americans in the Philippines, but Americans, colloquially known as Bostoneses, traded with Manila and established them selves ashore in the city as soon as Spain opened the islands to foreign commerce at the opening of the 19th century; and when Hubbell of Bridge port was consul, there existed a community which gave reason for the position. In predict ing the return of Americans to the islands, Rizal had probably carefully studied the commercial records. Americans were here for two or three generations, leading the way in trade, until the Civil War and pioneering the American west absorbed for a period of twenty years the ener gies of her young men; and with this task over Americans returned to Manila. The soldiers discovered Hubbell’s monument in a warehouse, and high command brought it forth to be set up where it now stands—the oldest American monument known in the islands. Nothing is known of its history, perhaps the guild of foreign merchants had it made. Monu ments are not always erected when they are sculptored; it was a matter of twenty years between the time France gave Liberty to Amer ica and the time it was erected in New York harbor; and during that period the monument lay in a warehouse, duty unpaid! This reference will give occasion to close this paper with references to other monuments in Manila. The monument to Magellan, at Magel lan circle back of the Intendencia building, wag designed to be erected at Mactan, where the great navigator was killed. But, put ashore from the ship that brought it from Spain, it was too cumbersome for the interisland craft, report has it, and so it remains in Manila. Legaspi and his navigator, Father Urdaneta, the Augustinian missionary, were, however, the founders of Manila. Their monument, too, an heroic bronze piece now adorning the old gun-ir^' posite the east entrance of the Ma was discovered by the Americans ( cupation period in a warehouse of th tomshouse—the bronze sword hilt gon pillaged and sold to a Chinese junkr missing paraphernalia replaced with Americans assumed the duty of choof for the monument and erecting it. Burnham monument, on Burnham memorial to the great Chicagoan wh modern Manila and Baguio, rests d> for the time being, as a stroke of lightni it a few years ago. The monument to Arthur W. Fergu American executive secretary, who wa a part of the early civil regime, stands ■ Fergusson in Ermita. A plaque p< the name of Taft, on Taft avenue, bei: at the junction of the avenue with ci. Burgos, and trees planted by Taft and < are growing on the old Luneta, Geneiai wood having caused them to be protected with iron railings. Dewey is remembered in the city’s most elegant boulevard, a thoroughfare which one day may unite the city he blockaded with the city where he raised the American flag aloft May 1, 1898—old Cavite. One landmark in old Manila has an intimate connection with Arthur Fergusson, whose work would have been less conspicuously brilliant he IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENT? si F T E '■ ' - rv ftJN THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 8 TtlE AMEKlkJAPi (JtlAMtiim UF j une, x had he failed of learning the Spanish language. The place of his contact with Spaniards and Spanish-speaking friends, daily, year after year, is the Palma de Mallorca, a hostelry in yellow paint on calle Real, of course in old Manila. At a little round table here, among cronies of his genial kidney, Fergusson held forth daily—in an atmosphere as stimulating as that of an oldtime English coffeehouse. Among the habitues of the place, and a guest at the round table, was Fergusson’s assistant, who succeeded him as executive secretary, Frank W. Carpenter, Governor Forbes’s amanuensis, and real source of accurate information, in the preparation of his book on the Philippines. These reliable servants of the Philippine govern ment owed their effectiveness to their acquisition of the language; and Carpenter did not stop with Spanish as a second mother-tongue, but mastered Tagalog too, if not several other dia lects. This information is imparted for what it is worth; at least it shows that the educated American can become a versatile polyglot, when he wishes to, and make it pay. Men of the Fergusson and Carpenter type had a chivalry of their own making. All during his service in the government, Carpenter kept Box A, into which he tossed a copy of every document he handled (and they were thousands, of the most important) and notes of his own on special incidents and the character and conduct of men and officials;—notes showing when they wobbled, when they failed to play the game, or maybe when they did play it magnificently— the good and the bad together, all in the telltake Box A. This, altogether, was a priceless record, an exhaustless treasure for the historian Manila’s Bañgos—Milkfish—Industry This article is extracted from the paper on the bangos industry of the Philippines published in the current number of The Philippine Journal of Science. It is the work of Herre and Mendoza, and for complete data the reader is directed to it. Obviously, an industry dating from unknown antiquity, which engages a goodly share of the capital of the islands’ senate president, and altogether, only in the environs of Manila, P45,000,000, is something to know something about. The same industry flourishes in the Dutch East Indies. There it is wholly in the hands of the Chinese, and here Filipinos have an important if not a major share of it. The native words garongin and hatirin apply to the bangos, the milkfish of English, at varying stages of growth.