Just little things

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Just little things
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XVIII (No. 11) November 1938
Year: 1938
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Fulltext: Local United Pi.00 per yeai Subscription. $3.00 U. S. Currency, per Subscription Entered as Second Class Matter May 25, 1921. at the Post Office at Manila, P. I. WALTER ROBB Editor and Manager Single Copies: 35 centavos Just Little Things • The foreign cemetery in Iloilo is right downtown. A shaft built to the memory of Nicholas Loney is its central feature. Loney sleeps here, and to the memo rial, both the foreign and the Filipino communities con tributed. He had gone to Iloilo in 1856, when he was 28 years old, when the town had 6,000 inhabitants and neighboring Jaro more healthfully situated had 30,000. Until he got the port filled and improved, he lived in Jaro. In 1869, in scaling Mt. Kanlaon in Negros in a study of the geology of the region, he was fatally at tacked by malaria. Iloilo had been made an ocean port in 1860, and for ten years Loney had been British vice consul at the place besides the outstanding leader in commerce, finance, and industry. The mall along the river, where he effected the first improvements, is named for him, Muelle de Loney, and the town has built a monument to him in its central park. This is because he founded the modern sugar industry that made Iloilo prosperous and a Visayan metropolis. He formed the Loney & Kerr company, who imported textiles, acted as ships agents, etc., and sold planters British sugar ma chinery that they paid for out of the additional recovery of sugar from their cane that the machinery perfectly insured. The principle was repeated 20 years ago, with American machinery the chief beneficiary, when centrals in their turn superceded Loney’s open-kettle mills of the 60’s and 70’s. Plantations were mainly on Negros, and the sugar was brought to ships at Iloilo by schooners Loney & Kerr built at Buenavista, Guimaras, the isle in the strait between Negros and Iloilo. Brixham traw lers were the models for the original schooners, called lorchas in our islands. The Brixham trawler is a story fishing smack familiar on England’s west coast. The Suez canal in the offing, Loney was going on and on in Philippine sugar when malaria overtook him. His offices were down toward Jaro from Iloilo, just past the Forbes bridge. In Loney’s time, a year’s exports of sugar from Iloilo of 98,912 piculs, just over 6,000 metric tons, the record of 1862 which was the second year of the Amer ican civil war, was tops. The quota let duty free into the United States is now 159 times that. Loney laid the foundations and Iloilo refuses to forget. • Now begins that season in the Philippines that lasts up into February and is dry, sunny, and like Indian sum mer in America. It tempted us a few days ago to walk downtown from Commissioner McNutt’s office where on Fridays he sees reporters, usually with care to say no thing for publication but sometimes with a bit of per spective that is off the record. Such a walk takes you through the Gardens, where you turn in at the old print ing bureau. Another city with such a central park would be proud of it and do things with it, but Manila won’t be budged in such matters. Goyo was there in his iron stall, like a victim of infinite paralysis in an iron lung. Goyo is the elephant in the Gardens, where there might be a herd; Rafael Roces gave him to the city 11 years ago, and now he is much larger and his back comes within 4 or 5 inches of the iron roofing of his stall that at times must be frightfully hot. Nothing at the Gardens, for the birds and animals, is as it should be. There are no cairns for the bears, just cages floored with concrete, and no ledges and caves for the big cats—perhaps no big cats even, by this time. You wait a day when Manila really provides a zoo, and pro vides for it. It is obviously a branch of popular edu cation. Farther along where the monkeys are, one petulant lady was anticipating the stork; though here too there are cages only, they are larger in proportion to the bulk of their inmates and some of the monkeys manage mat ing in captivity. There was a young man at the cages who seemed to be a student of simian mentality. He WARNER, BARNES eV COMPANY, LTI). LONDON — MANILA — ILOILO — CEBU — BACOLOD SHIPPING DEPARTMENT Agents For: Nippon Yusen Kalsha Cunard-White Star., Ltd. Bibby Line INSURANCE DEPARTMENT Transacting: Fire Automobile and Miscellaneous Fidelity and Surety Bonds IMPORTERS & EXPORTERS General Managers of COMMONWEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY ILOILO WAREHOUSING CORPORATION RAMONA MILLING COMPANY Special representatives of IMPERIAL AIRWAYS, LTD. MACHINERY DEPARTMENT Agents For: Sugar Machinery, Diesel Engines, Conden sing Plante, Mining Machinery and Steels, Shipbuilders and Engineers. AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT All Classes of Fertilizer IMPORT DEPARTMENT Sperry Flour Sugar Bags Manila Office: SORIANO BUILDING, Plaza Cervantes Cable Address: “WARNER” Standard Codes IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL November, 1938 was using bits of coconut stuck to a stick. Meshes on the lady’s cage were so small that when she thrust out her hand and got her fist around a morsel of coconut she couldn’t get her hand back in the cage without let ting the coconut fall. But she didn’t let it fall, she got her mouth close up and nibbled it through another mesh; and she did this quickly, as if she had thought about it and learned the answer. Meshes on a big bozo’s cage next Magdalena’s were larger, large enough to accommodate his fist, so the stu dent’s methods here were changed. He held Bozo’s coco nut so low that Bozo knocked it off the stick in reach ing for it, and it fell 7 or 8 inches outside the cage. This had apparently happened before, because Bozo had spread the lower meshes of the cage against just such emer gencies. He now got down to where the coconut had dropped on some green hay, gathered up several straws of the hay for a tool, and raked in the coconut with as much alacrity as a croupiei' at Monte Carlo rakes in the take from the wheel—and with the same superb grace. If a croupiei' thinks, so does Bozo: bear in mind how he had thought to spread those lower meshes, to make his task easier; nor did he grab just any of the hay, he grabbed instead the very straws that would be strong enough for the job, and he made the fulcrum short enough for the straws not to bend and let the coconut get way—doing so by streaching his arm far out and opposing the straws to the coconut at a right angle, thereby not only pulling it surely toward him, but straightly, in one operation. (There is a yarn about monkeys at Yale in the current Magazine Digest, tests whether they will work for money: they will, for food, but not for fortune). * * * ® We dropped in at Bayside Tutorial School a few mornings ago because we like Morton and Mrs. Netzorg who worked out the school and conduct it at their Pasay home overlooking a small playing field by the bay. The number is 21 Antipolo, as the street has been renum bered. Some of the merits of the school are that stu dents go as fast as they please, lay on hard in subjects that suit them best, and enjoy individual attention quite as if they were living-in at some competent academy. Some students are more regularly enrolled in the Amer ican School or a public school, say the Central School, and go here to bone up on their weaker subjects or to get abreast of a class that started ahead of them. Some are taking their course at this school. There is little atmosphere of school, as such, about the place. The boys and girls are assembled round study tables in rooms and on the porches and digging away at the work with out undue awareness that it really is work. As the trick is turned here, perhaps in truth it is not work. The school is a boon, you would say, for families arriving in Manila late for the opening of school in June, and for students irregular in their class standing, and par ticularly for students with definite goals in mind who are anxious to be on their way without such red lights as fixed terms, keeping along with the class, and ter minal stops for examinations in one forbidding heap. Graduates and students otherwise prepared are able to take the College Entrance Examinations given in Ma nila under the supervision of Glenn Miller, principal at the American School. Courtney Whitney, Jr. thus qualified for Exeter after a year in Bayside Tutorial. Frances Kelton, a daughter of Colonel and Mrs. E. C. Kelton, qualified for Mills, and her sister Florence was offered a scholarship at Byrn Mawr. Clinton Braine got a presidential appointment to Annapolis. He is a son of Commander and Mrs. C. E. Braine, Commander Braine being on the U. S. S. Augusta,, flagship of the Asiatic fleet. Good luck, Bayside Tutorial. Good luck from good work done. John Cumming, son of C. W. Cumming of Liebman & Co. (leathers) hurdled fourthyear high at Bayside Tutorial in five months and en tered Sta. Clara College without a hitch: John is one of the fellows who has a goal in mind. • Left over from an earlier number given in part to Bisayan news are some notes about an old friend, Hos kyn’s of Iloilo. Walter Saul seems to be the moving spirit of Hoskyn’s now (with G. M. Loring and Fred A. Loring), but in our day in Negros it was Saul’s father. Hoskyn’s is Iloilo’s great department store, and has been since Frank Hoskyn of Devonshire founded it in 1855 as a chandler’s shop and then expanded it as rapid de mand for its services grew. Herbert Hoskyn of Phil ippine Engineering is descended from the founder, and used to be with the store and still has stock in it. It has long been a commercial landmark in the Bisayas, people call on it for everything and always get what they want. When we lived in Bacolod the other half of the family had to have fresh fruits, other than bana nas, and Negros, raising sugar, didn’t bother to grow fruits. When it became a case of life or death, we ap pealed to Hoskyn’s who thereafter sent a batch of fresh apples, oranges, and any seasonal extras that were to be had, from Manila every week. In every other way, too, Hoskyn’s was thoroughly accommodating: it was like be ing back at Dover, with access to a good general store on terms of personal friendship with the owner. George M. Saul, Irish, was the first partner of the name in the firm, joining it the first year. Since then there has al ways been a Saul, and until recently, a Hoskyn. Three generations of keeping store is a long round. Incor poration was only effected in 1925. Naturally, in the heart of business Iloilo, Hoskyn’s business block has taken on great value aside from its value as the loca tion for a store. Greetings of the season to an old friend. 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