—Ed. Of more than sixteen hundred kinds of fishes recorded from the Philippines, bangos is the first in importance. It is by far the leading fish in Manila markets, and is the product of an industry in which over 45,000,000 pesos are invested around Manila Bay alone. Bangos is the daily staple animal diet of tens of thousands of Manilans, and in the typhoon season is the only cheap fish available. Bangos is shipped almost daily either by train or motor truck from Hagonoy, Bulacan, Navotas, and Malabon to various towns of Mountain, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Nueva Eci ja, Bulacan, Pampanga, Laguna, We Have The Largest and Most Complete Stock of Drygoods in the Philippines If you need silks, linens, cottons, or notions you can serve yourself best by choosing from our large stocks We also carry haberdashery, and make men’s suits and shirts Manuel Pellicer y Co., Inc. 44 Escolta, Manila Phone 2-11-06 and the novelist alike, and for the biographer. And what, in the end, did Frank Carpenter do with Box A? Upon leaving Manila, or some where upon his route home to Boston, he opened it up and destroyed, personally, so that he would know that it was done, every paper it contained! Some of the information was too devastating, and he concluded that the fairest way was to consign it all to limbo without discrimination. So, though there is much of history left in Manila, there is no Box A; and as a consequence, many a reputation, otherwise perilous, is secure of historical renown. The oldtimers were about the last of the Victorians, not the early of Al bert’s happy days, but the late, of the God-fear ing widow—of that contemporary American period that doted upon Howells and started Teddy trust-busting. They had a certain code to which they held, a peculiar mixture of sin and saintliness that dated them with the period the internal-combustion engine put an end to. Such were the Americans who occupied Ma nila and stayed to found the new community. A toast to their pluck and their virtues. As to their vices, if such they had or have—for many are our neighbors still, and many seek nepenthe of Manila days in the homeland— overboard with Box A! If there are permanent American objects of history in Manila, they are mostly of their building. It is very hard to write even a little, reminiscently, without di gressing to pay them deserved honor. The above was hastily prepared, hence its discursive ness, as an address to the Manila Sojourners’ Club, May 28.—Ed. Batangas, and Tayabas Provinces. In the interior towns of the above-named provinces bangos in all forms finds a very good market and plays an important part in the diet of all classes. In suitable natural localities, with fairly favorable marketing facilities, the culture of bangos is one of the most profitable industries in the Philippines. Throughout a large part of the Islands one monsoon may bring a glut of fish to the shores, with a corresponding scarcity during the opposite monsoon. In every such locality bangos ponds are desirable and profitable, if the countryside is at all thickly settled, even though there is no large town close at hand. The bangos feeds upon diatoms and other plankton organisms, the leaves of submerged flowering plants, and algae; it consumes large quantities of the filamentousegreen algae. The fry feeds upon plankton and the surface scum on the muddy bottom of quiet shallow bays and tidal creeks. When food is plentiful the bangos grows very rapidly. The bangos is among the most prolific of fishes. One of the ovaries of a ripe female taken in Subic Bay on April 10, 1927, measured 330 millimeters in length, 89 in extreme breadth (35 at the anterior, and 24 at the posterior, ex tremity), 40 in extreme thickness, and weighed 450 grams. The other ovary was equally large but had been damaged in removal. Bangos eggs are very small. The ovaries of this spe cimen contained 3,415 eggs per gram. One ovary contained about 1,530,000 eggs; therefore, the fish had about 3,060,000 ripe eggs ready to spawn. This fish was about three-fourths of a meter in length. It is a safe assumption that fish half again as large would contain many more eggs. In Batavia, Java, Dr. A. L. G. Seunier exam ined the roe of a fish 1,120 millimeters long, in cluding the caudal fin (probably about 940 or 950 millimeters in real length). The roe weighed 1,304 grams, and one gram contained 4,370 eggs, making a total of about 5,700,000 eggs in the whole roe. It seems probable that a bangos never con tains less than a million and a half eggs, and tha t a very large female may have in excess of 7,000,000 eggs. Bangos average 3,000,000 eggs and can only be exceeded, if .at all, by the cod, which has been known to have about 9,000,000 eggs. The minute bangos fry swim in vast shoals near the shore line of shallow sandy coasts and enter estuaries and tidal creeks. They come in with the advancing flood tide and go out with the ebb, and therefore are always surrounded by fresh, cool, but shallow water. A knowledge of this fact is fundamental to the successful culture of bangos. The capture of bangos fry (kawag-kawag in Tagalog) is a very important industry. The flat sandy coasts of Balayan and Batangas Bays, Batangas Province, Luzon, furnish by far the largest quantity. The annual license fees for catching bangos fry in Batangas Province during April, May, and June amount to about 100,000 pesos. The fry captured are shipped to Mala bon and other points on Manila Bay, there being no bangos ponds in Batangas Province. The fry are caught in exceedingly fine-meshed nets, made of coarse sinamay (abacá cloth). Most of them are caught from the middle of April to the latter part of June, but they can sometimes be caught during the early part of July. When captured, the fry are about 10 milli meters long and exceedingly slender. They are so small and transparent as to be nearly invisible. As soon as possible they are placed in low, wide mouthed, pot-bellied, unglazed, earthenware jars (palayok or palyok), some of which have a capacity of about 15 liters each, and others 30 liters. From about 1,500 to a little over 2,000 fry are placed in the 15-liter jar and 3,000 to 3,500 in the 30-liter jar. The jar is then covered with a piece of the base of a leaf stem, or petiole, from the areca, or betel-nut, palm. This is the most critical stage in the handling of bangos. A little carelessness may ruin the whole stock in the jar. The jar should be kept filled with clean water so that the fry may move abocx freely, and should be handled carefully to avoid injuring the tender fry. After the dealer has sorted the fry, the pur chaser counts them. Manifestly, it would be impracticable to count the fry in all the jars, which sometimes number 500, so an average is usually taken by counting the contents of ten jars. In counting the fry a wide-mouthed china bowl is dipped into a jar and filled with water and fry. Then a clam shell is dipped into the china bowl and several fry are taken up in it. The counter calls out the number of fry in the clam shell and the number is checked by two tellers. This operation is repeated until all the fry in the jar have been counted. When all JOURNAL IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE