The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Vol. 9, No.10 (October 1929)

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Title
The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Vol. 9, No.10 (October 1929)
Issue Date
Vol. 9, No.10 (October 1929)
Year
1929
Language
English
Subject
Periodicals
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In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
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Governor Davis’s Mindanao Trip.—How Newspapers Began in Manila.—Cashew Nuts, a Suggested Crop Diversification: E. M. Gross.—Diverting Ourselves with Diversification: Percy A. Hill.—A Close-Up of a Talkie Film.—Farther with Francis­ cans in Samar: More of the Mission Trail.— General Dorey Leaves: “Last of the Mohicans”. Two More Philippine Poems by Gilbert S. Perez.—Bridge: Henry Philip Broad.—Governor Davis’s Sugar-Meeting Talk.—The Founding of Mehan Gardens. - An Historic Account of the Ayuntamiento, Our Town Hall.—The New Mentality: President Rafael Palma.—Usual Reviews by Expert Authorities on Our Commerce and Industry. For Students of English: Fourth Installment of Farquson Johnson on the Language and How to Use It. : ULY ■ A • MAGAZINE • PREEMINENT IN • THE • PHILIPPINES ^pHE EXPERIENCED Smoker of Manila cigars knows the quality of TABACALERA Made from the finest selected Isabela leaf tobacco, properly aged and cured to bring out the best characteristics. i !' Try one of our CORONAS f « t’ -THE STORY OF THE GOODRICH AIR CONTAINER When a nail punctures the Air Container it is tightly gripped by the compression member. When the nail is withdrawn compression instantly closes the opening. The tread surface of the tire, down to this point on either side, is reinforced by a pliable bridge of compressed rubber similar to an arched bow of sprung steel. During inflation the stretch in an Air Container is confined to that part supporting the lower side walls of the tire and extending down around the beads and flap. Another Success by the Producers of SILVERTOWN TIRES Strong compression is created by building the compression member upon the OUTSIDE of the tube, and then turning the tube IN­ SIDE OUT before splicing. Side wall blows delivered at either edge of the compression member are resisted, just as the sprung bow resists further bending; and side wall breakdown is retarded. All inflation stretch in the Aii Container is at an approximate right angle to the compression member, keeping it “live” with every . flex of the tire while in service. THE GOODRICH INTERNATIONAL RUBBER COMPANY, INC. DERHAM BUILDING, PORT AREA, PHONES 5-69-42 AND 5-69-43 MANILA, P. I. L. A. COOPER, Branch Manager P. O. BOX 1482 I t > J IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOUR! October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 1 YOUR LOGGING PROBLEM can be solved readily by some type of WASHINGTON LOGGING ENGINE The Washington Simplex Yarder above leads all Yarders in ease of operation and low cost of upkeep. Washington Iron Works, Seattle, U. S. A. Agents for the Philippine Islands The Edward J. Nell Co., Ltd.,—Manila. WAS HI NG TO N ENGINES Interior Street-Car Advertising Small in Cost—Large in Results For Rates and Particulars—Call Up Telephone 2-19-11 Manila Electric Company A. B. TIGH Advertising Manager 134 San Marcelino Manila, P. I. THE WHITE EMPRESS OF THE PACIFIC EMPRESS OF ASIA EMPRESS OF FRANCE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA 16900 tons 18400 tons 16800 tons To CANADA, UNITED STATES and EUROPE QUICKEST TIME ACROSS THE PACIFIC CANADIAN PACIFIC STEAMSHIPS 14-16 CALLE DAVID MANILA, P. I. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 2 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 STAMP IT Saves time; eliminates dis­ putes; eliminates mistakes. TIME STAMPS DATE STAMPS SIGNATURE STAMPS FIRM STAMPS or for any other purpose where a rubber or metal stamp can take the place of writing it in by hand or machine. Tell us what you need and let us suggest a “cure” Philippine Education Co., Inc. 101-103 Escolta MANILA Has your Wife seen the “New Yorker” ELECTOLUX GAS REFRIGERATOR A Splendid New Model No Motor—No Noise Only F390.00 Or On Convenient Monthly Terms Manila Gas Corporation Showroom: 5 Calle David Tel. 2-16-43 CORONAS DE LA ALHAMBRA HALF-A-CORONA EXCELENTES ESPECIALES BELLEZAS PRESIDENTES Etc., Etc. Watch For The Name ALHAMBRA On Rings and Labels— It’s Your Protection Alhambra Cigar and Gigarette Mfg. Go. 31 Tayuman Manila, P. I. ¡MITA TED BUT NEVER EQUALLED! IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY The American Chamber of Gommerce OF THE Philippine Islands (Member Chamber of Commerce of the United States) ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER May 25, 1921, at the POST OFFICE AT MANILA, P. I. Local Subscription: P4.00 per year Foreign Subscription: $3.00 U. S. Currency, per year Single Copies: 35 Centavos WALTER ROBB, Editor and Manager DIRECTORS AND OFFICERS P. A. Meyer, President H. M. Cavender, Vice-President John W. Haussermann, Vice-President John L. Headington, Treasurer H. L. Heath W. L. Applegate J. C. Rockwell Kenneth B. Day Alf Welhaven ALTERNATE DIRECTORS J. L. Headington A. B. Cresap Frank W. Butler Wm. H. Rennolds John R. Wilson, Secretary E. E. Selph, General Counsel EXECUTIVE P. A. Meyer, Chairman H. M. Cavender H. L. Heath COMMITTEES FINANCE W. H. Rennolds, Chairman E. M. Gross O. M. Schuman RELIEF W. J. Odom, Chairman Carl Hess John Gordon MANUFACTURING P. A. Meyer, Chairman Alf Welhaven E. A. Seidenspinner LEGISLATIVE P. A. Meyer, Chairman Frank B. Ingersoll J. R. Wilson FOREIGN TRADE H. B. Pond, Chairman L. L. Spellman M. M. Saleeby PUBLICATIONS P. A. Meyer, Chairman 'Roy C. Bennett BANKING AND CURRENCY Stanley Williams, Chair­ man W. J. Shaw RECEPTION AND ENTERTAINMENT J. L. Headington, Chair­ man F. W. Butler J. R. Wilson HOUSE -------------------- , Chairman J. R. Wilson LIBRARY John Gordon, Chairman SHIPPING H. M. Cavender, Chairman G. P. Bradford L. E. Nantz INVESTMENTS P. A. Meyer, Chairman H. M. Cavender Davis Goes A-Voyaging, Etc.! While legislation was on the crane and simmering only slowly, Gover­ nor Davis went south on the Apo on his first extended provincial inspection. With him were his friend from St. Louis, George S. Johns, editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, his daughter Miss Davis, his niece Miss Alita Davis, staff members—Brigadier General Halstead Dorey, among others, the general bidding good-bye to Moroland and Moro friends—and Wilkins of the Manila Daily Bulletin, who was surrogate of the newspapers and the press services, and took pictures. Wherever Davis may go and smile, and Miss Davis and Miss Alita Davis may go and smile, there will be a Davis triumph; and whither the going may be matters not. The southern trip was a triumph, of course; these islands may be said to have placed themselves in fee to some amiable and distinguished official folk by name of Davis. But some real work was done by His Excellency. The smile may have changed momentarily to a frown at Iloilo, where the river is dammed to facilitate the work on the marginal wharf and some of the citizens com­ plain that their property is flooded and being ruined by engineering which more expertness would improve. Davis saw and heard, but said nothing. Maybe he has said it since he came back to Manila; the trip began at mid­ night August 23 and ended at sundown September 5. From Iloilo the course was set to Isabela de Basilan, where the islands’ two rubber plantations past the development stage were visited and ex­ ecutive interest in expanding the rubber industry was evidenced; but little was said of ways and means, this waiting upon the maturity of judgment and the gathering of further information. At Zamboanga, naturally, there was the question of San Ramon penal colony: whether to sell the plantation and move the prisoners or keep on doing business at the same old stand. Judgment reserved. At Jolo, the big crowd was all for the retention in office of Governor James R. Fugate, but a few standard-bearers toted placards to the con­ trary; and there’s a pretty tale. Fugate’s economies have gone so far as to deprive some officials of free automobiles and gasoline—heresy, as every taxpayer knows, in a bureaucracy, where every man’s importance is meas­ ured by his perquisites—and Fugate has restored to the Mohammedan mullahs their privilege to judge the Sulu fallaheens in religious and tribal matters, levy and collect fees therefor, as in instances of marriage and divorce, and thereby to live in the manner to which they have become ac­ customed—by exaction of tribute. The other side of this quaint picture is that it seems these restive recruits of the Crescent, the Sulu fallaheens, will take up the peaceful practices of husbandry wherever roads are built, giving them access to constabulary protection, and schools established. Besides them, there is the Christian minority in Sulu. A tangled situation, and again—judgment reserved. The Apo lazily journeyed on to Cotabato, Port Baras and Malabang, sluggish harbors of southern Mindanao, and, leaving its party ashore to hitch-hike along the old military wagon road to Ganasi and Lanao lake, steamed round to Iligan to pick them up again. On this hike the Maria Cristina falls were viewed, and seemingly limitless areas of Mindanao wilder­ ness surrounding what would be a source of hydroelectric power, the cas­ cading river, were the wilderness changed into an inhabited industrious P s' H íaET'/N F r 0 fl J . G n CASH O'ix. VH P « Dodega) There Is Nothing Quite Like The New Ford Anywhere In Design, Quality And Price Come in and let us give you a demonstration Very Easy Terms May Be Arranged “After We Sell, We Serve” MANILA TRADING & SUPPLY COMPANY MANILA ILOILO CEBU BACOLOD IN ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 4 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 region. This seems to have beenTthe locale, lending itself to quiet depths of thought, where the executive mind mulled over the idea of settling with the inhabitants of Mindanao by settling them upon allotments. Later, in Manila, La Vanguardia nearly endorsed the proposal of Director Hidrosollo of the nonchristian bureau, and an anonymous colleague of his, as memory momentarily runs, to carry out Governor Davis’s suggestion by creating a reservation of 3,500 hectares. When it is recalled that the Mohammedans alone in Mindanao number about 500,000, marrying young and often, readily submitting to vaccination and sometimes taking quinine, the reader may calculate for himself how very generous the proposal is. The Mohammedans in their colorful tribal costumes are picturesque; they submitted their petitions, mostly for schools and public improvements, made their obeis­ ances and bestowed their presents, and, at Iligan, bowed proudly out of the picture. The Mohammedan problem—judgment reserved. Not much was seen of the nineteen or twenty other peoples of Mindanao, their innings await another journey; they, too, have grievances, and once had the impression they possessed some of the lands over which their forefathers were tribal lords. The lugubrious aspect of pedestrian delega­ tions, down barefoot from the hills, excites but fleeting perturbation—the Apo's halts at ports are short and she is off and beyond the horizon before the chattering ashore has hardly subsided. Nevertheless, Governor Davis learns of the prevailing long delays in the granting of home­ stead patents; speed in this and road-building, he surmises, would do much good. He calls for data; they are available to everyone in the Lands (bureau) Courier and show that during the period since 1904, when the lands bureau was organized, something more than 32,000 home­ stead applications have been approved and that 100,000 are now pending. Discouraging—judg­ ment reserved. Homeward from Iligan is old Cebu, port, province and island—striated with roads and knit into a busy community of a million people bent upon wresting their livelihood from the stingy mountainous soil and the commerce commanded by the harbor, where the new im­ provements are progressing satisfactorily. Ships of the seven seas lay here, unburdening them­ selves of cargoes of manufactures and rebur­ dening themselves with bales of Manila hemp and sisal, bags of copra and tanks of coconut oil. Entertainment was lavish, and the little Apo lay to sagaciously until the typhoon at Manila—presaging the sugar convention, per­ haps—blew over and the high seas were once more venturable. Sure enough, the sugar convention was wait­ ing, and, when care had been taken to keep calm about the storm, but to send relief where it was needed (a duty involving a morning’s airplane flight across the mountains to the Infanta coast on the Pacific), Davis delivered his address purporting to announce his major economic policy—the reason for the appearance of the address elsewhere in these pages. Some suspect that the address took tone from the fact that Congress is in special session over the tariff; however that may be, Davis did advocate limiting the further progress of our sugar industry as a piece of practical sense‘and practical politics. The convention thereafter adopted a resolution against undue expansion; Osmeña announced that unless expansion is curtailed he will have the law on the industry; and bless you, he will! Strange transformation: only a short while ago, he who would plant sugar and pledge his property for the building of a sugar mill was lauded as a citizen of enterprising virtue—he had credit at the bank; and now the man who would follow that chap’s example is threatened with the law and blacklisted at the loans window! The Davises in a Basilan Rubber Grove Research on this occult situation turned up the story of George Wilcox, of Kauai, T. H. Back on Kauai, T. H., some 40 years or so ago, George Wilcox produced a crop of sugar which he had to sell in New York at about 2.09 cents a pound. Wilcox was then about fifty years old, and things looked so black to him that he went out and bought more fallow fields and tripled his acreage of sugar. “If sugar is going to be cheap, a man’s got to have a lot of it to make any money,” said Wilcox, in explanation to his astounded neighbors. And forth he went about the seeding of new fields; that is, about his business. Being impractical in one thing, he was im­ practical in all. He spoiled his labor, then German and Japanese, by paying more than the standard wage, building better than the standard cottages, and allotting to each cottage a half-acre garden which he irrigated free; and if any family wanted more than a half-acre, Wilcox provided it. Dr. Townsend, who teaches philosophy at the U. P., tells smilingly of a time when he visited Wilcox and found the great plantation proprietor busy in his carpenter shop devising a contrivance that Townsend couldn’t fathom the use of. Next morning the two rode out to the plantation villages together, Wilcox inquiring here about a sick child, there about a fever case—whether or not the doctor had come and his orders were being followed— all very impractical. They came to the Germans’ cottages. “We’ll go in here,” said Wilcox, pointing out a cottage with an anxious mother at the door; and he carried along with him the mysterious contrivance he had fashioned in the carpenter shop. In that household was a lad with a club foot, and the doctor had said he could probably cure it if he had just the right cast to fit it into. The plantation owner, old-fogy George Wilcox— past fifty and tripling his sugar fields with sugar at 2 cents a pound!—had made it his personal concern to provide the cast the doctor needed For Every Type of Motor Driven Vehicle or Machine “Look for the blue tin" STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW YOR IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COi L October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE J 0 URN AL to correct that tow-headed kid’s deformity! And who in h— is a club-footed, tow-headed kid on a sugar plantation anyway? Just a lot of bother! George Wilcox failed, of course: he was so profoundly and incurably impractical. But failure that he was, he is still living, though up in his nineties and disinclined to work. In fact, Wilcox always was such a perverse fellow that he never would work unless he could see something in it—not even putter aimlessly in his carpenter shop. Now, he doesn’t even know what his income is, it’s so immaterial to him; and he has to tell the publicans they have on Kauai to go over his books and figure it out for themselves, setting down what they think he should pay. “What there is of it is there,” he says. The assessor has an awful time with him too, for Wilcox doesn’t know the value of his own lands! But they’re still in sugar, though only worth the paltry sum of $32,000,000, sugar being so confounded cheap and costing much more to produce in T. H. than in the P. I., what with “Fall in” with By Diversification of crops is the present Philip­ pine slogan; so, falling in line with the numerous requests of my genial friend the editor, I write this, the first of a series of short articles, founded on personal experiments and studies, as to the commercial possibilities of other than major crops, which can yield financial returns to those who wish to attempt their cultivation. I have chosen the cashew nut for the first of the series because it. is admirably adapted to the small farmer’s requirements, and also because the tree will grow anywhere, is insect, parasite and pest resistant, and commences bearing after three years of life. The cashew-nut tree, for which the botanical name is Anacardium Occidental, in Tagalog is called casuy. It is a small garbled tree found all over the Islands in a wild state, never having been cultivated up to the present time. It flowers in the month of March and fruits from the latter part of April until early in June. The fruit is a lemon colored, pear-shaped, spongy body, of a strongly astringent sweetish taste, repugnant to most people; for edible purposes this fruit so far does not hold out any promise. It can, however, easily be fermented and distil­ led off into alcohol.. The part of the fruit that chiefly concerns us is the small kidney-shaped nut attached to the lower end of the fruit, weigh­ ing from 9 to 10 grammes. Its shell is an elastic spongy mass, containing a black viscous ves­ icatory oil analogous to carbolic acid, known as cardol oil. This oil makes the nut difficult to handle. When the outer covering or “shell” is removed we find a small cream-colored nut ■which is probably the most delicious nut found in the world to-day. It is not astringent as are most other edible nuts, nor has it laxative or satiating properties. The edible portion of the cashew nut represents about 45% of the total weight of the whole nut; 55% is shell; recovery the higher wages and all. Filipinos long ago took the places of Wilcox’s Japanese and German families, and are housed in his better-thanstandard cottages and diligently working his unprofitable fields! The fate of mén such as George Wilcox is, is sad indeed; they just plod on to failure—seem never to care to get ahead. But after all, sugar conventions are lively affairs: everyone talks and no one really gets hurt. The final decision will probably be the one which is politically and economically wise. The industry is very powerful, able as it was to evoke from Governor Davis the utterances he made. By the way, Davis’s state, Missouri, once had a sugar industry, and was to be ruined if certain things occurred and it lost it. The things oc­ curred, about on schedule time, Missouri switch­ ed from sugar to mules; she was still doing fairly well at last reports. What was to ruin Missouri by ruining her sugar industry is not precisely recalled—maybe it was abolition. It got the old clay-bank commonwealth all Cashew Nuts E. M. Gross of cardol oil from the shell is about 10%. Many efforts have been made irrthe past to shell these nuts by machine, but the elastic, spongy nature of the shell, irregularity of size, and the caustic character of the oil it contains, have thus far been insurmountable obstacles to the success of mechanical devices. Hence the process resorted to in shelling is to place the nuts on corrugated sheet iron under which a quick fire is burning; the cardol oil oozes out into special receptacles placed to receive it, the charred shell then cracked with a piece of wood, and the edible nut recovered. Some dexterity is required to recover the nut whole, as they command a much higher price intact,— about forty cents gold per lb.,—than when they are broken; pieces are worth only about one half as much. It is advisable to desiccate the nuts before packing in order that they may keep longer. According to last American consular reports, India is at present the only country cultivating and shipping these nuts to the United States. During the past year Calcutta exported to the States over four million rupees’ worth of cashew nuts, and about half a million rupees’ worth of cardol oil The principal buyers of cashew nuts are the “Salters”. The Indian practice is to give the coolie a sack of nuts in the shell, forty per cent of the weight of which he must bring back in shelled nuts, in return for a stipulated price. The coolies keep the charred shell which they use for fuel. The burning is done in the open air, but this is ob­ jectionable as the burning process gives off a very acrid smoke, irritating to the eyes and throat. The writer uses a fuming chamber process by which a considerable quantity of crystal carbolic acid can be recovered as a by­ product. In Indian practice the nuts are not desicy het up under the collar, but there were enough George Wilcoxes there to save the day. There always are enough of ’em; there are enough in these islands, if they’ll wake up to their chances. Footnote: That smile Governor Davis'flashes about so genially seems to robe in velvet some mighty stern pertinacity. See how the probes keep digging into the government graft, and some of the grafters. How much is His Ex­ cellency smilingly having his way about things? It’s just possible, you know, that he commences to dominate the council table. It’s just pos­ sible that he occasionally says in Harvard En­ glish, slightly Missouri-worn, “Well, after all, I guess this matter had better be handled this way. Yes, I really believe it had; so, if there is no objection. . . . None? Fine! (with the smile out in full regalia), we’ll have it done that way, then. Thank you, gentlemen (more, and more persistent, smiling), and I guess that will be all for today.” Yes, it is surely a possibility; and interesting, eh what? cated, but when shelled are heaped in piles in the various go-downs prior to shipment. As a result, many of the nuts become worm eaten. These are not a complete loss, however, for buyers allow a 10% worm eaten product. During desiccation about 4% of water is taken out, and naturally results in that much loss of weight in the finished product, but this loss is compen­ sated for by a superior finished article, worm resisting more crisp in taste; in other words, a “nutty tasting nut.” Recently India tried shipping the nuts in cold storage to arrest worm destruction, but if they are desiccated, this becomes unnecessary. The nuts are packed in clean petroleum cans. Planting should be done during the month of May-June, spot planting being cheapest. Each tree should be given 50 square meters of space, or about 200 trees per hectare. After about one year the trees need little, if any care. They commence bearing in small quantities after three years, gradually increasing every year until about eight years’ old, when the yield will be about 500 fruits per tree, or a total of about five kilos of nuts, or two of the shelled product, which is equal to four and one half pounds. In the shelling process, even with care, only about 75% of whole nuts can be recovered; we can, therefore, sum up the yield of an eight year old tree per year, as follows: three pounds’ whole nuts at $0.40 equal $1.20; one and one half pounds of pieces at $0.22 per pound equal $0.33; total $1.53; harvesting and preparing, $0.53; balance $1.00 per tree, or $200 per hectare, not considering the value of cardol oil, the alcohol which may be recovered from the fruit, or the gummy exhudation from the tree, which can be made up into the best book-varnish obtainable. Cardol oil is used for the preservation of fish seines, as a wood preserver, and can also be used as the base material for the manufacture of a hair-dye (Alpha and Beta Anacardic Acid with Ammonia), which does not stain the scalp nor the hands. The sap of the cashew-nut tree makes the finest of indelible inks. The natives Retail /ine American ix., BOTICA BOIE C' MANILA Wholesale Agents Heavy Chemicals—Fertilizer—Manufacturers We have been selling drugs for 98 years TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE ¿ OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 use the tree for wooden heels or wooden shoes, as it is a very light and hard wood. For this purpose many trees are destroyed. Local use for the cashew nuts is either to eat them roasted or to mix them with cacao beans in the making of chocolate, for which it is very highly ap­ preciated. The largest number of trees at Your Newspaper: How It Came Here II One right which does not find universal sanc­ tion among Latin nations (but is esteemed by Latins individually as highly as it is by other peoples) is that of free speech and a free press. This right, naturally, was not enjoyed in the Philippines prior to the advent here of American power—when it. instantly sprang into activity. Even now it is not widely functioning in either Latin republics or Latin monarchies: Mexico and several South American republics now have the press under censorship, as Mussolini has it in Italy, a monarchy, and Rivera has it in Spain, another monarchy; so it seems that whether ruling in a monarchy or in a pseudo-republic, the Latin governing element looks askance upon the freedom of the press and never hesitates to humble the fourth estate at the knees of its elders. This is comment, not criticism; any view on the subject is empirical, since it takes a millenium or more of time to prove anything right or wrong in this world; the fact is, stating it without decrying it, that freedom of the press has never been firmly established in any Latin country now called to mind, and it seems, among such countries, to be buttressed by no constitu­ tional provisions. France will be thought of by the reader, and truly the French press has been great since Voltaire’s time. But that press, written by the people who write the world’s best prose, the French people, is largerly a subsidized press; and such a press is a press voluntarily censored by those who subsidize it. This limitation, in another form, is affecting the modern press elsewhere—as in America and Great Britain—but the government in those countries at least keeps its hands off. (What is meant is, that newspaper blocs are known in both countries mentioned which reflect in all the papers of the bloc the opinions, predilections and policies of the owner, while the absolute in­ dependence of other papers is modified in some instances by the fact that any great newspaper is primarily a great business, and in busmess it happens often enough that business considera­ tions must prevail. Items and editorials some­ times appear in newspapers because the business office wishes them to, and other items and com­ ment are kept' out for like reasons.) During the Spanish regime, then, in the Philippines, newspapers operated under a strict secular and ecclesiastical censorship when they operated at all. Those who were devoted to their letters endured the humiliations inevitably appertaining to the ownership and operation of a property under a superior authority in whose wishes one must acquiesce, and Filipinos had present is found in the hills of Antipolo and Bataan province, where the nuts are collected an­ nually and brought to the Manila market. The collectors ask twenty centavos per hundred nuts. A few of the fruits come into the market and are sold for edible purposes, but most of them are left to rot under the trees. nothing to do with them except as employes. There was, in Spanish times, no Filipino press; that, now very flourishing, has been a growth under the United States. But somehow some of the old Spanish editors held on, perhaps by patriotism and hope, or perhaps because there was no alternative, and, under the new regime, one of these at least became a distinguished editor. He was Romero Salas, of the Spanish paper El Mercantil. The Philippines appear to have captivated his Iberian imagination and impul­ sive nature; he sang many paeans to their glory, remained in Manila, reared his family here, and left Manila only for his deathbed in Spain, one year ago. The career of Romero Salas as an editor in Manila bridges the gap between old times and new. But though there were no Filipino newspapers under Spain in the islands, they began quickly enough under the Stars and Stripes, which give a free press, of course, constitutional protection save in time of war; and even then a good deal of leeway. Retana (quoted by Carson Taylor in his brochure History of the Philippine Press) credits the first Filipino newspaper to Isabelo de los Reyes, the cultured Ilokano who, aside from being a fiery politician and sectarian crusader, has contributed much to the cause of Philippine learning. His newspaper was El Ilokano, and may have antedated somewhat the American occupation of Manila. Taylor omits a date for it. The next Filipino newspaper was La Inde­ pendencia, born September 3, 1898, just three weeks after the occupation, in the printshop of the Augustinian home for orphans at Malabon, a ship-building village in the environs of Manila. This is the place, therefore, to record the fact that the friars and the Jesuits introduced the art of printing in the Philippines very early. There are records indicating that the Augustinians imported the first type and printing presses MOTORMATES ASSOCIATED GASOLINE and CYCOL MOTOR OIL Their Sustained Quality Assures —more “life” in your motor —more “life” from your motor ASSOC I AT E I) MANILA CEBU Associated Gasoline starts easily, responds to your throttle at all speeds, and gives long mile­ age. It is a clean fuel, refined to minimize carbon formation and crankcase dilution. No motor oil deposits less carbon than Cycol. It has amazing stability, and maximum lu­ brication value. Cycol lasts longer; it assures an unbroken, protecting film of oil where heat, pressure and friction are greatest. OIL COMPANY ILOILO LEGASPI IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 7 before the close of the 16th century; for a long time, when their asylum was at Guadalupe, they taught the art of printing there, and only re­ moved the shop to Malabon when the new or­ phanage was built at that place. The oldest Filipino printer remembered was Tomás Pinpin, taught by the Dominicans; the Jesuits, too, had very early printshops. A text by Pinpin print­ ed in 1605 is extant. The printers, good ones, available among the craftsmen of Manila when Americans and Fili­ pinos began establishing newspapers, must have been taught by the friars; the revolutionists who printed La Independencia (which may have been preceded by La Libertad, a paper suppressed by Aguinaldo and succeeded by El Heraldo, as Taylor quotes Epifanio de los Santos as believ­ ing), made much of the fact that they were using the orphanage press, upon which many an argument against their cause had been printed. The first American paper published in the Philippines was The Bounding Billow, Taylor says, published by two sailors on the Olympia and, with an illustrated account of the Battle of Manila Bay, selling to several editions for a quarter a copy—50 centavos. It was followed September 10, 1898, by the first American newspaper, The American Soldier, by a group of the 13th Minnesota Volunteers. It found a place, broadened in scope, and became The Soldier’s Letter. W. W. “Mayor” Brown, destined to be a familiar figure in Manila for 30 years there­ after, financed this paper. Others were started, but The Manila Times, now out with its 31st anniversary number, is the only one which has survived. It began publication October 11, 1898, and has had a grist of editors and publishers averaging second to none in the islands. Martin Egan, “Bill” Lewis, L. H. Thibault, and R. McCullough Dick loom brilliantly among Times editors. Walter Wilgus, when George H. Fairchild was the publisher, had full play for his gift as a natural wit—with little fondness for politicians. When Fairchild laid down the dictum Govern or Go, as a norm of policy for the United States in the Philippines, that, for a man who kept the vitriol handy on his desk, as Wilgus did, was sanction enough for some of the most biting comment Philippine readers have ever enjoyed; it was spontaneous and it kept up daily, until the Times changed hands. It compared in dare-deviltry with the newspapers of the empire days, chiefly bought by soldiers and saying whatever they pleased. If there are files extant (since the lamentable Cosmopolitan-building fire, which left the Times with its name alone, though its files had been rich in antiquities of the early days), that period of American editorship in Manila deserves the attention of a genius. Editors and staff were hardboiled, recruited from the ranks of the volunteers whose enlist­ ments had expired, and the acrimonies of the barracks flowered in their unpent diction: what they thought, they said—in a way to be under­ stood. And they mostly thought contrary to the government. Among all their palladiums upon the preservation of which the fate of this modern Troy was to depend—but somehow didn’t—space is available for but one, The Manila Freedom. Taylor remarks it as one among 24 newspapers started in 1899, and pos­ sibly some others which are not recorded. Taylor thinks it was the successor of The' * Soldier’s Letter. C. W. Musser fathered it. F. C. Fisher and C. A. McDermot soon bought it, Eddie O’Brien became the editor and George Fuller the business manager; then Fisher and McDer­ mot sold it to Fred L. Dorr, an early-days Amer­ ican who had lived in Manila prior to the oc­ cupation and had been a friend of Rizal’s, and Dorr and O’Brien were associated in the paper together until a criminal libel action landed them in Bilibid and made some constitutional history. *The Chicago Daily News, July 31, 1929. Their offense was against Benito Legarda, appointed to the Philippine Commission, and in this day would excite no resentment from the government; but at that time the government, daily set upon by the little lions of the press, as Taft styled them, was more sensitive of its honor. Anyway, Taft had his opening and took it. O’Brien and Dorr demanded jury trial! Frederick Garfield Waite, one of the town’s best lawyers, was their counsel; he carried the case to the Federal supreme court and was one of the last to learn that the Constitution does not follow the Flag except as the Federal court may hold that it does; in other words, to learn that in the cases of Porto Rico and the Philip­ pines, judge-made law will be decreed at the high court’s discretion. Fuller bought the Freedom, which died about 1906; O’Brien has long been editing The Times of Cuba in Havana, Dorr lived out many another adventure and died in Manila about 1914. Some of the antecedents of the new spapers now being published in Manila will be reviewed next month. “By the end of 1899 the orgy of journalistic freedom,’’saysTaylor, “as indicated by the large number of new papers started in 1898 and 1899 appears to have subsided. The majority of those who ventured into the field either lost their capital, if they had any, or were unable to gather sufficient revenue to pay the printers. It may be noted here that in those days it was comparatively easy to start a newspaper, espe­ cially of a political nature. There were plenty of writers who were willing to give the anxious world the benefit of their wisdom for the pleasure it afforded themselves and without cost to the publisher. Filipino printers received from P0.20 to P0.80 per day and if the 'ghost didn’t walk’ on Saturday they lived just the same.” In newspaperdom, the ghost walks when pay­ day comes. Is the ghost gonna walk today? is an anxious query unless the business office has the envelopes ready early. NEW SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH To our readers who may be interested in movie theaters in the provinces—ivatch the talkies. Don’t be caught napping. The talkies in Manila are already turning out to be the schools of English one’s first observations pre­ dicted they would be. The initiatory difficulties at the Radio, for instance, where they were first installed in Manila, have been overcome. New equipment is going into the Lyric. The Rialto has been fortunate from the start. The Ideal goes talkie this month. While there is nothing to add to September’s comment, and nothing to modify, we urge theater-owners in the provinces the importance of installing talkies at once and getting the right kind of apparatus. There are two systems, one synchronizing the phono­ graph with the actors’ lips, the other photograph­ ing the sound on one edge of the film and scien­ tifically turning it back into sound from the microphones. Theaters with poor acoustics can be improved in this detail by use of heavy hang­ ings on the walls and across the ceiling and at the doors. The Radio has been so improved, until it is now easy to hear from any seat in it. Even a town which has been indifferent to movies will respond to talkies; and teachers will soon notice how the talkies help them in the teaching of English diction and pronunciation. Don’t over­ look the fact that the talkies are a new form of drama. Be first in your field with them. They annihilate movies overnight.—Ed. A Close-up of a Talkie By Jack Casey* Hollywood, Cal., July 28.—They work eight hours a day. If they get five minutes’ worth of results they are satisfied. That’s the talkies. Mechanics of the “new” (in reality very old) medium have caused what the producers love to call an art to become as mechanical as a barber’s electrically driven clippers. There’s a human guiding hand necessary to get a decent picture or a John Gilbert haircut. But turn the clippers loose or turn on the juice of talkie-re­ cording instruments and you’ll still get some­ thing—in the barber shop probably a painful nip on the scalp, but in pictures more than likely a classic, the human guiding hand having ruined more pictures than anything else. ■ * * * And the talkies—how are they made? On a set, in a hot, sound-proof stage. Broadway players—stage players—do just what they would do in a play behind the footlights. Only they do it under much brighter lights and in a sickish looking brown makeup, before from three to six cameras. The cameras have lenses of various sizes and are covered with hoods or are in port­ able booths. From a microphone near the players wires run into the sound or “mixing” room. There two machines record the spoken voice in a tiny zigzag thread (depending upon the voice or sound vibrations as to loudness or softness). On the film this is known as the film track and is transferred to one side of the film being “shot” in the cameras when the picture is matched up in the laboratories. Voices of the players are released in the sound room via a loud speaker—the same as by radio—• and the man in charge, by twirling a dial, just as in radio, does what is known as the “mixing”. He makes the voices either louder or softer—-to make them sound right in the theater—as his experience and judgment dictate. The record­ ing machines get the sound on the film track through tiny mirrors which catch and reflect the sound vibrations on the sensitized celluloid. The same medium is used to get it back from the film in theater-projecting machines and released through loud speakers to the audience. Buzzers are used as signals, and the numbers for the various “takes” (scenes shot) are talked into the microphone as well as photographed for identification on the film (silent) which photo­ graphs the scenes. In other words, synchroniza­ tion has to be perfect. Otherwise the film reels —one sound, one silent—would not match up to the sound track or talkie. * * * In the old days a director would say “cut” if somebody blundered. Now he says “N. G.”, and a buzzer halts the recording machines in the sound booth. The shooting schedule following a week of rehearsals on such a drama as “Paris Bound”— on which set, at Pathe, we spent an afternoon— is fifteen days. The work is scheduled to go on for eight hours a day. The picture will run, when released, an hour and fifteen minutes. So Ned Griffith, directing, had to get five minutes’ perfect results each day of the fifteen—which he did. In fact, he did so well that we can safely recommend “Paris Bound” to you. Ann Harding, very blond and very nice, stopped New York cold with her performance of the stage “Mary Dugan,” and does as well in this, her first film. However, we’re no press agent. Frankly, we enjoyed a private preview of this Griffith opus far more than we did seeing it made. Talkies are tiresome, arduous and mechanical. And a voice that is charming on the set gets a mechanical veneer in being recorded. Until that is eliminated the producers never will make the so-called “new medium” much of a threat to the speaking stage. 8 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 Diverting Ourselves By PERCY There are many words which can be parsed from different angles, with varied results. XV e have that fine old word crisis, for example, which can mean anything from an empty pocket-book to a bureau impasse; that splendid word, co­ operation, which hops all over the dictionary as well as the horizon and still remains a word; and now we have that bright evangel word diversification, as a panacea for all our Philippine troubles. Used by a non-producer, it may mean something or nothing; used bv a business man it may merely be a reiterated formula to take the place of thought; used by a politician it comes through his hat, but employed by a statesman, it becomes a noble expression, like conservation, trust-busting or what have you. But just how does this word strike the thirteen millions busied with their happy production, and far removed from the frolicsome rigodon, the mutual admira­ tion banquet and the merry word that does for the deed? The producer is sternly told he is making a mistake if he does not diversify. This is all right for a nation of farmers but not for a nation of planters. Even in the United States, the farmer-nation par-excellence, farmers have long ceased merely growing a variety of produce for actual consumption. Farming itself has moved upward from the subsistence occupations and has become a cash-crop occupa­ tion. Let us look at Philippine conditions, not from the viewpoint of the idealist, the optimist, or the “politicastro,” but as they actually are. We will find the following factors: The farmer or planter who faces the hardest problem is the one who diversifies or grows a variety of crops. He must start anew with some of these and learn new principles, as it were; he must fit his land to the crops and not the crop to the land; he must ignore climatic and physical conditions, which, sad to say, were here first; he cannot afford the latest equipment for each of his several major crops nor can he hope for low production costs,—a matter of time, concentra­ tion and experience. There is also his immobile labor question to be taken into account. Ever­ present problems are magnified when he is unable to concentrate on the crop that yields the great­ est returns. Where diversification of crops has taken place in the United States, it has only been a matter of time when requirement turned in the direction of the crop most suited to the physical, climatic and labor conditions of the producer, factors with which he was actually faced. There is a vast difference between a nation of farmers and one of planters. The former, as a world force, is being relegated to the background. If we had a nation of purely diversified farmers we might find out that our" export crops, upon which we depend for material existence, would be neglected for those of vital requirement for the field worker, as in Russia. Our four principal export crops, sugar, copra, hemp and tobacco, which, together with our principal domestic commodity, rice, are loca­ ted in regions over which the clever word has no control, for they are bound rigidly by climatic and physical conditions. As a matter of fact, we need more concentration than diversification to bring these crops up to what they should be, for in the last analysis they supply the where­ withal the country requires in the way of favor­ able balances of trade. It \ ould be interesting to have our experts, who ar< not faced with the actual conditions of the prou icer, recommend a paying crop that coulcl substitute rice in the clay lands of the Central Luzon plain, bound by monsoons, or one that might enrich the poverty-stricken Ilocano Coast, or the typhoon racked provinces of Isa­ bela and Cagayan, not to speak of the Batanes. Have we any agricultural or political Messiah who can discover that hemp can be produced north of a line running from Zambales to Baler, copra in Nueva Ecija, or vast quantities of cacao in Abra, rice in Davao or Cebu? The climatic with Diversification A. Hill* *From the Manila Daily Bulletin. conditions facing the planter from Basco to Jolo have thus far baffled all but the most op­ timistic theorists. If our agriculturists by proxy and exponents of the nebulous theory of diversification applied to Philippine crops mean that each region should diversify with the crops of the others, in other words, that each should grow a small area devot­ ed to sugar, rice, copra, hemp, etc., so that they WHAT A ROAD DOES Henry Becker, of Aparri, tells on his fre­ quent visits to Manila of the stimulation the road into the Cagayan valley has been to in­ dustry in that region, particularly to agri­ culture. Formerly the valley imported rice, now it exports some 125,000 bags a month. More than 100 small rice mills have been installed, most of them in villages which never had heard of such conveniences before the road gave machinery salesmen a means of reaching the valley. Sugar-cane planting is being extended, and the commerce-and-industry bureau reports a sugar-mill company organized; for several years, however, the output of this mill will be consumed in the valley. Less tobacco is being grown, Becker says, farmers are turning to rice and corn as better crops. This is partly a response to circulars printed in the local dialect and widely distributed among the farmers two years ago, Becker, Judge Cata lino Sevilla and more than 20 other influential men ha­ ving been associated in the preparation of the circular. Lumber and logs are among the valley’s exports which are increasing in volume and value. The road across the mountains from Bangui to Aparri, giving access to the Ilokos region without the necessity of the present long, expensive detour, is greatly needed. will not put their eggs all into one basket (a homely phrase that has ruined many a farmer) we cannot see how this ruinous policy would favorably affect Philippine conditions. If they advocate the production of new crops such as chinchona, pepper, camphor, or oil-nuts, they will have to resort to other methods than the blah-blah before they get producers to abandon Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Co. OF MANILA ENGINEERS MANUFACTURERS CONTRACTORS 71-77 Muelle de la Industria MANILA, P. I. a good egg for one that might be addled, or divert their energy and capital from the known to the unknown. If they mean the growing of crops such as cotton, cacao, coffee, kapok, etc., they sh ould be aware that these do grow here but they are grown unprofitablv or there would long ago have been a rush to engage in such industries. If they mean the diversification of crops to be put into pigs, cattle, poultry, this is also being done but we see no millionaires in any of those diversified industries. They should also note that the price of Philippine coffee produced in Batangas, when the industry there was at its zenith, cannot compete with the flood of Braz­ ilian, Columbian and Central American coffee at present prices. There are quite a few angles to this diversification, it must be admitted. The whole problem comes back to its original status of many years ago. Only , those entities of large capital desiring security, and willing to embark in new industries can solve the problems of introducing a new crop into the Isles of Philip. This modus operandi is paralyzed under present conditions and heeds not the siren song now sung by the co-oppers, who retain their former reser­ vations, mental and what-not. This may be the result of our hot climate,—quien sabe,—as it is not in line with the aspirations of the im­ practical; but it exists—like a sore thumb. Again the production or diversification, as you prefer, of cotton, coffee, cacao, brings us in direct competition with these same commodities pro­ duced in the United States, South America and Africa,—another problem. To advocate for the Philippines what is good in other countries needs more gray matter than that prompting a mere cursory exclamation. Diversity might lie in the cutting down of imports like pork andbeef prod­ ucts, eggs, fish, spices, pepper, etc. Who is the Moses who wants to invest money in these indus­ tries? If they were profitable they would be flourishing adjuncts instead of adverse facts. Why ask the cattle raisers to diversify when they are blocked by law? Why ask the sugar-grower to turn to pepper, the rice producer to grow cam­ phor or abandon a good egg for a doubtful hen­ fruit? No producer with his nose to the grind­ stone can be a patriot, nor does he welcome the idea of grafting the egg-plant with the milkweek to produce a vegetable custard. To date we have no Utopian idea that will aid us in producing more wealth except by concen­ tration rather than diversification owing to our unspeakable status. Faced with the dilemma of lowered prices for tropical products, expansion is out of the question, for many of the prices IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 9 offered are less than the cost of production. If diversification means new crops, who is to be the John D. or Edison who will lead the way—at a price? If it means diversification of known crops, it leads back to doing each other’s washing. What we need is a Society of Amigos de Paisanos and not Amigos del Pais. All these things were tried, weighed in the balances and found wanting, as any one can ascertain if he cares to read history. For four long centuries we have found out what crops can be produced here under our peculiar climatic limitations. It now remains to be seen what new ones can be introduced under our peculiar political limitations. We are inclined to believe from past performances that Juan will let some George do it, for he has only a few eggs in his basket which he knows are good eggs. Farther with Franciscans in Saman For two months we left the Franciscans labor­ ing in Samar, at the many missions taken over by them from the founders, the Jesuits, upon the latter’s expulsion from the Philippines in 1768. Other matters have claimed space, and our friend, the companion of the vicar of Santa Clara convent, has been making a vain fight against cancer of the throat. Samar was a familiar book to him, he was a parish priest there for so many years. He was short, stout, and sunny-natured. He knew how to suffer excruciating pain and die of it—with philosophic THE MANILA HOTEL LEADING HOTEL IN THE ORIENT Designed and constructed to secure coolness, sanitation and comfort under tropic climatic conditions Provides every Western convenience combined with every Oriental luxury Finest Dance Orchestra in the Far East Management - - WALTER E. ANTRIM uncomplaining thoughts, merry-smiling lips even when the voice was but a whisper, and faith that all is ordered for the best. Oh, an old formula enough; but a formula that made of our friend a very fine man to know. If anyone would make fine acquaintances, let him insinuate himself into the friendship of some of the friars in the walled city whom he thinks he should like to know; and let him go and visit with them, and they with him. He shall better his Spanish, revise his views perhaps, and fill his memory with quaint reminiscences out of which good tales may be made. The friars’ geniality is spontaneous and unfailing. They may think little enough of many present-day institutions, but they always think well of their fellow man. Some want Spanish teachers. Why not a friar friend? We could wish that the old priest from Samar had not had to succumb to cancer, but he seemed to mind it little enough. Faith was his nurse­ maid, submission his physician. When we occasionally took groups of children to the convent and went up into the vicarage, he gave each one some religious token—a picture of one of the saints in a plush or silken frame the nuns had made for it. He gave our daughter the Nazarene, which has become a cherished symbol to her; and on his hand, when he gave it, was the palsy of death, but on his lips and in his merry eyes gleamed a smile that knew not that mysterious halting, or unexplained shifting of course which men call death—wanting a better word. Many another friar living out his days among us, but with so very few of us, is a character who will bear acquaintance. If our traditions come to be as eloquent as theirs, taken with all their faults, but with their virtues too, great indeed will be our annals in these islands. Father Julian, God rest him. Now let us see some more of the Franciscans’ work in Samar: For the others he has neither capital, time nor inclination in the face of existing conditions. The proof of the feasibility of introducing n<ew crops here lies in the melancholy fact of sums aggregating into the, millions spent here by those who tried and were beaten. And the crops were many from peanuts to pineapples, kapok to cam­ phor, castor-oil-beans to champacas, and a score of other efforts in agricultural pioneering. Tired of the fruitless struggle and saddened by the loss of their capital they have long since disappeared from the scene. The introduction of new crops is the work of efficient experimental stations carried on by entities that can afford to lose at first if there is ultimate hope in prospect. These again would be organizations of some magnitude which desire to invest in a stable country with the hope of a continuity of existence. Sulat, meaning Writing. At the edge of a beautiful and fertile plain on the east coast of Samar, on the right bank of the Sulat river and on the shore of secure cove. “The church, dedicated to St. Ignatius Loyola, is of stone, built by the Jesuits and repaired by Fr. Enrique de Barcelona in 1844, who at the same time built a bell tower of stone (no doubt serving as a fortress against the Moros too), a beautiful baptismal chapel and a cemetery surrounded by a stone wall, outside the town and well situated. The convento is also of stone, strong and spacious. There is a wooden town hall and a primary school supported by the community fund, the building being by Father Barcelona; the other buildings, excepting about ten wooden ones, are of nipa and in the usual style of the country.” When Father Huerta wrote, in 1865, he also mentioned the chapel in the visita of Catalaban, on the island of that name at the mouth of the cove. San Antonio de Padua, always good to the poor in their afflictions, is the patron of this chapel; San Isidro Labrador, who encour­ CONJECTURE AS to whether or not you need glasses is unsafe and you are courting trouble if you indulge in it. There is only one way to make sure, and if there is the slightest doubt in your mind about your eyes, settle it now by having our experienced Optometrists give them a scientific examination and learn the facts about the condition of your vision. Always the best in quality but never hi ¿her in price ages thrifty husbandry and blesses the crops, is the patron of the ermita at Meytigbao. Of course, if their intercessions are unsuccess­ ful, man is at fault—never the kindly saints. Ah, that man should sin: he should ever heed the homilies from the parish pulpit and properly behave himself. The friars’ recipe for a good life was simple, and, perhaps in part for the reasons about to be stated, not very difficult to follow: “The boun­ daries of this town extend five leagues north and south and on the west are not marked at all. The mountains abound in fine woods suitable for building and for cabinet-work; there is a diversity of palms, rattans, edible plants, resins, gums and wild game of every variety. . . . Ex­ cellent sea fish abound in the coastal waters. Cultivated lands yield rice enough for all re­ quirements, especially a black rice known as muiniis, which ordinarily is given to the sick. Coconuts, Manila hemp, taro and yams are also abundantly produced. The people are devoted to agriculture, the stripping of Manila hemp, the making of coconut oil, hunting and fishing, the women to weaving; and all the surplus products are exported in the people’s own boats to the provincial capital and Manila. . . . This parish is served by Fr. José Mata, minister, 27 years old.” In such pastoral isolation and plenitude simple virtues were not of course exceptional; all author­ ity being in the parish priest, they were the rule. Borongan. “The name of this pueblo sig­ nifies Cloudy Place, from the fogs from two rivers betwee n whose opposite banks the pueblo is situated.” As was the case with the other towns of Samar which were early established, the Franc' scans took over Borongan from the Jesuits in 1768, when there were 751 tributos in the town and a population of 4,999. Fr. Juan de Mora was the first Franciscan sent there as a parish priest. The church is under the advoca­ tion of Our Lady of the Nativity. Burned down in 1773, Fr. Roque de San José rebuilt it in 1781; Fr. Juan Navarrete gave it a new roof of tile in 1843 and defrayed from his personal funds the expense of a fine tower in 1853. Na­ varrete erected other buildings in the town. The church in one of the barrios, Meydolong, “was built by the infidels converted by the zealou Fr. Vicente Mérida about the year 1820, who began paying tribute in 1844”; an­ other village, converted to Christianity by Na­ varrete “began paying tribute in 1849.” That was the process, then; first, teaching the seminomadic animists the Catholic faith and respect for established government, then set­ tling the neophytes in a village round a church (Please turn to page 11) IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 10 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 Building and Loan Associations This brief discussion will first take up certain obvious advantages of Manila as a building and loan center. The paramount advantage is the absence of booms and business depressions of devastating intensity; Manila grows rationally, constantly, increment upon real estate is assured. This growth, it is clear upon even the most cursory examination of the reasons for it, will persist indefinitely—until the city has a population of several millions. There will be bad times and good times, but not annihilating crises. Manila is the outlet of half the hinterland of the Philip­ pines, upon which, engaged in productive occu­ pations, is half the islands’ population. These 4-1/2 or 5 million people may be tenfold that number before Luzon shall be overcrowded. Their activities are most varied, even in agricul­ ture, and, at their prevailing standards of living, they never produce anything which does not yield them an instant and material profit. It is sometimes complained that commodity prices are low, and times are said to be bad; but even at such times there is a profit for the farmer, who in the Philippines is not given to going beyond his means—the sugar farmer excepted. Even if the future should bring times of per­ sonal peril to the provinces of Luzon, Manila, a place of consular residence entitled to interna­ tional protection, would be a refuge for the pur­ sued and would suffer nothing from the dis­ turbances. An expert, surely, called upon to pass upon Manila as a place for real estate in­ vestments, could not fail of rendering a most favorable report. Building and loan associa­ tions are authorized for the purpose of providing the poor with means of taking advantage of such conditions and utilizing their savings as a means of relieving themselves from poverty. Building and loan associations are incorporat­ ed associations of men and women authorized to charge high interest and exempted from income taxation for the mutual benefit of their members, who are of two classes—those who borrow and those who lend, both acting through the associa­ tion. As the profits are, when the law’s intent is followed, periodically distributed to all, the high interest is merely a compulsion to more rapid saving. The objective is the building of homes for the members who borrow, and the augmentation of the savings of those who lend. At the sam^ xime a borrower is a debtor to his association, he is, to the extent he meets his payments, equally a creditor. Building and loan associations accumulate the pittances of their members. Those who are merely saving, can save only a little each month, perhaps no more than a peso or two; and they are, even though they may have saved a sum of several thousand pesos, unable of themselves to effect a secure real estate mortgage. Besides, all the time they should be engaged in getting such a sum together, they could have from it no more than the prevailing savings-bank rates. By pooling, in building and loan associations, with others who are saving by pittances each month, they immediately have the advantage of the higher rate charged by the association for loans; that is, 3,000 or 5,000 saving members paying a peso each into the association each month, make it possible for the association im­ mediately to effect a sound real estate loan, the association attending to all the details, legal and administrative. When such members wish to withdraw, it is 'easy for the association to square off their ac­ count with the current collections from other members and new ones coming into the associa­ tion: under the Dayton plan, in wide vogqp in America, members pay in whatever they can at any time, and withdraw whatever they wish, even all that is due them, at any time. Our rules are somewhat more regulatory, but the investment is always safe. Incidentally, few building and loan associa­ tions whose operations are localized in a single community where the natural interest of every­ one will keep them under due surveillance, ever have failed; practically it is impossible for con­ servative associations to fail, even in cities where real estate is subject to material fluctuations of value. The loans are made upon appraised values, the mortgages, as soon as made, begin to be paid; and they are all bulked together in the assets of the association holding them, so that any loss suffered on some is made up from profits gained from others. This illustrates the This article on building and loan associations is prompted by the proposals from Earl B. Schwulst, banking-bureau director, to amend certain paragraphs of the corpora­ tion law in the division of it per­ taining to such associations. The zeal of Mr. Schwulst is commend­ able, his motives unquestioned. But it would be more important to impress the fact upon the public of these islands, particularly the residents of Manila, Iloilo. Cebu, Baguio and many provincial cen­ ters where the people would be greatly benefited by building and loan associations, that the Phil­ ippines now have one of the best laws governing building and loan associations to be four 1 anywhere. Our law on this subject was drafted by Luke E. Wright and Henry C. Ide, who came here as Commis­ sioners and left as Governors, and were both adept in the drafting of good laws and erudite in knowl­ edge of the law. Most defects of fundamental character probably lie elsewhere than in our building and loan law.—Ed. peculiar security offered the creditors, many mortgages instead of a few or only one; and be­ sides that, the constant employment of the money, putting it into new loans as fast as olcl ones are paid up. Those who save through the medium of a building and loan association are only able to save in pittances, from their periodical incomes— salaries, or wages. A goal of several thousand pesos, enough for a mortgage loan, would be too far off for them, it would be a fatal strain upon their frugality and they should never reach it; but a few pesos each month placed with the asso­ ciation is not beyond them, and they soon realize the advantages of living within their means and putting something aside regularly for the future. Their passbooks or stock certificates become sources of pride to them, and marks of their prestige among their fellows. (By the way, the passbook would be better than the stock certi­ ficate, as it would be more convenient to the bookkeeper and the stockholder). As with the saving member, a goal of a sum sufficient to secure a piece of ground and build a house on it is too far off to attract the borrow­ ing member, who can never hope to have more than a small fraction of the required sum at any one time. His income, salary or wages, is period­ ically received and must go for the most part to square up current family expenses. He can, however, manage to put aside a few pesos each month, and his loan is so arranged that such pit­ tances amortize, in a given period, the principal of the loan, the legal interest on it, and the other charge by way of premium. He is credited with interest upon all that he pays into the associa­ tion; after a time, when he faithfully keeps up his payments, he is able to go to a real estate mortgage company and effect a loan (paying off the balance due the association) at a much lower rate. He now has some acquaintance with the business of saving, and may be said to be well launched toward acquiring an unencumbered title to his home. He always has the option, of course, of keeping on with the association until his pittances pay him out of its debt, at which time his stock and its earnings cancel his loan. But he should always have the privilege of paying up and with­ drawing, particularly to secure better terms, at any time. The association, of course, has the advantage of foreclosure upon delinquent bor­ rowers without the usual formal foreclosure pro­ ceedings in court, in which case the delinquent borrower must be credited with all that is due him as a creditor of the association. (The pro­ posed amendments to our law would not be as liberal to borrowers as some laws in successful operation in the United States. There, indeed, it has been found that fines for delinquency are a nuisance; other lessons taught by experience have made the associations in most states more liberal toward debtor members than the law requires). Amendments to a good building and loan law ought to be undertaken cautiously, perhaps in the light of more experience than the Philippines have had with the few associations now operating here. The law often says the associations may do thus and so, not requiring that they must. It defines their maximum powers, and our law defines the associations as home-building organ­ izations. By extension, however, and no doubt in view of even greater abuses extant in these islands, even large loans of building and loan associations upon farms and plantations have not been corrected by our courts. The associa­ tion’s viewpoint on such a matter is one thing, the borrower’s wisdom another. Everyone knows, of course, that only two classes of farm­ ers in the Philippines have regular periodical incomes with which to meet the obligations of a loan from a building and loan association; for such loans are payable periodically, in the same manner as the capital is accumulated by the saving members and utilized by borrowing mem­ bers for building homes for themselves. The two classes of farmers referred to are the hemp planters and coconut growers, whose crops are continually ripening. Any other farmer, be­ coming indebted to a building and loan associa­ tion and being compelled to meet very material payments monthly—or, being delinquent, to have fines charged against him, increasing even the high interest he has agreed to pay—runs a peculiar risk with his land (which is his capital), which may be peremptorily seized by the asso­ ciation and, in the same manner, sold to satisfy the obligation. By the time this has happened, whatever the planter-debtor has coming to him on his stock by way of interest is offset by the fines and proceedings charges. Building and loan associations are not designed to meet the needs of planters for money; their field is the urban community; and in such a community any debtor of theirs, being hard-pressed, can usually make shift, among all the agencies avail­ able, at least to save all that he has put into the association—that is, all his payments together with his accrued earnings as a creditor. {Please turn to page 16, col. 3) October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 Farther with Franciscans in Samar (Continued from pa¿e 9) and plaza, then levying and collecting taxes for the carrying on of local government and the support of the crown government in Manila. Father Huerta describes Borongan as surrounded by fertile lands; Fr. Juan Navarrete introduced there the cultivation of Manila hemp, “all the products of this pueblo were doubled and tripled under the zealous direction of the oft-mentioned Navarrete.” Pavanas. This pueblo when taken over by the Franciscans from the Jesuits in 1768 had 310 tributos and a population of 985. The stone church which the Jesuits had built, under the advocacy of St. Peter and St. Paul, burned down, and a second built by the Franciscans met the same fate in 1835, but Fr. Leon de Tembleque built a third one which is no doubt that still in use. The terrain is fertile, the bordering mountains on the one side and the sea on the other abounding in products more than sufficient for the community. Laoang. “The first founders of this pueblo, about the year 1680, were three principales, headmen, of the pueblo of Palapat, Kahundik, General Dorey Leaves—Last of Mohicans! Brigadier General Halstead Dorey, U.S.A., left Manila, September 20, to return to the United States and assume command of the army divi­ sion which has its headquarters at San Antonio, Texas. Some of the newspapers honored his departure with stories on his army career; the Journal will not repeat the data recorded in Who’s Who in America, but will endeavor to furnish its readers with some of the more salient facts involved in America’s administration of Mohammedans in the Philippines—this being the work to which Dorey was devoted when first associated with Leonard Wood in Mindanao and Sulu in 1904 and thereafter for some years, and later, from 1925 to the time of Wood’s departure from Manila in the spring of 1927, when Wood was governor of the Philippines and Dorey was his chief adviser, handling Mohammedan affairs particularly. Dorey was absent from the islands during most of the time Vice Governor Eugene A. Gil­ more was acting governor, but returned to Manila to hold the same post under Stimson (and for three months under Davis) that he held under General Wood. His departure from Manila in September leaves no old-timer at Malacañang whose experience carries back through the whole period of America’s sovereignty over the Mohammedans of the Philippines. No capable lieutenant is left behind: Dorey, in Mohammedan affairs, is the last of the Mohicans, to overstrain a familiar allusion; and he is probably not to return to the Philippines. Governor Davis’s direct reliance will be, it would seem, Ludovico Hidrosollo, director of the nonchristian-tribes bureau created by pro­ vision of the islands’ organic act of 1916, the Jones law. This young man, first of the young Fihx :nos Taft pensioned to America for college trainmj is naturally very ambitious for con­ tinued success in his career, guided heretofore in measurable part by the counsel of American friends, Dorey being the last, who had first­ hand knowledge of our Mohammedan wards and, in most cases, a decided sympathy with them. Hidrosollo’s task is not an easy one, since it involves, by policy of the government, eventual abandonment of Mohammedan custo­ mary law and its entire substitution by the civil and criminal codes of the Philippines. In other words, it is the aim of the govern­ ment to leave the Mohammedans alone only in their religion; and even in the field of faith the proselyter will of course pursue his missionary labors under the protection of the law. This is no new thing, it began when the American regime began; the government feels that with the education of Mohammedans up to the point where they can scrawl their names upon notesof-hand and bills-of-sale, and the names of candi­ dates upon election ballots, transition from tribal practices to the formal legal instruments of Christian civilization will be the next and quite a natural step. And, rather unfortunately, sometimes, the Mohammedan has much the Surahan and Anodanod, who kept the pueblo in subjection to Palapat until 1768, at which time and as soon as we received the adminis­ tration of Samar from the Jesuits, the town was separated from Palapat and Fr. Antonio de Toledo was assigned there as the first parish priest.” The archangel St. Michael is the patron saint; the church, stone and timber, was built during the period from 1848 to 1852 by Fr. Sebastian de Almonacid, “who at the same time directed the construction of a town hall, tribunal, of stone and timber, and another build­ ing of the same sort where a primary school supported by the community fund is establish­ ed. . . The lands cultivated, fertilized by a multitude of small streams, produces much rice, tobacco, Manila hemp, coconuts and palms. The people are devoted to farming, producing hemp, coconut oil and nipa-palm wine, this palm abounding in the vicinity. Cattle raising and fishing are other industries.” The women, in Father Huerta’s time, were diligent weavers of native cloths which they sold in Catbalogan, while the rice not needed at home was sold in Albav. Cal viga is the next Samar town in the Fran­ ciscan list. Our next journey commences there. same feeling—that he is being led on to commit­ ments of whose consequences he is not fully aware. This is not to suggest insincerity, the govern­ ment seems very sincere in what it does; and it may be granted that it always has been. Some criticism adhered to the speed with which Frank W. Carpenter, succeeding Pershing in 1914 as Mindanao-Sulu governor, h.urried the process along; but the record indicates only a difference Bulletin Photo Halstead Dorey of degree in what he did and what the others did before him—Bates, Wood, Pershing. However much any of these governors wished to respect the Mohammedan people’s laws and customs, it must have been very hard to follow that which they did not know; the tendency was, and is, to follow what is known—our own laws. Nevertheless, Dorey witnessed a tremendous change during the 25 years he knew our Moham­ medans. When he went to join Wood, first Mindanao-Sulu governor, at Zamboanga in 1904, the Philippine Commission had just created that province and provided a legislative council, Wood at the head of it, to enact laws conforming as nearly as possible to the lawful customs of such peoples and leaving the chiefs the same authority over their people as they now exercise. The organic law even provided that the customary laws be codified, printed in dialect and Arabic as well as in English, and made applicable to all civil and criminal cases involving Mohammedan litigants only. There were five districts, each under an American governor, and the governors settled disputes between chiefs and had the power of enforcing their decisions upon such differences. Some remnant of this remains, justices of the peace are expected to have recourse to the customary law where its application is plainly indicated and would not conflict with what we have from Justinian. The original arrangement seems to have been very liberal, as is said, but it was in fact a drawing away from the Bates treaty (with the Sultan of Sulu) and really looked toward what has follow­ ed. The Mohammedans had not kept public order as the treaty pledged them to do, Congress had balked at slavery and had never ratified the treaty, and the President was considered absolved from executive observance of the treaty because the other party had failed of compliance. The treaty recognized the sultan’s civil and religious sovereignty over his people, and we see that the Mindanao-Sulu act placed civil power in the new government it created and aggrand­ ized local chiefs. Wood had everything to organize, of course, in 1904. Taft had a solid foundation upon which to erect modern administration in the other parts of the archipelago. It is not intended as a reflection upon what Taft did to say that Wood made his own foundations and patiently built upon them, gaining the confidence of the Mohammedans as Taft did that of the Christians; and it was upon Wood’s reports that the Phil­ ippine Commission depended in drafting the organic law for Mindanao-Sulu, the Moham­ medan province. These are proud memories for Dorey, devoted as he is to Leonard Wood’s patriotic achievements. For he was there helping his general, such being his invariable allusion to the comrade in civil and military duties whom he loved, as a son might love a father, and admired as a hero. Few men have ever endured more inconsolable grief than Dorey still endures over the death of Leonard Wood. But however benevolent the paternal government of the Mohammedans Wood advised, it long ago succumbed to the nationalism that pervades the land, and, therefore, to the policy, as already intimated, which made provision for it as an expedient. One of the most rational devices was the tribal wards, with ward courts on which the peers of the lit­ igants sat as assessors and authorities on the customary law. The wards have since become municipal districts, and the tribunals courts of justices of the peace—mostly Christian im­ migrants. The five districts are now provinces, Davao, Cotabato, Lanao, Sulu, and Zamboanga; four of them enjoy all the paraphernalia of democ­ racy, they are organized under the general provincial-government act. Only Sulu has an appointed American governor, the one now in office, pending confirmation of his appointment by the Philippine senate, being James R. Fugate, a Dorey selection, of whom reports are good. The Mohammedans were disarmed in 1911, by Pershing; the outlawry prevalent theretofore has since abated perceptibly, but is not entirely a thing of the past and heavy detachments of the Philippine constabulary are always on duty in Mindanao-Sulu. In Zamboanga, at Petit Barracks, a memento of old times, there is a garrison of Federal scouts, Filipino soldiers. The commander, Colonel Fletcher, is at this writing gravely ill in Sternberg hospital in Manila. On his sick bed Dorey had to bid him good-bye. The old order changes. “The Philippine government,” says one of Hidrosollo’s reports, “as well as the Filipino people is greatly indebted to the work of pacifica­ tion undertaken by the (American) military authorities with no less great sacrifice of life. This pacification which immediately followed the general disarmament (in 1911) undoubtedly paved the way for the implantation of civil government.” Lanao and Sulu were the most recalcitrant provinces; in Lanao the Moham­ medans are frugal, conservative, illiterate farmers, and in Sulu they are the immediate descendants of pirates and tribute-demanding headmen. With the abolition of the department has come a change in fiscal arrangements. The depart­ ment used to have all the local revenue and the 12 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 disposition of it, including the port collections. It was very little, but wonders were done with it. The prison building on San Ramon penal reservation, outside Zamboanga, was built of reinforced concrete for P 153,495.10; municipal markets were built for P6,000 each in most cases, either of concrete or hardwood. Now, for their major appropriations, the provinces take their chances in the general insular budget. Hence the current discussion concerning a Mindanao program; some legislators would be liberal in making the jungle accessible to settlers, others say the settlers should be there before the roads are built—to justify the expense. There is indecision, as in all things deliberated over by unwieldy bodies of men, but Mindanao and Sulu progress in the material sense anyway— on the stimulus of their commerce overseas. Procrastination may retard but cannot wholly stop Mindanao-Sulu progress. Out of the schools which Wood inaugurated has come the best system of rural schools, perhaps, in all the Philippines; there appear to be about 100 farm and settlement schools where peasant boys ply the hoe in the corn row part of the day and bend over the three r’s the remainder, these schools producing crops which help maintain them. Davao teems with industry, because of the American pioneers Wood encouraged to settle there and take up plantations on the slopes of Bud Apo, skirting the gulf. They have been followed by Japanese, who have imitated them in the cultivation of Manila hemp and coconuts. Now a modern experiment is being tried, an American corporation is turning a tract of nine square miles into a business unit as a hemp farm, building roads, providing drainage, choosing and cultivating the hemp carefully, and finally stripping, drying and baling it by machinery for overseas shipment. The Japanese have another economical unit devoted to hemp and coconuts, and word comes to Manila that they are install­ ing a paper mill depending upon the waste hemp for its raw material. A kutch factory and a coconut factory operate at Zamboanga, lumbering enterprises are mány, rubber is the prime crop on Basilan island. Dorey wonders about his oldtime friends, the Mohammedans. But they clamor for more schools, roads and bridges and if these are forth­ coming the chances are that they will reconcile themselves, even to such things as law codes and justices of the peace, and become diligent husbandmen. For a long time, though, it will be contended by some that the Mohammedans are one with the Christian people of the Phil­ ippines, and by others, who are not zealots of a cause, that they are a people culturally distinct from the rest. In March, 1915, Carpenter got the sultan to renounce in writing, duly witnessed, his preten­ sions to temporal sovereignty, and to recognize that of the United States. During Dorey’s last year here there were occasions when Moham­ medans came to him murmuring, even threaten­ ing to take matters into their own hands, alleging mistreatment. “But Leonard Wood would not want you to do that,” Dorey would say, “it would displease him.” And with their belief in the undying soul that beholds the conduct of the living, something they do not have from Mohammedanism, but from Buddhism perhaps, this would quiet them and off they would go— back to Mindanao to face it out. Two More Philippine Poems by Gilbert S. Perez Pokeresque Moonlight off Corregidor, And in the distance The towering heights Of Mari veles. On the holystoned table A lone pack of Crimson angel-backs And a saucer Of pearl white beans: Beans At a penny apiece. Morning off the Romblon coast, And the creaking Of chairs on deck; The glare of the sunlit Sea; Close eyes that are Sleepless and weary: Beans At five for a peso. Evening off the barren hills Of old Cebu; Cigarettes in ash laden Saucers, And the steady shuffle Of card on card: Beans At a peso ¿apiece. Dawn off the coast Of Mindanao, And rows of cots On deck; The slow steady grind Of the engine; A lone light, Red eyes, Grim, drawn faces: No beans—• And the sky the limit. —Gilbert S. Perez. Old-timer Huddled about his aching feet lie the lotus years Yellow and sear like autumn leaves in the forest; His weather-worn face—so old and so furrowed With the grim interlacings of pitiless time—• Smiles at the touch of little saffron hands, Baby fingers and tiny petaled hands That clasp his own in the thickening tropical twilight. I’m tired, grandpa, let’s go home. —Gilbert S. Perez. OVER YEARS tire building experience is behind every DIJNIOP tire you buy DUNLOP quality is built on this unrivaled experience, and today, Dunlop research ensures constant progress. Every possible improve­ ment is embodied in Dunlop Tires. Make them your choice always. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL Vetober, 1929 THE AMEHICXH CHA1V1W Bridge Henry Philip Broad By Margaret White, rolling out to the Country Club in her car, fervently hoped that her hostess would place her with the better bridge players. One always learned something from them; and Margaret well knew that her game was not above need of improvement. She was, as a look at her watch informed her, a little late. When the car came to a stop in front of the low, whitewashed club-house, she realized the woeful inappropriateness of the word little. Already eight tables on the cool, rambling verandah had become green-topped foci of interest from which radiated well-dressed women in various stages of silent engrossment. From one of them Mrs. Stanley, the hostess, rose and with a frigidly polite smile on her carmined lips, met the late arrival. Tm so sorry, Mrs. Stanley, I . . .” “It’s all right, Mrs. White. I took your hand. . . You play here.” Margaret, a little nervous, observed that she was to play with some of the town’s sharks. They greeted her with a subdued eagerness from which blame and curiosity were not altogether absent. They are nice about my being so late, Margaret thought, but she had not the courage to explain the reason for her tardiness. They seemed not in the least interested in it. With well-concealed trepidation Margaret faced her partner, Miss Martin, whose reputation at bridge was unsm’passed. They were to play against Mrs. Seeley, an army officer’s wife, who had but recently arrived from the States, and Mrs. Blake, reputed to be the wealthiest woman south of Manila. It was Mrs. Seeley’s brittle voice which called out a disdainful I pass in sharp staccato. Again Margaret felt the distinct shock once before experienced on a similar occasion: Could this decidedly unfriendly tone come from the charm­ ing woman that she knew Mrs. Seeley to be? Why, bridge changed her. That rapped-out I pass so reflected itself in her pale face that she suddenly looked a wizened sprite instead of a handsome woman with a parted, blue-black bob. Strange! Three hearts, sang out Miss Martin, Margaret’s partner. Her faded, but cleverly done-up face glowed with a sudden rich warmth; she must have a peach of a hand, Margaret thought, and how delighted she was on account of it! Funny, how Miss Martin was lucky at cards! Uncanny almost, the way she held the tops! Fate’s own way, no doubt, of doling out the poor thing some compensations. . . From the standpoint of a happily married woman she found Miss Martin’s lot a particularly hard one. . . Now it was Mrs. Blake’s turn to speak. The grey-haired woman, said to be the wealthiest south of Manila, and who always gave exactly the opposite impression, bent her head. All knew that the cogitation would not be a short one; perhaps Mrs. Seeley, a new comer did not know that Mrs. Blake would calculate all her chances, evaluating to the minutest possibilities the strength of her hand. A mathematician, bent upon the solution of an abstruse problem, would take the same posture and probably the same attitude as Mary Blake. Poor Mary Blake, Margaret thought. Poor, yes, in spite of her unquestioned wealth. Who would not be wealthy if she consented to live the way Mary Blake had done all these years? Who would live in so small a house, with such restricted comforts? And who, oh Lord, who would wear such clothes? Glancing at the wind-blown hat, the crumpled dress, Margaret White, smart in a beige sport suit, felt all other emotions swamped by an all-pervading pity. How dearly Mary Blake had paid for her wealth! With her youth and the precious glamor of her femininity she had paid! Mrs. Blake raised her angular face from the cards, and slowly took in the countenances of the other women. Miss Martin still smiled. Mrs. Seeley nervously fidgeted on her chair. Margaret White sat tensely silent. “Nice little woman, this army girl,” mused Mrs. Blake, “but irritating at times with her crisp, curt way.” What was that? A clearly provocative little cough from her partner? Did the snip mean to hurry her on? Did she want her to ruin her chances by a hasty bid? Well, she’d show her. . . and she delayed the drawn-out conclusion a bit longer. Her eye fell on the still beaming Miss Martin, elegant in pale pink chiffon. Again a new dress and hat to match! Surely from that exorbitant Yvonne store in Manila! Where in all the world did the woman get the money to doll up like that? She must be making a lot as a bookkeeper at the export firm. . . Mary Blake shook her head in disapproval. She had the deepest contempt for a person who spent a great part of her earnings on clothes. And contempt, too, though tempered by memories of the happy associations of earlier years, she had for Margaret White. Silly old Margaret! Always sporting the latest styles. Had she not yet come to see that money alone counted, and not pretty clothes? Another cough from Mrs. Seeley, slightly less discreet; and Mary Blake, after another glance at her cards, came to a conclusion at last. With a quick motion of her wrist, she shoved the cards together: I double three hearts. She sat up straight in her chain and immediately forgot all about the game. Her eyes roamed over the beau­ tiful bamboo-crested hills. How lovely they looked under the slowly gathering rain-clouds! Those hills, seeming so near and that were so far, far away! For years she had longed to go into the hills, but had never found time. But she would go some day and invite her soul to its festival, some day when Ralph was less busy with the new sawmill or when he could find a good man to take care of the Lamitan plantation that was coming into wonderful bearing, or when they had disposed of the new hemp land out San Ramon way. . . Some day, yes! Then she would go into the hills, Keats in one hand and the other in Ralph’s. . . It was Margaret’s turn to speak. Always less captivated by the game than by the emotions it bared, she had watched Mary Blake until Mrs. Seeley, a suspicion of anger in her pale? Built by Filipino Craftsmen /’''OMFORT through every minute of a busy day, with good looks and long service to make them full value. There is a size to fit your foot at any HIKE store. 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She had played bridge for more years than she was ready to admit, and now she did not know what to do. Tingling with in­ decision she looked at her hand. A trick or two, no more. She would never play bridge well. . . She always forgot what this and that signal stood for. . . Hopeless case. . . How seriously the others took bridge! She raised her cards to her face, flushed crimson with embarrassment. At her side sat Mrs. Seeley, tensely mute. Margaret’s anxiety increased threefold. But she could not make up her mind. “My partner doubles the three-heart bid.” Mrs. Seeley suddenly lashed the brooding silence with the whip of her sharp voice. “What do you say?” And Margaret, flustered and utterly unable to think, stammered out I pass, breathed a sigh of relief and recovered her peace of mind. 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I pass commits you to nothing, takes all responsibility from you. Safety first! She breathed another sigh. Helen Seeley knew, with one glance of her black eyes, what her cards promised. Not for her the nerve-racking hesitation. She did not hold much of value, but her partner had doubled and the fussy White woman had passed. That Mrs. White! How could anyone come too late to a bridge-party? To her bridge was a serious and most exacting affair and she threw herself into with all the fervor of her vibrant nature. With an astounding fidelity of memory she could recall interesting hands held long ago, could dissect in detail card contests that all other participants had long since forgotten. Fresh from the States, and absolutely sure of her impeccability she could not but harbor toward the other three women a feeling of aggressive toleration which at times verged on unmistakable impatience. She rapped out: Three shades, and turned to Miss Martin. “It’s your turn.” Miss Martin still smiled, but it was no longer a delighted smile; it had taken a grim quality not often seen in her once fine features. These married women, she thought! Always treating her with that barely concealed patronizing air that got on her nerves! That partner of hers who was ever so strangely kind to her. . . That Army woman, too! The way she crackled out that Three spades. . . It's your turn!. The way she looked at you, fiercely, searinglv. . . Mrs. Blake, after all, pleased her most. Always enough absorbed by her own devices to leave others to theirs. . . Those others considered her a misfit from the point of vantage of their own well-regulated worlds! A smile of contempt curled her lips. Would they confine their sympathies to their wonderful selves! What a sweetly encouraging look from that pudgy White woman! Did she think, prototype of the happy-though-married woman that she was, that the world held no other felicity? Miss Martin snorted, but not audibly; Mrs. Seeley coughed, but very audibly indeed; and Miss Martin said: Four hearts. The wealthiest woman again took her own time for reflection; finally she doubled the fourheart bid. And Margaret, weak with excite­ ment, her freshly regained assurance ebbing away under the falcon eyes of the army woman, passed as did her opponent. Miss Martin mur­ mured a subdued Content and the game began. Margaret’s partner played with deliberate hesitation. Let them take the lead from her! Let them wait her own good time! Mrs. Blake with evident regret had to part with the two top-cards of her hand. Across the table her partner shot daggers at her. What was the matter with the woman? She had nothing and yet she had doubled the initial bid. What was the great idea? She’d ask her after the game. When it came to bridge Helen Seeley stood on no ceremony. The game ended with a smashing victory for Miss Martin and Margaret. No one spoke; an angry flush settled on Mrs. Seeley’s pale face as she wrote down the score with rapid strokes of her small hand. Fifty for contract threw in Miss Martin, timidly yet exultingly. Without a word Mrs. Seeley pointed to a neat 50 above the line; a smile of infinite depreciation stood on her lips. That she should have been beaten by such rotten players! No use reproving her partner for her foolish doubling; she would not grasp it anyway. Her hands picked up newly dealt cards. It hurt her pride to be beaten by inferiors. Well, this was not yet the end. Win she would, if she put her mind to it. . . She did put her mind to it and won. It was to her that the hostess handed the tissue-wrapped prize. At the conclusion of the game, tea was served. It tasted extraordinarily good to the relaxed participants. Outside dusk had fallen, envelop­ ing the lacy bamboo, swaying coconut trees, and shivering oleanders with a sheet of consum­ ing darkness. Increasing coolness heralded the advent of the night. “Wasn’t it a nice game?” Helen Seeley asked, tea-cup in hand. The cards lay stacked in their green-and-gilt cases. They all enthusiastically agreed. The excitement of the struggle had given place to the contented sensation of an afternoon well-spent. Conventional smiles again masked their faces. Miss Martin spoke to Margaret: “What a perfectly lovely dpess, Mrs. White! You did not get it here?” “Mother sent it to me from Los Angeles,” she answered, flattered. Miss Martin’s taste was not be disregarded. “Clothes are a problem in this small Phil­ ippine town,” said Helen Seeley, leaning forward. Margaret, to her bewildered satisfaction, beheld again the charming, handsome woman where shortly before she had detected the sprite. The sharp staccato manner that had so changed her had completely vanished. “I’m afraid I’ll turn into a frump some day,” she added, in a voice singularly warm and ap­ pealing. “You could not if you tried, Mrs. Seeley,” Miss Martin’s tone was frankly admiring. Those eyes and that creamy skin could never change much. Margaret said nothing. For the first time during the afternoon she felt really at ease. Her gaze wandered about the three women, so IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER UE LUWUWEXLE Governor Davis’s Sugar-Meeting Talk The sugar industry is one of the most important in the Islands. Thirty per cent of our exports consist of sugar. The total value of sugar exported in the year ending June 30, 1929, was P100,428,198, of which P98,430,210 went to the United States. The prosperity of approximately a million people in the Islands is directly dependent on the conditions of the sugar trade, while indirectly everyone is effected by it. If the industry is pros­ perous, that prosperity is shared by every other business here. Any act which crippled the sugar industry would seriously injure every man, woman and child in the Islands. The destruction of the industry would ruin thousands of our people and would set back the prosperity, progress and development of the Islands for many long years of hardship and suffering. If then we consider the importance of the sugar industry to these Islands and if we realize that over 98 per cent of our sugar exports go to the United States due to the favorable tariff situation, we begin to get a slight conception of the vital necessity to the Philippine Islands of maintaining friendly trade relations with the United States. Recently it was proposed in Congress to limit the free entry of Philip­ pine sugar into the United States. The able Philippine commission worked hard and faithfully to defeat the proposal. Influential friends of the Phil­ ippine Islands, both in and out of Congress, effectively fought against it. The press of the United States supported' the fight by strong editorials. Finally the first battle was won; the tariff bill was re____________________ {Please turn to page 17)____________________ different in appearance, and outlooks on life, and she marveled at the un­ deniable affinities which she saw shape themselves into being. They chat­ ted animatedly between sips of tea. Miss Martin was telling an amusing story, her tapable hands planted on the hand-embroidered tea-cloth. “This friend of mine . . . she went home via Suez, it’s just two years ago . . . and she fell in love with a man . . . They parted in Boston . . . and she came back to the Islands. And who do you think stood at the pier in Manila? The very same man! He had come to meet his wife . . . Here she had been traveling with her all these four weeks ... I . . . She, my friend I mean, she laughed . . .” All were very still now. All three of them sensed here a tragedy that in their married security they had lost the fear of. Miss Martin laughed, a deliberately provoking laugh that spontaneously forbade compassion. Then Mrs. Blake spoke. She had sat still most of the time, taking no part in the conversation. But she had not lost the significance of that laugh. “There are all kinds of cads in this world,” she said and became aware of the apparent irrelevance of the remark. Pointing into the void of in­ vading night, she added: “Look! Isn’t it lovely?” One could distin­ guish the hazy outlines of the hills by the fires of the hill-dwellers. Helen Seeley gazed into the inky blackness splashed with spots of flame. It was lovely ... as lovely as that feeling of security in a place one loved, that attachment . . . But with her there never was time to become attached . . . one never stayed anywhere long enough to become at­ tached . . . One feared it because it hurt so to part . . . She sat still and very quiet. Her life had been spent roving from one military reservation to another.. . Margaret White, stroking the silken pleatedness of her lap, pondered. How charming, how humanly warm were these women! How much kind­ ness, how much friendship and understanding there was between them! With a sudden shock it came to her, as Mary Blake rose and put her arm around her, that always women were kind to one another, always . . . except at bridge. Roll Call On Independence (By United Press) Washington, D. C., Oct. 9.—The following senators voted in favor of the King measure for Philippine independence: Senator King, Henry F. Ashurst, Democract of Arizona; Alben W. Barkley, Democrat of Kentucky; Hugo L. Black, Democrat of Alabama; John J. Blaine, Republican of Wisconsin; Coleman L. Blease, Democrat of North Carolina; Sam G. Bratton, Democrat of New Mexico; Senator Brock, Democrat of Tennessee; Smith W. Brookhart, Republican of Iowa; Tom Connally, Democrat of Texas; Clarence C. Dill; Democrat of Wash­ ington; Duncan U. Fletcher, Democrat of Florida; Walter F. George, Democrat of Georgia; Harry B. Hawes, Democrat of Missouri; Carl Hay­ den, Democrat of Arizona; J. Thomas Heflin, Democrat of Alabama; Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., Republican of Wisconsin; Kenneth McKellar, Democrat of Tennessee; William II. McMaster, Republican of South Dakota; George W. Norris, Republican of Nebraska; Gerald P. Nye, Republican of North Dakota; Lee S. Overman, Democrat of North Caro­ lina; W. B. Pine, Republican of Oklahoma: Joseph T. Robinson, Democrat •of. Arkansas; Morris Sheppard, Democrat of Texas; Ellison D. Smith, Democrat of South Carolina; Daniel F. Steck, Democrat of Iowa; Hubert D. Stephens, Democrat of Mississippi; Thomas of Oklahoma; Park Tram­ mell, Democrat of Florida; Robert F. Wagner, Democrat of New York; Thomas J. Walsh, Democrat of Montana; David I. Walsh, Democrat of Massachusetts and Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat of Montana. The tabloids over here (in San Francisco) have described the typhoon over in Manila as being about the worst catastrophe that was ever visited upon that fair city. Hundreds killed and still more dying, twisted and mangled beyond recognition. Families torn apart, and little babies left without their mothers, to slowly die, their feeble little cries unheeded by the terror-stricken populace rushing wildly hither and yon, seeking shelter from the infuriated elements. INTERNATIONAL TRUCKS Have you seen the 6-SPEED SPECIAL? This extraordinary new number of the INTERNATIONAL line has created a sensation among trans­ portation men and all others who have need for motor transportation. Its ability to out-pull, out-climb and out­ perform any other truck of the same rated capacity under FULL load has made the motor world sit up and take notice. Six speeds, with a TWO-SPEED axle, makes available a reserve of power which makes it practically impossible to “stall” it if there is traction for the wheels. Speedy, safe, dependable, and most econom­ ical to operate, this new SIX SPEED SPECIAL is worth your while to look over. See it at our showroom. Macleod and Company 154 M. de Comillas Manila, P. I. BRANCHES IN Iloilo Cebu Davao Legaspi Vigan IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOUR1 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 What 100 Insurance Cards Show The reading of Middletown would suggest to ly Manilan the interesting possibilities in the juntless things still unknown about this city, nd about the Philippines, which it would be lore than worth while to find out. The book ; a scientific social survey of a typical middlé'est American industrial city built out of an ldtime county-seat and drawing its new popula;on directly from the surrounding farms. How ie 30,000 people of the new city get their living, ature, mate and spend their leisure hours is Id about with scientific preciseness and dechment. If such a survey should be attempted in Maila, it would show this town to be better off in >me respects than Middletown. Work, for one ■ing, is probably steadier here. For in Middlejvn the laying off of thousands of men at the ictories may occur at any time and does occur .requently. Wives of the men were questioned about their anxieties over this condition (and all others affecting their lives), and it came out shat as poverty approaches the families of work­ men life insurance is, with most of them, about the last thing given up. This is a severe test )f insurance, a practical one. It would be ineresting to learn how such things go in Manila. The wives of Middletown workmen cling to the ope of educating their children in order that °v shall have things easier than their parents, aid-up insurance is a means of doing this, ^ourse there are some Middletown families io will keep the family automobile and let the urance lapse, but they are a minority. In mila there is at least one large employer who 1 discharge an employe who tries to keep a car en his earnings are not enough for him to do but he doesn’t discipline them for taking out urance—a means of protection and of saving jney instead of an expensive pastime. II The first 100 cards in the files of a leading añila life-insurance agency were gone over, th the following results: The 100 cards pertained to the insurance of persons, 89 men and 15 women. Jf the women, 11 are independently insured 1 4 are jointly insured with their husbands, ise four insured with their husbands are sewives. The eleven independently insured •de a child of 6, a child of 10, one of 13 and of 14; the average age of the 11 is 19-1/11 and that of the 4 insured with their hus. is 29-1/2 years. The children are of 3 insured with a view to their education; f the best ways of utilizing life insurance is, it on the life of a child, to mature at the age for college and provide a periodical income during that period. Of the 89 men in the list, 12 are merchants, 13 are teachers, 6 are landlords, 15 are clerks, 5 are students, 8 are farmers, 3 are officials, 1 is a chemist, 1 is a soldier, 3 are sailors, 1 is a photo­ grapher, 1 is a treasurer, 2 are telegraphers, 1 is a musician, 1 is an accountant, 1 is a checker, 1 is a priest, 1 is a stenographer, 1 is a mechanic, 1 is an editor, two are telegraphers, 4 are chauf­ feurs, two are foremen, 1 is a banker, 1 is an electrician, and 1 is a shoemaker. Pl,500 each, 40 of Pl,000 each, 39 of P2,000 each, 9 of P3,000 each, 8 of P5,000 each, 1 of P4,000 and 1 of P10,000. All ages are as of the date when the insurance was taken out. The average age of the men especially, indicates that life insurance does not make an early appeal in the Philippines; or, if it does, thought of saving for it is put off for some reason, either because youth wishes to spend or because young men wait until their families are well started, or for something else. One man was insured at 54, for P2,000. The lowest age is 17, that of a student insured for Pl,000. Most of the cards, of course, pertain to Filipinos. Doesit take so long for young Filipino The Insular Life Assurance Co., Ltd MANILA, ow rates iberal conditions ocal investments oans on real estates repayable monthly instalments, at ow interest P. I. If a mindful man with a fixed salary dies, he will only leave a small saving to his family FOR ABOUT P31.00 ANNUALLY our company guarantees the payment of Pl,000 to your wife or sons in case of death, or to the insured himself if he survives the policy. Call or write for particulars to: HOME OFFICE 4th Floor, Filipinas Bldg. Plaza Moraga, Manila, P. I. P. O. Box 128 C. S. SALMON 3rd Floor, Gachés Bldg. Escolta cor. T. Pinpin 11 P. O. Box 734, Manila V. SINGSON ENCARNACION, President J. McMICKING, Manager The average age of the men is just under 31 years. They include no boys; the 100 cards disclosed no boy whose education is guaranteed by insurance, which may indicate, as several girls are insured, more parental anxiety in behalf of girls than of boys. The insurance in force on the 104 lives listed in the 100 cards totals P202.000 and therefore averages slightly below P2,000 per person. Embracing, as it does, 100 policies, four of them being joint policies, it includes 2 policies of he West Coast Life Insurance Company offers a full line of modern life insurance contracts designed to meet every need of business or personal protection For particulars and quotations consult the ?hilippine Branch Office West Coast Life Insurance Co. Pedler Building Manila, P. I. Telephone 2-36-74 fathers to get firmly enough established finan­ cially as the age at which they seem to take out life insurance would indicate? The taking out of any insurance whatever seems to be post­ poned for other things, and the policies finally taken seem to be small in nearly every case. In­ surance has had a remarkable growth in the Phil­ ippines, but it is obviously just well begun in a field that it will take a long time to exploit as tho­ roughly as sound social organization demands. BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS (Continued from page 10) The planter usually has no such recourse. Competition is a corrective influence upon the profligate practices of associations, those which are frugally conducted being soon able to pay the saving members higher earnings on their investments and to offer the borrowing members real estate loans at less heavy rates. Little reserve is necessary for a frugal association to maintain. This comes of the excellent credit such associations enjoy, because their loans, conservatively made originally, daily ^increase in value in two ways: (1) from the payments of the borrowing members, reducing the prin­ cipal at stake, and (2) from the increment on the real estate security. It is the law’s inten­ tion that the profits of the associations be period­ ically distributed, less a very nominal amount, to the saving and the borrowing members by whose efforts in conserving pittances from their salaries and wages it has been made. The life of these associations is limited to fifty years, and in winding them up there should be little more than the capital and current earnings to dis­ tribute—the net earnings of previous years having been frugally utilized when in the treas­ ury and periodically distributed to the members whom the law intends shall have them. The field for building and loan associations in the Philippines, and even in Manila, is by no means fully occupied, arid a better popular understanding of the manner in which these associations operate, according to law, is highly desirable. They do cities infinite good.—W. R. '^PONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL Governor Davis’s Sugar-Meeting Talk (Continued from pa¿e 15) ported by the committee without the limitation feature. We must not deceive ourselves, however, into believing that the campaign has been finally won merely because we have been victorious in the first battle. That battle was especially important because it aligned on our side many high-minded, unselfish groups who put prin­ ciple above privilege. But undoubtedly the campaign will be continued and new, more deceptive, more subtle methods adopted. The underlying purpose, so obvious in the first fight, will be kept under cover. Other interests and other arguments will be pushed into the fore­ ground. Promises, baits and lures will be dangled before our eyes. Already in the second skirmish we are being tempted by the offer of additional governmental revenues through the return of taxes which it is proposed to collect on Philippine imports. The insular govern­ ment, sorely as it needs more revenues, will not sacrifice the welfare of the Filipino people to obtain them. I am opposed to this proposal as strongly as I was opposed to the limitation proposal. But other offensives will be launched, other baits offered, other methods tried. It will be well for us to remember the old warning of Cassandra which, if it had been heeded, would have saved Troy from destruction. “Timeo Dañaos et dona f erentes”. “I fear the Greeks bearing gifts”. Eternal vigilance is needed. Our forces must always be ready. We must ever be on our guard. Our fight is based on principle, a principle which applies not only to sugar, but to every other Philippine product imported into the United States. On that high plane the first battle was won. On that high plane the campaign must be continued. How best can we meet these attacks? In my opinion there are several measures of defense which can be adopted. The first of these is publicity. The American people react quickly and unselfishly to issues based on moral prin­ ciples. If they understand the fundamental issue, they will give generous support to our cause. Your Association might well give serious thought to the best method of carrying on a continuous campaign of publicity. A second potent weapon is education, both in the United States and in the Philippines. In the United States the sugar interests should be reassured that the American market in the future will not be swamped by Philippine sugar. If they can be convinced of this fact, much of the opposition would disappear, as they are fairminded men, seeking only to protect their own interests. This puts a serious responsibility on the Phil­ ippine, sugar interests and others interested in the prosperity of the country, to oppose in every way an undue increase in the production of sugar. The promotion of unnecessary new centrals should be discouraged. Planters should be taught the importance of diversifying their crops. The growing of tropical products for which there is a constantly increasing demand and a world underproduction should be en­ couraged, while the increased production of products in which there is already a world over­ production should be discouraged. This is not only wise policy but it is sound economics. The Philippine Islands, with its wide range of climatic and soil conditions, should produce a much larger proportion of the food consumed in the country than is being produced at the present time. The annual importation of more than twenty-seven million pesos worth of foodstuffs, including nearly five million pesos worth of rice, of thirteen million pesos worth of meat and dairy products, and of relatively large quantities of such products as cacao, coffee, peanuts, ' jpical fruits and vegetables, and eggs —all of which can be easily and cheaply produced in the Islands—constitutes a serious and an unnecessary drain on our resources. If there should unhappily be a war in the Far East at any time, the fact that we are dependent on outside sources for such a large amount of food­ stuffs would very seriously affect the Islands and particularly the poorer people. Efforts to prevent an undue increase in the production of sugar would show good faith, as well as good sense, and would minimize, if not end, the opposition. Finally, we should cultivate the closest possible trade and other relations with as many different American groups and interests as possible. American farmers and other business men should be induced to think of the Philippine Islands as good customers for their products rather than thinking of them as competitors. For example, in the last twenty years the importation of dairy products from tne United States has increased from F210,000 to more than P6,000,000, wheat flour from Pl,000,000 to over P§,000,000, cotton goods from Pl,300,000 to P30,800,000, iron and steel products from P 1,600,000 to P31,600,000, paper and its manufactures P445,000 to 1 * 5,600,000, mineral oils from Pl,300,000 to P14,200,000, and the total im­ ports have increased from P10,200,000 to 1 * 168,700,000. Recently a suggestion was made by a group of Filipinos studying the tariff question that articles which could be supplied to the islands both by the United States and by foreign countries should be subjected to sufficiently high duties to give reasonable protection to Philippine and American goods, but not so high as to establish monopolies. While 1 am not prepared to endorse specifically this proposal at the present time, it is an example of a friendly measure which would be an expression of appreciation for the tremendous advantage which the protection policy of the United States gives to the products of the Philippine Islands. Such evidences of friendship promote friendly measures in return. As was said in an editorial in one of the Manila papers yesterday, “If we want preferential rights in the United States, then we must also grant them.” In the same way the labor organizations in the United States should be convinced that with the development of the Islands, labor emigration will decline and will not become in any sense a menace to American labor. Every effort should be made to keep Philippine laborers from leaving the Islands. They should be offered induce­ ments to remain here. They are and will in­ creasingly be needed to develop our local indus­ tries. They can look forward to prospects of a more favorable future here than in the United States, and their presence in large numbers on the West Coast adds another element of difficulty to our problem. Finally, the effect of political speeches, methods and policies in promoting or repelling friendly relationships might well be considered, but this is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. To sum up, the welfare of the sugar industry is vital to the future prosperity of the Philippine Islands. That welfare is largely dependent upon the continuance of the present free trade rela­ tionship with the United States. We must, therefore, make every effort to insure the main­ tenance of that relationship by peaceful argu­ ments if possible, and by fighting any hostile proposals in Congress if necessary. It is better to win by peaceful means if possible. To do so it is important to convince certain powerful groups in the United States that Philippine products and labor are not a menace to their interests. To show our good faith in urging this argument it is necessary that we do our part here in the Islands. We should discourage an undue increase in sugar production. We should discourage the emigration of Philippine labor. We should encourage wherever possible friendly relationship with the United States in business, professional and official circles. This may seem like practical politics. Perhaps it is, but it is sound economics as well. Diversi­ fication of agricultural products is a wise policy from the standpoint of the farmer and it is so recognized the world over. To give but one example of many which might be given, take rice and sugar. The price of rice is higher than has been for five years, while the price of sug is low. We export sugar and import rice. The. is a world over-production of sugar but appa ently no such condition exists in regard to ric Good rice land usually makes poor sugar lane It is economically unsound for the farmer t convert good rice land into poor sugar land, thu adding to an already depressed sugar situation It is also extremely harmful to the future inter ests of the whole Islands. In the same way an economic developmer which will provide profitable employment for tl laborer is also advantageous to the Islands as whole. It is better for the country to off inducements for our labor to stay here and th increase our own resources than to emigrate ai build up the resources of other countries. And, finally, to cultivate cordial relatiorishi with a powerful friend who offers us unusu advantages is only the part of wisdom, enlighten­ ed self-interest, and good economic policy. So in saying this word of welcome I believe it necessary also to make it a word of warning, and to call your attention to the heavy respon­ sibility which rests especially upon all those interested in the sugar industry. We cannot in good faith argue in the United States that Philippine sugar and Philippine labor will not b harmful to American interests unless in goo faith we try to carry out the promises und lying those arguments. Good faith and soun business judgment alike demand intelligei action. Upon you, therefore, rests not only tl future welfare of the sugar industry but in larg part the future progress and prosperity of th Philippine Islands. Our campaign to make ths future possible is based on high principles, we can win by sound peaceful arguments, we and good; but if we must fight, let us go into th; battle with clean hands. Paris is making women’s dresses longer. W this change really kneeded? The Tribune says the Philippines unders the spirit and genius of democracy. Tha they are apt in stategraft. While Topacio, posts director, was junke the postoffice administration seems to have 1 junked. Three several airplane companies are stri for place in the Philippine field. But none them has made a flying start. They are running an egg-laying contest • aggie college. Does anyone know of a’ liable old hens? So many Billingsgate affairs occur a University that someone suggests maki college subject of the primary course in ma and right conduct. We’d have more faith in the originality officialdom’s new ideas if they didn’t so c sistently follow quiet conferences at Malacaña The United States Senate voted 36 to 45, ridding the United States of the Philipp Islands (five to four against independenc The vote came not directly as a considera! of the Philippines but as side-issue in conned with the American tariff. Therein lies an ement of discouragement. The Philippine question certainly me a better consideration than can be given it w it is subordinated to plans for protecting cott seed oil, beet and cane sugar and d products.—B ulletin. THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL Octo, LUZON STEVEDORING COMPANY, INC. Haphazard Studies in the English Language (Continued from September) baptism. Pronounced as two syllables, bap' tizm; not three, bap'tiz-um, nor two, bab'tizm. be. To be grammatically correct, the case of an apposite personal pronoun following the verb “to be’' should agree with its subject. We should always say, “It is I, you are he,” not “It is me, you are him.” Colloquial excep­ tions are frequent, but the rule is plain and should be strictly observed. beastly. An English colloquialism occasionally heard in America. “Beastly weather” is a single example of phrases used by people of all classes in England, but regarded in the United States as coarse. “Beastly drunk” is said by some writers to be defensible, while by others it is regarded as a libel on the beasts. beat. Do not use this word for the more ex­ pressive word “defeat.” be back. “I’ll be here again,” “I’ll return,” or “I’ll come back again,” are all preferable to “I’ll come back again,” are all preferable to to “I’ll be back,” a common colloquialism which should be avoided. been to. Pronounce been, bin, short i. The “to” is superfluous in “where have you been to?” “Been to home” should be “Been at home.” begin, commence. The preference should always be given to the former, though the two words have the same meaning. “Begin” is of Anglo-Saxon origin and is the better word. The use of “commence” is often evidence of affectation. Lightering Marine Contractors Towboats Launches Waterboats Shipbuilders and Provisions We will share all our profits with you! Concentrate your shopping Buy it at our store and save money Children learn thrift by saving coupons! Coupons with all cash and all provincial C. O. D. orders! Beck’s begins a new era. Commencing Octo­ ber 1st, premium-plan profit-sharing coupons go with every purchase at our store. Free catalogs of the premiums the coupons will get will be distributed to customers. The catalogs list hundreds of items. Study them. Decide upon what you want, then save up coupons from your purchases with which to get it free! Coupons are equivalent to 10% discount, and our prices positively remain unchanged. You truly share in all our profits by saving your coupons and getting premiums free with them. Articles in our store priced as low as TO.25 may be obtained with coupons, and other articles worth hundreds of pesos. Refurnish your home, or any special room, with articles the coupons obtain. We redeem our coupons at any time ‘IMMIE & GRILK PHONE 2-16-61 PORT AREA When you give us one peso, we give you back ten centavos —a one-peso coupon—with which to get a nice premium when you want it. Soon your coupons are equal to one or two pesos—five, ten, twenty, a hundred—and all just as good at our store as any money in the wide world. BECK’S-escolta We always have what you want 'ESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 19 “the same persons,” says Godfrey Turner, “who habitually discard the word ‘many’ when they have a chance of gloryfying in ‘numerous’ have concurred in giving the cold shoulder to ‘begin.’. . . ‘Directly I commence to speak, every one commences to look at me,’ said a mincing miss at a suburban ‘at home’. There are mincing misses of the male sex in authorship who are always ‘commencing to.’ Female authors are seldom caught at this feminine weakness of phrase.” “In the beginning” God made heaven and earth. Note the weakness of a change to “In the commencement.” According to Crabb, “begin” is opposed to end, “commence” to complete. A person begins a thing with a view of ending it; he commences a thing with a view of completing it. Begin is used for either things or persons, commence for persons only. A word begins with a particular letter, a man commences his career. beginner. It is incorrect and displays ignor­ ance to speak of “a new beginner.” A begin­ ner cannot be anything but new to his work. Omit the “new.” being. Many writers have labored strenuously When Telegraphing Use The Radiogram Route WORLD .DE IRELESS RADIO CORPORATION OF THE PHILIPPINES 9 PLAZA MORAGA I 2-26-01 Phones: < 2-26-02 I 2-26-03 to prove the illegitimacy of the expression “is being,” as in “The house is being built,” but it is now well established, and appears to have filled a void. “Is being” first appeared as an English passive, corresponding to the progressive form in the active voice, late in the 18th or early in the 19th century, and gained currency chiefly through the newspaper press. Its opponents, who were many, argued that it was pure invention; that there is no progressive form of the verb “to be,” and no need of it; hence, that there is no such expression in English as “is being.” They pointed to the following among other examples of literary usage: “The books are selling.”—Allen’s Gram­ mar. “The fortress was building,”—Washington Irving. “An attempt is making in the English Par­ liament.”—Daniel Webster. “The church now erecting in the city of New York.”—North American Review. These quotations are of interest as showing the void—the need now supplied by “is being,’ which was characterized by the grammarian Always Open Goold Brown as “one of the most absurd and monstrous innovations ever thought of.” Another writer said that “is being done” was “a new-fangled and most uncouth solecism, substituted for the good old English idiom ‘is doing’—an absurd periphrasis driving out a pointed and pithy turn of the English lan­ guage.” Richard Grant White devoted many pages of his interesting work, “Words and Their Uses,” to his protest against “is being,” which, said he, “about seventy or eighty years ago began to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic English.” He concludes that “it can hardly be that such an incon­ gruous and ridiculous form of speech as ‘is being done’ was contrived by a man who, by any stretch of the name, should be included among grammarians.” In spite of these fulminations of the learned and the conservative, the locution “is being” came to stay. At first regarded as an awk­ ward neologism, usage has accustomed and even reconciled us to it, and the imperfects passive, “is being built, is being done,” etc., pass unquestioned in modern English and American literature. Indeed Dr. Fitzedward Hall has shown that such compound participial forms have been used by good writers on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a century. “The deviser of our modern imperfects pas­ sive,” says Dr. Hall, “is, more than likely, as undiscoverable as the name of the valiant antediluvian who first tasted an oyster.” As early as 1795 Robert Southey wrote of “a fellow whose uttermost upper grinder is being torn out by the roots by a mutton-fisted barber,” and Charles Lamb speaks of “a man who is being strangled.” Many of the best of living writers employ “is being” freely, and having regard for the logic of facts the conclu­ sion must be reached that the once obnoxious neologism has firmly established itself in the English language and its literature. This does not, however, deny the right of the mo­ dern speaker to say “the house is building” if he prefers that locution to “is being built.” A pronounced difference is seen between such phrases as “is growing” and “is being grown,” the one indicating development from within and the other the watchful care of the husbandman. “Is feeding” and “is being fed” further illustrate the difference of signi­ fication. belong. “Do you belong?” is a common col­ loquialism used when the subject of conversa­ tion is of some particular organization, etc. Regarded as a colloquialism, and as elliptical —“to the society, etc.” being understood, there is little to urge against this absolute use of “belong.” Some writers, however, think it objectionable. belongings. An old English word recently restored to good usage after a period of disuse. Sometimes applied by the head of a family to the members dependent on him. beside, besides. These words are interchange­ able in the meanings of over and above, dis­ tinct from, although besides is more frequently used in this sense; as, “There were learned men besides these.” Beside means by or at the side of, on one side of; as, “He sat beside me.” Also, aside from, apart from, or out of; as, “Paul, thou art beside thyself”. Besides specially means moreover, in addi­ tion; as, “Besides, the gentleman is married.'' Generally speaking, it may be said that the tendency of present usage is to use “beside” only as a preposition with the original mean­ ing, by the side of, or with the cognate mean­ ing, aside from, out of; while “besides” is used in the adverbial sense (moreover) and in the remaining prepositional sense. bestial. Often mispronounced. Should be best'yal, with short e. be that as it will. Should be “be that as it may.” better. Erroneously used for “more” in phrases like “better than a mile,” which is incorrect, between. Often misused for among. It is strictly applied only to two things, parties or persons, while among is used in reference to a greater number. We say, “Between James and John,” but “Among the apostles.” IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 20 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 What the Archives Say of Mehan Gardens The following is translated from the Spanish certified to by Manuel M. Miranda, chief of archives of the Philippine government: “Jardín Botánico (now Mehan Gardens).— Decree of the Superior Government of Sep­ tember 13, 1858. As of this date I have decreed the following: “Taking into consideration the proposal of the town council of this city in the conference of July 16 ultimo, concerning the convenience and utility that would come of establishing a botan­ ical garden in the extensive field of Arroceros, which would at the same time be a school of practical agriculture and the acclimatization of exotic fruits; . . . “Noting the opinion of the subinspector of engineers of August 8, that also of the committee of commerce and the director of the economic society of September 6; “Noting the endorsement of the superior directorate of finance of August 25, ordering the compliance of this body with the decree of Sep­ tember 4; “Believing that from the viewpoint of hygiene and ornamentation of the city devotion of the field of Arroceros to plants and making it a park and place of recreation for the public, and that evident advantages will derive from the planting and cultivation of plants with the object of acclimatizing those which are not now being grown here and teaching the better utilization of others, so that a certain number of Filipinos of the provinces, supported in Manila by general funds, may be returned periodically to their respective provinces to put into practice the knowledge they have acquired; “Having heard and being in conformity with the ruling of the senior general assessor, I hereby decree: “Art. 1.—There is hereby created a School of Botany and Agriculture in Manila under the patronage of the superior government and the immediate supervision of a board to be created for this purpose to include an officer of engineers and other persons from the different corporations administering or having to do with the funds from which this new establishment will be sup­ ported. “Art. 2.—Within the boundaries to be indi­ cated by the aforementioned subinspector of engineers, the field of Arroceros is hereby set aside for the practical work of said school, as a botanical and acclimatization garden and de­ monstration plot, it being understood that the roperty pertains to the town council under the citations which govern within the polemical ne of a fortified plaza. “Art. 3.—The permanent personnel of the school shall include: one professor of botany with a salary of Pl,500 a year; two teachers of horticul­ ture with a salary of P500 a year each; ten stu­ dents selected among the young farmers of the )rovinces, who shall be changed every three ¿ears and be aided during their term of study vith Pl00 a year each; and the necessary num­ ber of prisoners, chosen among short-term men who are industrious laborers, to whom a gratuity of P500 shall be yearly distributed. “Art. 4.—For the acquisition of plants and tools, there is hereby set aside the sum of P 1,500 a year, reimbursable when the planting and / ceding is complete. “Art. 5.—The products of the botanical gar­ den and school of agriculture shall go, as far as they will, toward covering the foregoing appro­ priations, but in case they are insufficient the sums shall be made up from special funds in the following form and according to the degree of interest which for its inauguration must be taken in this important improvement: the town council, Pl,000; consular funds, P 1,000; Amigos del Pais (a corporation for the fomentation of Philippine agriculture), P500; Filipinos’ community fund, P3,000; total, P5,500. “Art. 6.—Until the personnel necessary for the undertaking of the artistic work upon a scientific basis is organized, the sum of P2,500 yearly shall be employed in proportion to the sums set forth in the preceding article for the preparatory work and the planting of rows of trees which border the streets and pathways for the use of the public. “Art. 7.—If it becomes necessary to build cottages, sheds, and railings for the purposes of the school, and sentry boxes, porters’ lodges and other structures conducing to the better administration of the botanical garden, due per­ mission of the captain general must be requested, on the understanding that all construction must be of light material and subject to the general conditions obtaining in the polemical zone. “Art. 8.—The board of inspectors of the botan­ ical and agricultural school shall agree upon and submit to me such other measures as conduce to the fullest realization of this project; and the rules for instruction and work of the personnel provided in Art. 3, subject to the approval of the professor of botany; but meantime and as a preliminary step, the board shall propose to 'ine This girl that “Mac” drew in Judge is telling “Junior” she’s That Way about him and “Mac” because they always make the cocktails with GORDON GIN it’s always best! Cop (to loiterer at the Rialto after the last run of “Broadway”): Say, what’s the big idea in hanging around here? The show’s over. Loiterer: ’S all right, Chief. I’m waitin’ for that girl in the chorus, Billie Moore, that’s all! That’s a longer wait than you have for your favorite whisky, which of course is— ROBERTSON SCOTCH WHISKY Kuenzle & Streiff, Inc. Importers 343 T. Pinpin Tel. 2-39-36 Manila, P. I. the most useful and advantageous employment of the fund set aside in Art. 6, for the initial preparatory work. “Notify all concerned and return to the ex­ ecutive secretary the instructions submitted for the approval of the finance department August 25, in order that the department may have proper authority for the disbursement from the community fund in accordance with Art. 6 of this decree, which shall also be published in the Official Gazette.” Thus was the Jardín Botánico, Manila’s spa­ cious central park, created by Lieutenant Gen­ eral Fernando de Norzagaray, a Spanish gover­ nor and captain general of the Philippines, 71 years ago. Sebastian Vidal y Soler, a natural­ ist, from Barcelona, became the director of the park, where his statue, donated by his admirers in Barcelona, now stands. “Sr. Vidal y Soler, a native of Catalonia, was married to an Amer­ ican lady, of Philadelphia, very beautiful and beyond dispute the most elegant lady of her time in Manila. Her name was Ella.” Vidal died July 28, 1889, and his statue was erected in May 1892. When the Americans came to Ma­ nila six years later, the park was in a very repul­ sive and insanitary condition; it soon became the work of John Mehan to improve this and all other public grounds of Manila, notably includ­ ing the Cementerio del Norte. The park’s name was changed from J ar din Botánico to Mehan Gardens, but remains pop­ ularly called the botanical garden. The original purpose of establishing it has never been carried out, the plant life there shares the neglect to which the zoological specimens are subjected, and—no monument to Mehan is found in all the park. This is one of the circumstances of which visitors to Manila ask why? Someone must know the answer. There is a calle Norzagaray in Manila, also two calles Soler. The Ayuntamiento The word Ayuntamiento means town council and in Manila applies to the public building on the northeast side of Plaza de McKinley in the walled city, a building two stories high and nearly, if not quite square, extending over an area of some 6,000 square yards (6,240 varas cuadradas being the exact area). Our data are kindly furnished us by Manuel Miranda, keeper of the Ayuntamiento archives—documentary records dating back to 1561 and beginning with Legaspi’s commission from Philip II of Spain, to occupy and govern lands he might discover in this region of the world. The Ayuntamiento was built in 1735, Marshal Fernando Valdéz y Tamón, then governor and captain general of the Philippines, laying the corner stone January 31 of that year. When built it was the finest public building in the islands; it remains one of the best and is excel­ lently suited to be converted into a museum of art and history. It is of stone, and of the Europ­ ean type of architecture; the old clock tower that formerly topped the fagade was thrown down in the earthquake of June 3, 1863, at which time the building suffered such general damage that the town council and other bodies using it for a meeting place had to abandon it for a time and hold their meetings in what is now, and has been for a score of years, the Corregidor Bar. During Spanish times the Ayuntamiento was generally known as the Cabildo (the capitol), from which fact calle Cabildo takes name. The town council, aside from holding meetings there, assembled there to view from the upper balconies the fiestas celebrated on the occasion of the arrival in Manila of a new governor general, or a new archbishop; and in the halls the great recep­ tions and balls of the period took place, as many do today. The original structure being damaged beyond use and eight years having elapsed, on May 30, 1871, Sr. Botella, the municipal architect, sub­ mitted plans for a new building, but the town council rejected them because the space allotted and its distribution were inadequate to the city’s requirements. Botella became occupied with {Please turn to page 22} CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 21 When in Manila Stop at The University Apartments on the New Luneta! We have reserved a number of special rooms and suites all modernly equipped and completely furnished with Simmons furniture to the last detail for our friends from the provinces who want rooms nearby the clubs and hotels and convenient to Manila’s business section. Nothing like them in town: a Frigidaire in every room. Private bath, shower and tub, hot and cold water. Rapid elevators. Moderate first-class rates. Telegraph or write for reservations in advance. Live at the exclusive place—University Apartments. Cuisine service on call. —W. J. Odom, - V IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OT C" YM -.RC' ' '' -'4ij 2 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 The Ayuntamiento (Continued from page 20) ther duties, being, it seems, an engineer officer f the Spanish military forces, and the governor eneral commissioned the ports and highways ngineer, Eduardo Lopez Navarro, to draw new Ians. These are the ones followed in the uilding as it now stands, which cost Pl52,241. 'Merrit’s headquarters were here when he ommanded the American forces of occupation, Aigust 13, 1«98, and assumed the duties of lilitary r Amor. Otis, and then MacArthur, Licceedin^ Merritt, had their offices in the Ayunamiento; and governors Taft, Wright, Ide, mith, Forbes, and Harrison had their offices The New Mentality By President Rafael Palma University of the Philippines Educating youth today demands a change in jrinciple and methods in the same way that cience and industry have sought new by-paths n their development. We cannot educate the routh of today under the tenets and doctrines jequeathed to us by our ancestors. They epresented an epoch and a world entirely dif­ erente from ours. The world of our forefathers s no longer the world of today. To feed our routh with the aggregate of the theories and reliefs which have already lost their usefulness vith the march of ages, would be to commit a Sross mistake. We cannot give to an adult only ;he amount of food we give an infant, without mperiling his health. Neither can we expect ;o educate the youth of our day with the body )f truths and knowledge possessed by our elders lnder social conditions which were not only lifferent from, but diametrically opposed to diofce that obtain at present. /i do not mean that we should discard old truths simply because they are such. I mean that we should determine which of them should oe retained and which should not, in order to hasten our development along the road of human progress and wisdom. We cannot afford to tarry in our journey, while the world is Uup and doing,” unless we are content to lag behind. The wheel of progress, like inscrutable time, will not stop just because we stand in its way. We must move with it or be crushed by its relentless motion. Some educators would make us believe our salvation lies in the dogmas of the past. They look upon present conditions as anomalous and dangerous deviations from the time-honored rules and norms of conduct which made our infancy carefree and happy, and our parents in­ finitely more so with our conduct. zBut hap­ piness in its true sense has yet to be defined, because its conception has varied with time and place. In that twilight of civilization, known as the Stone Age, man lived in caves. He was happy and contented with the fruits he could gather and with the raw meat he could get by fishing and hunting with stones and splints. Later, on, not satisfied with the tools he had, he hit upon flint to generate fire, the bow and CHARTERED BANK OF Capital and Reserve Fund............................................£7,000,000 Reserve Liability of Proprietor.................................... 3,000,000 MANILA BRANCH established 1872 SUB-BRANCHES AT CEBU, ILOILO AND ZAMBOANGA Every description of banking business transacted. Branches in every important town throughout India, China, Japan, Java, Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States, French Indo-China, Siam, and Borneo; also in New York. Head Office: 38 Bishopsgate, London, E. C. T. H. Fraser, Manager. Manila. here. The first American laws for the Phil­ ippines were enacted here, the general orders of the military governors, and the acts of the Philip­ pine Commission. Osmeña long had his office here, both as speaker of the Philippine Assembly, which held its sessions here, in the Marble Hall, and as speaker of the house of representatives when the full legislature began functioning in 1916. At present the cabinet offices are here. Mention of these few things only hints at the rich historical associations of the Ayuntamiento, which, stone below and only the best of hard­ woods above, should stand for centuries to come. the arrow to kill animals from afar, and pottery, not only to cook the game he had bagged, but also to store water at home and thus avoid going out to the spring every time he needed to quench his thirst. After long centuries, he settled down and tilled the soil, and domesticated, to help him in his labor, the animals he previously hunted. In this way he assured himself a steady and permanent food supply; he no longer depended, as he had been wont to do, only upon what he could get from hunting and fishing. Having ample time to accumulate property and advance his well-being, he became an arch­ itect, beautified his dwelling, and in company with other men, founded towns, constructed temples, and built forts to protect himself from his en­ emies. As time went on, planting and cultivating ceased to be his principal occupations. He trans­ formed the products of the soil, and through his resourcefulness and ingenuity, invented machines for weaving and for locomotion both on land and on the sea, utilized electricity to speed up com­ munication, and still dissatisfied with the resist­ ance of the earth, traversed the space above and made distance no longer a hindfance to good will / among nations. His happiness increased as fast as he was able to invent, and to utilize the varied forces of Nature for his own good. Modern man is insatiable in his ambitions, and the conception that he has of happiness has gained in weight and measure. It would be tyrannical to impose upon him the measure of happiness that satisfied his grandparents, be­ cause they knew little of Nature and enjoyed fewer comforts and conveniences in life. It would not only be tyrannical, but humanly im­ possible, to cause the youth of today to renounce enjoyment of the benefits brought about by our civilization and to dress in bark or leaves and branches of trees as our ancestors of antiquity did, or to travel not by rail but in carts drawn by carabaos, or to read by the glow of a candle instead of in the brightness of an electric light. /Whether we wish it or not, youth will always endeavor to avail itself of the privileges of this age of machinery ancb social revolt, regardless of the consequences, vlt were better that edu­ cators and priests should not oppose this natural WANTED: BACK COPIES! The following back copies of the Jour­ nal are wanted to complete a file and any reader sending them into the office will receive one year’s free subscription: Year 1922: January, February, March, April and August. Year 1925: February and July. Year 1927: January. Year 1928: June, October, November and December. tendency of man in his upward flight, because if religion and education are to maintain their influence over youth, they should go with life and not against it. To me, the greatest error of the Church, as well as of the pedagogy of old, was that both endeavored to mould life in ac­ cordance with a preconceived notion, and to maintain this notion in spite of the revolts and derangements which it occasioned and was unable to check. *#here are people who still cling to the belief that life can be encompassed in the hollow of one’s palm, when, as a matter of fact, the foun­ tains of life are many and stream through in­ numerable channels. If religion, in collabo­ ration with the school, was able, at one time, to build a barricade which it thought sufficiently strong to withstand the onrushing tides of life, the natural sciences, politics, economics, com­ merce and law, as well as many other agencies of civilization, undertook to demolish the dam/so that life could once more run normally. /The mission of the school should be, to my mind, carefully to watch the course of life, to keep its flow constantly supplied at its source by checking errors and superstitions and by adding new in­ formation to the stock of human knowledge; to set up before the vision of man sound principles and high ideals to be striven for and attained, that man may always maintain contact with his spiritual destiny and thus discover for him­ self the true rewards of earthly existence. . God and Humanity are not antagonistic terms. He who would see a conflict of prin­ ciples between God and man, wherein man could not live surrounded by comforts and conven­ iences without displeasing God, insults the Almighty who, in His infinite wisdom, kindled in the heart of man the desire for his own per­ sonal advancement. Man should strive to better himself, elevate the conditions that en­ viron him, and beautify the planet in which he lives. God did not put him in this world to do nothing, to evade the struggles or to escape from temptations and live in the seclusion of the desert. It is his duty to discover the laws of God by reading the book of Nature. Man is a combination of matter and spirit, of body and soul. It is his duty to unfold equally the forces of matter and of spirit. Never should it be considered that because man is composed of two elements, there exists a principle of contradic­ tion within himself. He must seek the perfect equilibrium between the tyvo. The old maxim “mens sana in corpore ¿no” summarizes the erudition of the ages. tTThe Middle Ages en­ deavored to perfect the spirit at the expense of the body. It was a mistake which produced a weak and feeble civilization, full of impossible visions and ideas which brought about more wars and conflicts between men and men and between nations and nations than any other period in history. The present age tends to elevate the body at the expense of the spirit. It is another mistake. We must seek no conflict. Man cannot be brutally materialistic nor in­ humanly spiritualistic. It is beyond roly humble powers to understand why a certain ^school of thought should insist that we cannot please God if we continue ad­ ding day by day new moral and religious and scientific truths to the stock of human wisdom. Nor can I consider that we have exhausted the sources of knowledge in matters of religion and morality, and that religious and moral precepts of our ancestors are unalterable and not amen­ RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 23 able to any modification or betterment, con­ sistent with the experience of the times. Why should it be insisted that our children be tied to the parental authority, as was the practice in patriarchal times, and that they be subjected to the perennial control of their parents, even long after they have become mature beings? Why, I ask, ought we not educate our children with the greatest possible amount of freedom in order to develop in them, from their tender • years, the inner moral restraints that they need for overcoming evil impulses, without at the same time lessening the respect and obedience that they owe to their elders—who should, in turn, treat them with the love and consideration Utting rational beings, and not as chattels jd beasts of burden? Some people still enter' tain the basically wrong notion that our children are, by nature, incorrigible beings, so strongly inclined to evil that they cannot be permitted to do anything without the previous permission and consent of their parents, thus converting them into automatons doomed to a life of eternal irresponsibility and^^jncapable of helping them­ selves from the moment they are deprived of parental protection and help. . It is precisely to stimulate the good instincts and suppress the evil that children should be encouraged to assert themselves. Harassing them with all kinds of restrictions and prohibi­ tions, even in trifles, would be to stifle their spirit. Of course, parents should at all times be on guard to advise their children and sound the alarm on prohibited matters,] but if in spite of this counsel a serious blundenis committed, parents should administer the corresponding punishment (in order that the children may realize fully the consequences of their bad action), and not be too indulgent and condescending with their children when they misuse their freedom. It is a poor educational policy to keep on repeating old precepts and formulas and not encourage youth to add, by its own efforts, a new stone to the edifice of posterity. To judge things of the present by the measure of ideas and viewpoints of the past is a sign of narrow-minded­ ness. The greatest deterrent to progress insists in the belief that the past is “always /little better,” something immutable and perfect. |f education is at all worthwhile in life, it is be­ cause it opens new avenues and unfolds new vistas, repairs the worn-out and corrects the inconsistent. It is just a waste of time to look at the present with tearful eyes, crying in a loud voice over changes and departures from old habits, without recalling that many of the evils and deficiencies of the present are but the results and echoes of the education of the past. J We should once and for all admit that the role of education is to introduce innovations, blaze new trails, proclaim new doctrines and try new ex­ periences, for if our aim is simply to perpetuate acquired habits, old customs and primitive ways, the force of heredity is more than sufficient to do that. Our generation, determined as it is to seek membership in the sisterhood of nations, cannot commit a greater blunder than to repel the influx of new ideas, processes and methods which have caused other nations of the world to rise to heights of power and supremacy. It is the height of folly and a sign of intellectual near­ sightedness, nay, a suicidal intent, to believe that we can prevent this invasion by mere lip­ protestations and denunciations against the practices of the day. Isolation is a thing of the past. There are now innumerable contacts between different sections of the globe. No country can prevent the coming of foreign com­ merce and trade, much less that of ideas and doctrines of the age, which, by their nature, are more subtle and penetrating than air and light. There is a sophism in believing that we of the Philippines are a separate group, that we can with impunity preserve the ideas and habits which constituted our old mentality, and at the same time attain progress along with other nations—in the light of that mentality long withdrawn from the rest of the world. Unless we consider ourselves as a race superior to the n U < •1 ‘ 1 ~~ly presumptuous < i 7 f J not govern our<' <•< in a manner out ■ ■ ■■; . of the age. The ■ :r. fT> fact of the matter is that we are shamefully behind the times, not only in the realm of eco­ nomic development but also in intellectual, moral and spiritual endeavors, precisely because bf/aur narrow and conservative attitude of mind. ‘zOne has only to go beyond our borders to be con­ vinced of our backwardness ancLinferiority, not necessarily in comparison with Occidental nations, but as compared with our neighbors, the Oriental countries. I do not mean to say that we occupy the last rung of the ladder of nations, but we shall soon find ourselves there, unless we make all possible efforts to follow the manners and usages of the modern world and to work in accordance with its experience and wisdom. ^Instead of confining our knowledge to local conditions, we should open our windows and see the world without. The fundamental value of education lies in furnishing universal knowl­ edge. We should study not only crtir present and past, but also the present and past of the world. Our experiences are quite too limited to be self-sufficient—so we should drink deep of the wisdom of the world. We are but an integral part of a single process. The world will go on, with or without us,/and the longer we delay our participation in it/ progress, the later shall we reap the benefits/ We can preserve our point of view as a nation, we can govern ourselves the way we please, even in disagreement with the standards generally admitted; but if we are prudent, if we have common sense, if we do not wish to renounce our right to survive, we should familiarize ourselves with, and adopt, the con­ structive forces by which the more advanced nations have made themselves great, and profit by what they did and how they did it. Above all, we need to alter our attitude of mind, shaped as it is in the mould of the past epoch, and to enrich it with the ideas of the present. I consider this problem one of the most far-reaching in the Philippines today. I see that there are still many of us who are in love with the preconceived noiy#ns and ideas of the past, and they are so out of tune with the thought processes of our age that it can be said of them that they are living in a world distinctly their own. While 1 believe the past has be­ queathed to us many beliefs and practices which are good and useful even in our times, neverthe­ less, it has also left us certain errors and super­ stitions in which we can no longer acquiesce— since they have fallen into the discard. T° c°n" demn, in the name of the past, our system of coeducation, equal privileges between man and woman, separation of the Church and the State, i INFORMATION FOR INVESTORS Expert, conñdential reports made on Philippine projects ENGINEERING, MINING, AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY, LUMRER, ETC. Hydroelectric projects OTHER COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES BRYAN, LANDON CO. Cebu, B. I. Cable address: “YPIL,” Cebu. woman suffrage, eight-hour days in shops and factories, the dignity of all work and professions, which severally constitute some of the most outstanding principles of the modern world, is tantamount to denying the conquest realized by humanity in solving many perplexing prob­ lems which brought about great suffering and miseries in olden days. -'T am interested in this University’s becoming the source of a new light which shall radiate new teachings more in accord, in flesh and blood, with the realities of life. Filipinos should not live in a world of abstractions, but in the atmos­ phere of this age in which destiny has placed them. This is the only way to achieve lasting and beneficial progress and prosperity for our country.. MANILA TEXAN VISITS TEXAS John Wheat has been back to the homeland. He is back in Manila now. In America he visited eleven states. One of them was Texas, his native state. John is just an average fellow, of the type inured to life east of Suez. Of course he is a veteran of ’98. Before he went on his American visit he was the gentleman behind the Silver Dollar bar. Years ago, when a series of Sunday afternoon lectures was arranged at the Chamber of Commerce, John bought the first season ticket sold; and he attended reg­ ularly. His ethics are plain, but somewhat catholic in scope: honesty counts a great deal with him, and appearances little. When John was visiting Texas, one Sunday morning after breakfast he was sauntering down a business street and enjoying a cigar. “My,” he thought, “it’s right nice to be back in old Texas again.” This pleasant soliloquy had hardly begun when a committee of two female vigilantes bore down upon him. Two menacing index fingers pointed to his cigar. Why was he smoking, and openly on the street, on the Sabbath? He was depraved, said the vigilantes; he was.. . . It seems he was a great deal that is no longer tolerated in Texas. “This is my native state,” said John, “and this my favorite cigar—a Manila. I always have one after breakfast. I never thought smoking was any harm. I learned to smoke in Texas.” This weak defense was wholly insufficient, John only let himself in for further reproaches. The scene on a main street of Dallas was dis­ tasteful to him. “Ladies,” he said, bowing, and with a gallant inflexion of the word, “if you will just give me time to pack my grip, I think you will not be bothered by my smoking again.” John took the next train out of Dallas to Mexico, where things went well with him until Calles burned down the town; then, of course, he had to move on once more. He began working bac£ toward the sunset. He crossed Texas to do this, and bade his native state goodbye. “I don’t understand Texas folks anymore,’ he explains. “I guess I’m dated.” John was a cowboy in Texas in his youth; he has won his saddle in roping contests at old Foi;t Worth; he is one of those hard-riding chivalrous characters Texas children get excited about in the movies. Hitting the trail westward from Texas, John stopped at Los Angeles. “The breadline was just two blocks long there.” At San Francisco he was more at ease, but he went on north. Portland didn’t have anything he wanted, Seattle made no appeal. But the newspapers announced the proximate sailing of an Empress ship out of Vancouver for Manila; so John left Seattle for Vancouver and caught the Empress. He still had the diner card of the train that bore him to seaboard on the Pacific, when he arrived back in Manila. It heralds the all-day lunch service—individual hot meat pie cents. John admired this efficiency, for he isn’t rich. But the card bears a more ominous line—No cigarettes sold in Nevada or Utah.” “America’s changed a lot in the last thirty years,” is John’s verdict. “It’s all right, I guess—for them that like it that way. But there certainly has been a change—specially in the cow country.” ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 24 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 SHIPPING REVIEW BY H. M. CAVENDER General Agent, The Robert Dollar Company September, in the Philippines, saw a gen­ eral decrease in exports, as well as imports.. Owners felt this even more than usual due to increased competition, with added new, fast express liners in the service. Unlike the early six months of the year, increased space is not taken up by ship­ pers, simply for the reason that the cargo is not available. During the period when sugar exports are going strong, extra tonnage is quite readily absorbed in the Philippine market. The exports moving over the U. K. and Continental route can be termed as slow. This was partic­ ularly the case with hemp. Copra and copra cake were fair and lumber steady. It is rather difficult to predict the movement of the principal commodities during October, but it is generally believed by owners that the markets will strength­ en, resulting in increased cargo. Exports to the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts were very slow. This was somewhat anticipated, but was felt more than expected by owners, due to, as earlier mentioned, increased tonnage on the berth. Owners do not hold out on these routes for October, as the sugar season, the principal commodity, does not open until November. The movements to Straits Settlements, China and Japan remained about normal. No trade route from the Philippines, during the month under review, saw any unusual movement of a particular commodity. Manila to New York via Suez and Europe See the Old World on your trip home. Stops of several days in many ports. You can travel through Europe and catch our boat for New York via Southampton, England, at Bremen. “The Most Interesting Trip In The World.” NORDDEUTSCHER LLOYD Zuellig & von KnobelsdorH Agenta 90 Rosario, Manila Phone 22324 From statistics compiled by the Associated Steamship Lines, there were exported from the Philippines during the month of August, to China and Japan ports 14,602 tons, with a total of 57 sailings, of which 2665 tons were carried in American bottoms with 11 sailings; to Pacific coast for local delivery 13,109 tons, with a total of 12 sailings, of which 11,735 tons were carried in American bottoms with 11 sailings; to Pacific coast for overland delivery 559 tons, with a total of 10 sailings, of which 330 tons were carried in American bottoms with 6 sailings; to Pacific Coast for intercoastal 2964 tons with a total of 11 sailings, of which 2655 tons were carried in American bottoms with 9 sailings; to Atlantic coast 44,480 tons with a total ot sailings, of which 23,767 tons were carried in American bottoms with 5 sailings; to European ports 23,222 tons with a total of 22 sailings, of which 181 tons were carried in American bottoms with 2 sailings; to Australian ports 1419 tons with a total of 3 sailings, of which American bottoms carried none; a grand total of 100,355 tons, with a total of 77 sailings, of which American bottoms carried 41,742 tons with 16 sailings. Trans-Pacific passenger business, first class, continues steady and a steady increase is anti­ cipated for the next few months. Steerage traffic is still seriously handicapped by United States quarantine regulations, which require that vessels be berthed to 25% of the licensed berthing capacity only. This condition will exist until these regulations are modified or lifted. Just when this will happen, is a matter of speculation and, so far is now known, they will continue to be in effect indefinitely. First class passenger business from Manila to Europe and New York via Suez is steadily increasing and it is anticipated will continue to increase for the next few months. The following figures show passenger traffic moving during the month of September: (first figure first-class, second figure steerage) To China and Japan 159-183, To Honolulu 15-432, To Pacific Coast 66-159, To Singapore and Straits Settlements 13-0. To New York via Suez 3-0. SHIPPING PERSONALS R. Stanley Dollar, Senior Vice-President of The Robert Dollar Co., accompanied by Mrs. Dollar, daughter Diana and son R. Stanley, Jr., arrived in Manila, September 24, aboard the s. s. President Polk and sailed by the same steamer midnight, September 25. Mr. Dollar and family are on a tour around the world in the interests of the company. T. J. Cokely, oriental manager for the Robert Dollar Co., with headquarters in Shanghai, accompanied Mr. R. Stanley Dollar as far as Manila. Mrs. Cokely also accompanied Mr. Cokely. Mr. and Mrs. Cokely left Manila, September 30, aboard the s. s. President Hayes for Hongkong, stopping over there for a few days, and returning to Shanghai by a later steamer. L. E. Nantz, formerly connected with L. Everett, Inc., has resigned from that firm September 1, 1929, has taken up duties with the automotive section of the Pacific Commercial Co., Manila. W. J. Wilson, oriental engineer for The Robert Dollar Co., arrived in Manila, September 24, aboard the s. s. President Polk and left September 30, aboard the s. s. President Hayes for Hong­ kong, later returning to Shanghai, his head­ quarters. Mr. Wilson was in Manila on busi­ ness for his company. Captain James Tasker, formerly master of the s. s. Robert Dollar, arrived in Manila, September 26, aboard the s. s. President Jefferson to take up duties in the operating department of The Robert Dollar Co., Manila. Mr. Van Nieuwenhuyse, general agent for the Eastern and Philippines Shipping Agencies, Ltd., left Manila, September 28, aboard the s. s. Margaret Dollar for Davao and other South­ ern Philippine ports and will be absent from Manila several weeks. Ralph Johnson, assistant director for the Orient, United States Shipping Board, with headquarters in Manila, returned to Manila, September 26, aboard the s. s. President Jefferson after several months absence in China and Japan. H. M. Cavender, general agent, The Robert Dollar Co., Manila, left Manila, September 20, aboard the s. s. President McKinley for Hongkong, where he met Mr. R. Stanley Dollar and party and returned to Manila with the party, Sep­ tember 24, aboard the s. s. President Polk. W. J. McGough, representative of Isbrandtsen, Moller & Co., New York, recently left that city on a tour of the Orient and is expected to visit Manila shortly. H. F. Gourlie, formerly shipping manager of Smith, Bell & Co., Ltd., Cebu, has joined the shipping department of Macondray & Co., Manila. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 25 RAIL COMMODITY MOVEMENTS By L. ARCADIO Acting Traffic Manager, Manila Railroad Company. As usual we give below the commodities received in Manila, August 26, 1929, to September 25, 1929, both inclusive, via Manila Railroad: 1929 August September Rice, cavans............................ . .. 131,562 134,312 Sugar, piculs............................ 1,344 2,856 Tobacco, bales......................... 34,140 32,160 Copra, piculs........................... . .. 291,500 240,350 Coconuts.................................. . .. 870,100 1,709,400 Lumber, B. F............................ 12,420 866,700 Desiccated coconuts, cases........ 19,926 20,828 If the weekly carloading statistic is in your opinion a good material for your readers we will continue to furnish such figures. Rotarians’ plans for attracting travelers to Manila in accordance with Governor Davis’s desires expressed to the Manila club of that world or­ ganization, go forward encouragingly under the leadership of the committee and President C. W. Franks. Stanley and Mrs. Dollar were fortunately in Manila recently and Mr. Dollar had the opportunity of personally en­ dorsing the movement. Stimulation of travel to Manila should come from the steamships on the direct route between Manila and San Francisco. The Dollars have allocated some vessels to this new route, and other ships may be attracted to it. Miss Lucile Howell occupies a travel-bureau desk at the Manila hotel. This is a happy selection. Miss Howell will, among other things, furnish information on interesting places to go in Manila and the provinces. Senator Osmeña has long been urging his countrymen to travel abroad more, and did so again at more length than usual in his recent Columbianclub talk. On the same occasion he told of many ways in which the islands may be made a pleasant place for sojourners; his mere mention of his ideas publicly is an assurance that he plans helping in an official way, but no news has come from the legislature as yet as to providing provincial hotels. They are essential to the best results. FREIGHT CAR LOADINGS COMMODITIES • NUMBER OF FREIGHT CARS FREIGHT TONNAGE INCREASE OR DECREASE 1929 1928 1929 1928 Cars Tonnage Rice................... 809 813 10,675 10,787 4 112 Palay................. 126 184 1,802 2,437 58 635 Sugar................. 24 5 323 38 19 285 Copra............... 955 1,146 8,758 10,335 191 1,577 Coconuts........... 227 323 2,520 3,901 96 1,381 Hemp............... 7 2 39 10 5 29 Tobacco........... 40 62 416 441 22 25 Livestock......... 76 101 378 509 25 131 Mineral Products 342 464 3,354 4,885 122 1,531 Lumber andTimber................. 145 202 3,248 4,351 57 1,103 Other Forest Pro­ ducts ...........5. 5 7 50 49 2 1 Manufactures.. . 306 394 4,654 5,851 88 1,197 All others includ­ ing LCL....... 3,133 3,725 23,091 29,314 592 6,223 Total........ 6.195 7.428 59,308 72,908 1,233 13,600 SUMMARY Week ending Sat­ urday Sept. 7. Week ending Sat­ urday Sept. 14. Week ending Sat­ urday Sept. 2P Week ending Sat­ urday Sept. 28. 1,313 1,701 1,469 1,712 1,916 1,870 1,813 1,829 12,810 16,526 13,532 16,440 18,687 18,408 17,842 17,971 603 169 344 117 5,877 1,882 4,310 1,531 Total........ 6,195 7,428 59,308 72,908 1,233 13,600 The decrease in numbef of cars and tonnage on almost all commodities may be attributed to the interruption of our main lines and branches caused by the typhoon of Sept. 2 which prevented the movement of most of our trains during the greater part of the month. AMERICAN MAIL LINE DOLLAR STEAMSHIP LINE COMBINED TRANSPACIFIC SERVICE SAILING ONCE A WEEK The “President” Liners Offer Speed—Service—Courtesy—Comfort Excellent Food, Comfortable Cabins, Broad Decks, American Orchestra, Dancing, Swimming Pool, Sports SAILING ONCE A WEEK TO SAN FRANCISCO AND LOS ANGELES via Hongkong, Shanghai, Kobe, Yokohama, and Honolulu SAILINGS ON ALTERNATE FRIDAYS ROUND THE WORLD President Harrison - - - Oct. 23 President Johnson - - - Nov. 6 President Monroe - - - Nov. 20 President Wilson - - - Dec. 4 President Hayes - - - Dec. 18 Sailings every fortnight NEW TRANS PACIFIC SERVICE To San Francisco via Hongkong and Honolulu VICTORIA AND SEATTLE via Hongkong, Shanghai, Kobe, and Yokohama SAILINGS ON ALTERNATE SATURDAYS 24 Calle David MANILA Telephone No. 2-24-41 IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 26 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 REAL ESTATE By P. D. Carman San Juan Heights Addition This is one of the best September totals since 1920. Following the excellent figures of July and August, it would seem that a temporary depression in other lines does not affect Real Estate, at least not immediately. The fol­ lowing are the Septem­ ber totals 1921 to 1929 inclusive: 1921, 1,022,093; 1922, 1,040,814; 1923, 1,153,444; 1924, 1,652,377; 1925, 1,164,819; 1926, 1,167,921; 1927, 722,047; 1928, 899,079; 1929, 1,179,905. Sales City of Manila Aug. 1929 Sept. 1929 Sta. Cruz..................... P 342,518 P 145,463 Binondo....................... 84,618 282,403 San Nicolas................. 56,000 17,399 Tondo.......................... 293,658 98,547 Sampaloc..................... 61,580 152,489 San Miguel................. 1,000 35,000 Quiapo......................... 43,000 Intramuros.................. 35,000 48,500 Ermita......................... 68,068 54,398 Malate......................... 101,347 98,909 Paco............................. 159,822 20,534 Sta. Ana...................... 33,436 19,762 Pandacan.................. . 2,220 150,501 Sta. Mesa.................... 19,010 1,000 Singalong..................... 12,000 Pl,258,277 Pl,179,905 THE RICE INDUSTRY By Percy A. Hill of Muñoz, Nueva Erija. Director, Rice Producers' Association As predicted in the last review of the rice indus­ try, prices have since stiffened for both palay and rice, the average price advancebeingabout 40 centavos per sack. This was due, as pointed out, to dwindling sup­ ply and the stiffening of the overseas export mar­ ket, especially Tonquin, f urther aggravated by the breakdown of railroad shipping facilities caused by the typhoon in the early part of September, and which are still suspended at the date of writing (Sept. 25th). Curiously, the consuming public reacted to the warning of the market’s advance tendencies, by reviving the bogey of profiteering, hoarding, or ‘“what have you”. The sugar-men, alleging lack of forthcoming supply, desire a reduction in the protective tariff, the only thing that allows us to produce rice at all. As a matter of fact, the outlook for the coming crop is as good as it was this time last year, in spite of baguios, cut-worms, and press scareheads. In addition to the sugar men’s suggested remedy of the state of affairs, we have an over-taxed Labor Bureau trying to give information to a mere one-half of one per cent of all laborers. The “boomerang” law regarding rice warehousing, another’s attempt to meet the situation, will penalize the producer by restric­ tion of credit, and a forced sale of his product, since the deposit function is not supposed to work after Jan. 1st, 1930, and the buyers them­ selves will not wish to carry a burden when their profits are small. Thus storage of supply which is a godsend to the producer is penalized by a law that sounds good but which in effect is not to the advantage of the buyers and millers to comply with; they will buy outright, and let others take up the burden of warehousing. All these things are the regular slings of mis­ fortune that occur annually about this time, tp the detriment of the producer. Let us look first at the attempt to “fix prices”. All persons in an administrative position with a modicum of sense know that this has never succeeded in any in­ dustry which ignores supply, demand and price. To date, all these noisy efforts of the Don Qui­ xotes who strive for the milennium have never reduced by one cent the price in open market of this commodity, nor have all their lucubrations increased supply by a single kilo. It is just an annual brainstorm, like that of last year at this time, which we have to suffer. As for the reduc­ tion of the protective tariff: First, it is a small tax paid by those whose standard of living is infinitely higher than the humble grower of this necessary commodity. Secondly, this revenue means much to a government whose most vital question is that of seeking more and equitable taxation for our ill-balanced finances. Thirdly, the danger lies in the fact that, once the abroga­ tion of the greater part of this protective tariff (which can be accomplished by Executive Order) is effected, given the present Chinese demand and price, we could easily export our rice to that market in preference to keeping it here; for in the last analysis the rice producers, some four and half millions, must, live in spite of the one half of one per cent of labor, and irrespective of the sugar-men. All of the above problems are deserving of careful study. As regards the benefit of irrigation, this lies not so much in increasing the crop as that of insuring the crop against the weather. Com­ bined irrigation systems have perhaps increased our yield by 8%, which is, after all, something tangible, but there is no necessity of any further expansion since in a good year we are self-suf­ ficing. A permanent expansion of our rice yield would put us in a much more unfortunate posi­ tion than the sugar men, a product with no ade­ quate market. The price of rice in a good year falls below the cost production. At present the gain to the industry over cost is slightly more than our legal interest. Any radical move that will affect the industry adversely will conse­ quently drive the rice producer to other crops, which would mean sugar, and then we have another impasse. The upward trend of the overseas rice market is due to Chinese and Japanese demand. We must import to stabilize supply, and of course no law we can make will affect world prices or over­ seas supply, all of which is obvious. At present the coming crop promises as well as the crop of last year did at this time. Approximate esti­ mates can be made within the next 75 days. THE YOKOHAMA SPECIE BANK --------- ------------------ 1.. ■ —i ■■ ■■ = LTD. ■ — (ESTABLISHED 1880) HEAD OFFICE: YOKOHAMA, JAPAN Yen Capital (Paid Up) - - - - 100,000,000.00 Reserve Fund .... 108,500,000.00 Undivided Profits - 10,420,920.97 MANILA BRANCH 600 DASMARINAS, MANILA K. YABUKI Manager PHONE 2-37-59—MANAGER PHONE ] 2-37-58—Export, Current Account, Cashier | 2-37-55—Import, Accountant REVIEW OF THE HEMP MARKET By L. L. Spellman Macleod and Company This report covers the Manila hemp market for the month of Sep­ tember with statistics up to and including September 30th, 1929. U. S. Grades:—The first of the month found the selling market in New York quiet with buyers showing little or no interest. Shippers were offering on the basis of: E, 12-1/4 cents; F, 11-1/4 cents; G, 8-3/8 cents; I, 11 cents; JI, 10-1/4 cents; SI, 10-7/8 cents; S2, 10-1/4 cents; S3, 8-1/2 cents. Hand to mouth business continued and by the middle of the month sellers were becoming overanxious and prices had declined to: E, 11-7/8 cents; F, 10-7/8 cents; G, 8-1/8 cents; I, 10-5/8 cents; JI, 9-7/8 cents; SI, 10-3/4 cents; S2, 9-7/8 cents; S3, 8-1/2 cents. The more the shippers endeavored to sell, the less interested the buyers appeared to be and the weaker prices became. By the end of the month an unusually large quantity of hemp was being offered and the nominal asking prices were: E, 11-1/2 cents; F, 10-5/8 cents; G, 8 cents; I, 10-1/4 cents; JI, 9-1/2 cents; SI, 10-3/8 cents; S2, 9-7/8 cents; S3, 8-1/4 cents. This showed a decline of from 1/4 cent to 3/4 cent per lb. on the various grades during the month but these prices do not reflect the true situation and undoubtedly hemp could be bought from 1/4 cent to 1/2 cent under these prices. Davao hemp which usually carries a premium and finds a ready market was being offered in large quan­ tities with no buyers and the asking prices were as low as the prices on hemp from other prov­ inces. In Manila the market for U. S. grades was extremely quiet the first of the month with rather indifferent buyers on the basis of E, P26; F, P24.75; G, P17.25; I, F24; JI, P21.25; SI, F24; S2, P22.50; S3, P17.75. There was very little change by the middle of the month so far as prices were concerned but the under­ tone was decidedlv easy. Sales were made on the basis of E, P26; F, F24.50; G, F17.50; I, P24; JI, P21.25; SI, F24; S2, P22.25; S3, P17.75. Throughout the balance of the month prices declined steadily and the buying- was IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 27 confined principally to speculators. The month closed with sales of province hemp at: E, B25.50; F P23.50; G, P17.25; I, F22.50; JI, B20.50; SI, P22.75; S2, B21.50; S3, F17.75. It became apparent that the consuming markets are unable to assimilate present stocks of high-grade hemp and until production declines or consumption increases, there is no prospect of any relief. U. K. Grades:—The London market opened quiet with sellers at: J2, £36.10; K, £31; LI, £31; L2, £28; Ml, £28; M2, £25.10; DL, £25.10; DM,£21. During the first half of the month there was a fair amount of business and the market remained steady. There were a few changes in prices but on the average they remained about the same, sales being made at: J2, £36.10; K. £31.10; LI, £31.5; L2, £28.5; Ml, £28.5; M2, £25.5; DL, £25.5; DM, £21. The continued heavy receipts prevented any advance in the market and at the close London was from quiet to dull with sellers on the basis of: J2, £36; K, £30.10; LI, £30.10; L2, £27.5; Ml, £27.5; M2, £24.10; DL, £24.10; DM, £21. In Manila the market was extremely quiet the first of the month with shippers buying on the basis of: J2, P16.75; K, B14; LÍ, P14; L2, F12.50; Ml, P12.50; M2, B10.25; DL, P10r25; DM, P8. There were a few adjustments in prices during the first half of the month and while all hemp offered found buyers, there was little, if any, competition. Nominal prices were: J2, PT7; K, B13.75; LI, P13.75; L2, P12.25; Ml, F12.25; M2, P10.50; DL, P10.50; DM, P8.25. In sympathy with the U. K. market and probably influenced somewhat by the heavy decline in U. S. grades as well as by continued heavy stocks, the market for the lower grades found buyers rather indifferent at the end of the month although speculators in Manila were buving province hemp on the basis of: J2, 4 * 16.75; K, 4 * 13.50; LI, P13.50; L2, 4 * 11.50; Ml, Pll.50; M2, PIO; DL, P10; DM, P7.75. Prices show an average loss of about, P0.25 during the month and are about Pl.00 down from August 1st. The continued heavy receipts and the depression in U. S. grades is bound to have its effect on the U. K. grades notwithstand­ ing the fact that this fiber is cheap when com­ pared with other hard fibers throughout the world. On the other hand, the better qualities, or the so-called U. S. grades, are still dear even at the present reduced prices. Japan:-—Notwithstanding the fact that the exchange is greatly improved, the buyers for this market are buying sparingly and are taking full advantage of the depression in the U. S. and U. K. markets. It is reported that they still have considerable Manila hemp in store at Kobe. Maguey:—This fiber declined owing to the entire absence of demand. The first of the month buyers were paying P12.75 for Cebu No. 2 and P11.00 for No. 3. At the end of the month most of the buyers were offering Pl 1.75 and 4 * 10.00. However, a few of the houses were paying P0.25, and in some cases P0.50, more. With the season opening for Northern Maguey within the next month or two, it begins to look as if there is very little prospect of prices recovering for the present at least. Production:—While receipts do not compare with the earlier months of the year, they still remain comparatively heavy and total produc­ tion for the year will undoubtedly reach 1,500,000 Bs. and some of the experts prophesy 1,600,000 Bs. In addition to Abaca, the Islands pro­ duced 37,000 Bs. of Canton fiber and 95,000 Bs. of Maguey fiber during the first nine months of the year. Freight Rates:—There is no change in rates on hemp since last report. Statistics:—The figures below are for the period ending September 30th, 1929: Manila Hemp . 1929 Bales 1928 Bales On hand January 1st. . . 170,301 139,624 Receipts to date............. 1,220,379 1,035,093 Shipments to— U. K............................ Continent........... U. S............................. Japan........................... All Others................... 1,390,680 1929 Bales 259,786 133,326 436,214 274,192 59,035 1,174,717 1928 Bales 259,441 154,272 282,967 235.889 81.720 1,162,553 1,014,289 REVIEW OF THE EXCHANGE MARKET By Richard E. Shaw Manager, International Banking Corporation The market opened with all Banks buyers of U.S. 8 T.T. ready and forward at 3/4% pre­ mium. Selling rates were correspondingly strong at 1-1/8% pre­ mium for T.T. By the middle of the month Banks had made heavy purchases of T.T. for immediate and future deliveries and had so far satisfied their require­ ments and incidentally so reduced their cash positions that buying rates were dropped to 5/8% premium for T.T. and 1/8% premium for O/D. Selling rates were likewise reduced to 1% premium. For the balance of the month there was little or no fluc­ tuation in quotations. No marked strengthen­ ing in rates is anticipated during the next few months. Travel Coast Limited” {Continued on page 28, Col. 3) East via the “North Chicago! Leaves Seattle at U 1:00 A. M. for all the principal cities of the United States. Two days of sightseeing through America’s greatest mountains. A particularly satisfying fea­ ture of Northern Pacific travel is its diner service. The luxurious, new Observa­ tion-Club car with its deep, rest­ ful lounge—cushioned chairs— library—writing corner—club rooms—showers—and maid and valet service—affords many hours of pleasure. New-type Pullmans and pow­ erful, new locomotives. You will find unusual travel comfort and courteous, personal service aboard this fine train. The Japan Tourist Bureau, American Express Company, Thos. Cook 8s Son, Shanghai Commercial 8b Savings Bank or any trans-Pacific steamship company, will gladly furnish additional information. Oswald Crawford, G. A. 501 Granville Street Vancouver, B. C. R. J. Tozer, A. G. P. A. 200 L. C. Smith Bldg. Seattle, Wash., U. S. A. Northern Pacific Railway The following purchases of telegraphic trans­ fers have been made from the Insular Treasurer since last report: Week ending July 27th. . . . $1,452,000 Week ending Aug. 3rd. . . . 200,000 Week ending Aug. 10th. . . . 400,000 Week ending Aug. 17th. . . . 250,000 Week ending Aug. 24th. . . . 700,000 Week ending Aug. 31st. . .. 700,000 Week ending Sept. 7th... . 310,000 Week ending Sept. 14th.. . . 20,000 Week ending Sept. 21st. .. . Nil Except for minor fluctuations, Sterling rates have held steady with sellers of T.T. at 2/- 7/16 and buyers at from 2/- 9/16 to 2/- 5Z8. The New York-London cross-rate closed on August 31st at 484 11/16, Touched a low of 484 5/8 on September 20th and from that date onward rose rapidly to 486 at the close. On August 31st London Bar Silver was quoted at 24 3/16 ready and 24 5/16 forward. Quota­ tions did not rise above that point during Sep­ tember but weakened rapidly until on September 25th the market touched a low of 23 1/16 ready and forward, closing on the last day of the month at 23 3/16 ready and 23 1/4 forward. Bar Silver in New York stood at 52 5/8 on August 31st, was high for September at 52 1/4 on the second and fourth of the month, had Stop oSi at Yellowstone Park Season June iS-Sept. 20 Without exception this is the most unique outdoor playground in all the world—3,500 square miles of geysers in eruption—hot col­ ored pools—boiling lakes—the deep, brilliant gulf of the Grand Canyon—and big, friendly bears to amuse you. E. E. Blackwood, G. A. 912 Government Street Victoria, B. C. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 28 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929» SEPTEMBER SUGAR REVIEW By George H. Fairchild New York Mar­ ket:—During the first week of the month under review, small sales of duty-free sugars were made to refiners at 3.89 cents 1. t., equival­ ent to about P9.15 per picul ex godown Manila, but at the close of the market on the 5th, holders of these sugars advanced their prices to 3.93 cents 1. t. Holders of Cubas refused to sell below-2-3/16 cents c. and f. (3.96 cents 1. t. for P. I. centrifugals), at which price they had hoped to dispose of their sugars. The market was irregular during the second week, but prices improved for the following reasons: (1) The prevailing drouth in both Europe and Cuba, which threatens the reduction of the crop pros­ pects in both places, and (2) the carrying into effect on August 31st of the plan of the Cuban Single Selling Agency. The following week was characterized by inactivity with prices on the decline. Small sales of Cubas were made for prompt shipment on the 19th at 2-7/32 cents c. and f. (3.99 cents 1.1.), while Philippine afloats changed hands at 3.96 cents, equivalent to P9.31 per picul ex godown. A material im­ provement was visible in the fourth week, when refiners developed a greater buying interest on the 26th and holders were able to sell small quantities at 2-5/16 cents c. and f. (4.08 cents 1. t.). The market was inactive at the close of the month, with a quotation for Cubas at 2-11/32 cents c. and f. (4.11 cents 1. t.), at which price there were sellers but no buyers. The latest visible stocks in the U. K., U. S., Cuba and European statistical countries for the month under review are 2,517,000 tons as com­ pared with 2, 275,000 tons at the same time last year and 2,195,000 tons in 1927. Futures. Quotations on the New York Ex­ change during September fluctuated as follows: 1929— September. . . December.. . . 1930— January......... March........... May.............. July............... September. . High Low Latest 2.31 2.09 2.23 2.37 2.19 2.35 2.35 2.23 2.34 2.35 2.23 2.34 2.40 2.30 2.38 2.46 2.36 2.44 2.49 2.46 2.49 Philippine Sales. During the month of Sept­ ember, sales of Philippine centrifugals in the Atlantic Coast were reported as follows:—afloats, near arrivals and for future deliveries—amount­ ed to 42,500 tons at prices ranging from 3.96 cents to 4.20 cents 1. t. as compared with sales amounting to 6,250 tons during the same period last year at 3.96 cents landed terms. Europe:—Owing perhaps to the prevailing drouth in Europe, Licht’s latest estimate of the new European beet crop is 8,154,000 tons, a decrease of 1.86 per cent as compared with the last out’turn which was 8,308,981 tons. Dr. Mikusch reports in his circular for August that despite the delay in the development of the beets in some countries in Europe, his estimates for the 1929-30 crop was released at the usual date. He warns however that his estimates are at best an attempt to characterize the present condition of the beets. He states it will be sufficient to call to mind the surprise of last autumn to show the extent to which the future meteorological conditions may change the crop prospects during the next few months. Dr. Mikusch estimates the acreage for the 1929-30 crop at 2,645,000 hectares with a production of 8,575,000 metric tons as compared with 8,460,000 tons’ out’turn last year. Local Market:—The local centrifugal market during the first week was very quiet ^with ex­ porters’ quotations at P9.00/ P9.25, while local traders paid as high as P9.75 for sugar suitable for direct consumption. Values ad­ vanced in the second week in sympathy with the rise in prices elsewhere, but since stocks were small these prices were not sufficiently attractive to holders. Chinese were interested buyers i^n the third week, and sugar for local consumption were obtainable at P9.80 ex godown Iloilo and P10.10 in Manila. Transactions in the last week were very insignificant since local stocks were practically exhausted. Crop Prospects: Weather conditions have improved since the 10th of this month. During the three-week period following September 10, there has been adequate sunshine, optimum soil moisture and intermittent showers which have partially compensated for the severe drouth of April and May on Luzon and the heavy rains of July and August on both Luzon and Negros. The Philippine Guaranty Company/ Incorporated (Accepted by all the Bureaus of the Insular Government) Executes bonds of all kinds for Customs, Immigration and Internal Revenue. DOCUMENTS SURETYSHIPS For Executors, Administrators, Receivers, Guardians, etc. We also write Fire and Marine Insurance Low rates iberal conditions ocal investments oans on real estate repayable by monthly or quarterly instal­ ments at low interest Call or write for particulars Room 403, Filipinas Bld¿. P. O. Box 128 Manila, P. I. OXYGEN Compressed Oxygen 99.5% pure ACETYLENE Dissolved Acetylene for all purposes WELDING Fully Equip­ ped Oxy-Ace­ tylene Weld­ ing Shops HYDROGEN Compressed Hydrogen 99.8% pure /'BATTERIES Prest-O-Lite [, Electric Stor­ age Batteries Philippine Acetylene Go. 281 CALLE CRISTOBAL, PACO MANILA, P. I. The Kabankalan Sugar Co. began milling on September 30, which is a few days earlier than their usual schedule. A decided innovation however has been the early milling of the Pampanga Sugar Development Co. (October 2). With juice purities of 80 or better on the first day of milling, it is apparent that Pampanga is following a wise procedure in beginning milling early, since April purities at the same central average around 72 and in May even lower. Another advantage also of early milling is that the efficiency of the capital investment in central equipment and railways is increased by a mini­ mum of 12 per cent, and planters are enabled to obtain seed for early planting with a consequent beneficial result to the following crop. In spite of the improvement in weather con­ ditions, it is unlikely that the relatively high unit yields obtained last year, which were mainly due to a very favorable and seasonable weather, will be equalled this year. Tabulated below is a preliminary estimate of the centrifugal sugar production of the Philip­ pines by islands for the 1929-30 crop as compared with the previous crop: Philippine Exports: Exports of sugar from the Philippines for the 1928-29 crop from No­ vember, 1928, to September 30, 1929, amounted to 619,991 tons, segregated as follows: Island Piculs Met. Tons 1928-29 Met. Tons Negros....... . 6,790,000 429,468 417,356 Luzon........ . 3,950,000 249,838 246,161 Panay....... 505,000 31,941 24,421 Mindoro. . . 150,000 9,487 10,886 Cebu......... 80,000 5,060 844 Leyte......... 25,000 1,581 None Total.. . . . 11,500,000 727,375 699,669 Metric tons Centrifugals.................................. 619,991 Muscovados.................................. 23,901 Refined.......................................... 7,432 Total...................................... 651,324 Java Market:—The Javan market was relatively firm throughout the month. After disposal by the Trust of the balance of the present crop at Gs. 13-1/2, equivalent to F7.28 per P. I. picul f. o. b., in the middle of the month, the market became quieter. Following are the latest quotations: Spot-October.........Gs. 13-1/8—F7.09lper P. I. November.............. Gs. 13-1/4— 7.15 picul December...............Gs. 13-3/8— 7.221 f.o.b. Jan.-Feb.-Mar.... Gs. 13-5/8— 7.34/ Review of the Exchange Market (Continued from page 27) declined to a low of 50 1/8 on September 28th and was quoted at 50 1/4 on September 30th. Telegraphic transfers on other points were quoted as follows on September 30th: Paris, 12.40; Madrid, 152; Singapore, 115-1/2; Japan, 97-3/4; Shanghai, 88; Hongkong, 97-1/8; India, 135-3/4; Java, 122-1/2. The Robert Dollar and Company and the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company can now install and operate radio stations for the dissemination of radio messages both in the Phil­ ippines and abroad following the granting of certificate of public service and convenience yesterday. The certificates were signed by Judge Roman A. Cruz, associate public service commissioner, before whom the hearing on the applications of those radio companies took place: The Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company plans to operate a round-the-world radio service with head offices in California and Manila. A powerful radio station in Parañaque, Rizal, will be installed soon by the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company, it was announced at the commission yesterday. The Robert Dollar Company will develop the radio business in the Philippines and radio stations will be built in places where present means of communications is scanty or otherwise inefficient. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 29 COPRA AND ITS PRODUCTS By E. A. SEIDENSPINNER Vice-President and Manager, Copra Milling Corporation Japan................................................. 11,810 Java.................................................... 2,119 North Atlantic (Europe)................. 20,848 North Africa...................................... 5,103 Straits Settlements............................ 2,434 United States.................................... 162,139 248,701 August, 1929...................... 2,334,651 September, 1928................. 1,917,114 Cigars: While September exports to the United States show a slight increase against August, they are considerably behind the cor­ responding 1928 period. Comparative statistics of cigars shipped to the United States: September 1929, 15,477,900. August 1929, 15,031,324. September T928, 19,455,333. HOW THEY DO IT The government has allotted more than ?800,000, proceeds of the gasoline and lubricating-oil tax, for bridges and roads. Perhaps not less than 75% of this tax is collected in Manila, from gasoline and oil consumed in motor vehicles operating here. But the city’s allot­ ment is but F84,000—another instance of taking directly from Manila in order directly to aid the provinces, which have limited taxing power. It seems evident from travel over the highways in this section of Luzon that the tax in question helps keep the roads in repair. Even after the typhoon, the road into Baliuag, Bulakan, was better all along the way than almost any street or avenue in Manila. Another treasury vacuity is reported here, and street work lags. The Manila copra market during Septem­ ber opened at levels somewhat under export equivalents. It was obvious that much of local supplies would move to the Continental market unless Manila prices advanced or U. K. bids declined. Al­ though Marseilles ad­ vices showed the market to be weak in spots, on the whole Continental demand remained fairly steady during the month, and with bad weather conditions locally during the first half of September, Manila buyers ad­ vanced their pricespending improved production. The month closed with arrivals considerably improved and a steady demand. Total arrivals for the month of September were 388/262 bags as compared with 506,544 bags for September, 1928. Latest advices follow: San Francisco, F. M. M...4-1/4 to 4-3/S cents London, Cebu Sundried... £22/15/0 F. M. M... £22/10/0 Manila, Buen Corriente... P9.25 Arrival Resecada. . . . PIO.00 to P10.25 Coconut oil:—European demand for copra has little effect on the U. S. coconut oil market due principally to the comfortable situation of large consuming buyers and the generous supply of competing Fats and Oils. The bulk of September trading has evidently gone to the edible trade and scattered tank car sales were reported at substant­ ially better prices than were obtainable for August. With the higher equivalent bids made by Europe for copra, it was but natural that local coconut oil manufacturers should look to the Continent for coconut oil bids. However, we have no record of substantial trading with Europe in coconut oil although we have been advised of the sale of one bulk parcel. There seems to be little prospect of improved demand from the U. S. market unless prices decline more in line with buyers’ ideas. Latest cables follow: New York........7 to 7-J/g cents C. I. F. San Francisco^ .6-J^ cents F. O. B. Manila..........* .31-J^ centavos per kilo in drums. Copra cake:—Hamburg demand for this item was very well sustained during the first half of September and a fair amount of trading was noted at advancing prices. The month closed however with heavy resale offerings down to £9/0/0 October-November-December shipment, under which pressure buyers have become indifferent and refuse to quote at better than £8/17/6. Latest cable advices follow: Hamburg..........£8/17/6 San Francisco. .No quotations Manila, Sellers.. F66.00 per metric ton ex godown Buyers...........P63.00 to P64.00 per metric ton ex godown. TOBACCO REVIEW Alhambra Cigar and Cigarette Manufacturing Co. Rawleaf:—The market for local and export grades during September remained a quiet. The quantity exported was very small. Com­ parative figures are as follows: Rawleaf, Stripped and Scraps Kilos Australia............................................. 310 China.................................................i 12,402 Hongkong........................................... 31,536 Take the NEW EMPIRE BUILDER Companion train to the ORIENTAL Ofñ yHEN you take the short Trans-Pacific route to Se­ attle—or if you enter at San Fran­ cisco—you have a most diverting trip to eastern America awaiting you on the New Empire Builder, companion train to the Oriental Limited. This luxuriously ap­ pointed and skilfully serviced no extra fare train reaches Chicago in 61hours from Portland or Se­ attle. 1200 clean, cinderless, scenic miles are traversed behind either oil-burning or electric locomo­ tives. The route includes 60 miles CLEAN. CINDERLESS, LUXURIOUS, SCENIC ROUTE Apply to Tourist Agencies orTrans-Pacific Steamship Lines or write J. Wesley Young, Gen’l Agent, Pass’r Dept., 1400 4th Ave., Seattle, Wash. A. H. Hebb, Agent, 916 Government St., Victoria, B. C. Edw. A. Dye, Gen’l Agent, 607 Hastings St., Vancouver, B. C. C. A. Gerken, Gen’l Agent, 679 Market St., San Francisco, Cal. M. J. Costello, West. Traf. Mgr., Seattle, Wash. Cable address: Hillrail in daylight along Glacier National Park. Enroute, see the electrified New Cascade Tunnel, longest in the Western Hemisphere—8 miles through the Cascade Mountains —shortening the distance across America on the Great Northern Railway. At Chicago make con­ nections with fast de luxe trains for Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Washington, D. C., and other American cities. A Dependable Railway IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MEN'i ION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 30 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 Greatest success in all Buick history Sales Tell the Story—And 1930 Buick Sales Break All Records I THE 1930 Buicks have attained tremen­ dous popularity in Manila over night. All who have seen this “greatest of all Buicks” have expressed sincere admiration for the beauty of the new Fisher bodies—the at­ tractive lines which make the 1930 models distinctive. Public approval has been translated into sales—which is the truest test of the acceptance of new motor car models. All Manila sales records for cars in Buick’s class were broken during the first two days of the showing of the 1930 models. Call today and see the 1930 Buicks. Take note of the many improvements—the luxurious appointments—the new symmetry and grace of lines. You will recognize at once that Buick has attained new heights of excellence. Here is a car truly worthy of the Buick tradition. Automotive Sales Company DISTRIBUTOR Buick — Marquette — GMC Trucks Pinpin and M. del Banco Nacional IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION ["HE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 THE AMERICAN ^MAiviniLr^ ur iuuivvw j v PRINCIPAL EXPORTS Monthly average for 12 months July, 1929 July, 1928 ending July, 1929 Commodities --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Quantity Value % Quantity Value % Quantity Value % Sugar............................................................................................................................ 37,208,377 P Hemp............................................................................................................................ 15,067,578 Coconut Oil................................................................................................................ 13,663,639 Copra............................................................................................................................ 11,187,689 Cigar (Number)......................................................................................................... 17,084,565 Embroidery................................................................................................................. Maguey........................................................................................................................ 967,349 Leaf Tobacco.............................................................................................................. 2,908,283 Dessicated and Shredded Coconut....................................................................... 1,842,545 Hats (Number).......................................................................................................... 94,212 Lumber (Cubic Meter)........................................................................................... 15,928 Copra Meal................................................................................................................ 9,673,685 Cordage........................................................................................................................ 497,893 Knotted Hemp.......................................................................................................... 112,798 Pearl Buttons (Gross)............................................................................................. 73,259 Canton (low grade cordage fiber)........................................................................ 593,289 All Other Products................................................................................................... 5,557,593 24.0 17,959,911 P 3,040,901 15.5 54,168,924 P 8,811,801 31.3 4,626,539 20.1 12,056,253 3,646,876 18.6 15,876,635 4,725,082 16.7 4,100,349 17.8 13,641,676 4,481,117 22.8 16,037,832 5,159,036 18.2 1,902,255 8.3 15,874,324 3,179,960 16.2 18,323,834 3,628,502 12.8 677,662 2.9 19,236,900 850,598 4. 6 17,121,306 723,798 2.5 1,137,738 4.9 632,234 3.5 896,219 3.1 194,205 0.8 764,821 155,881 1.1 1,317,882 273,920 0.9 964,631 4.2 301,550 91,589 0.8 1,744,268 600,833 2.0 585,216 2.5 1,926,115 693,957 3.7 1,735,143 621,119 2.1 296,378 1.3 112,008 476,130 2.6 137,098 638,042 2. 1 532,766 2.3 12,559 459,111 2.5 14,760 517,054 1.7 612,911 2.6 7,163,630 519,838 2.8 8,681,504 630,964 2. 1 265,229 1.1 575,919 309,495 1.8 375,937 323,319 1.0 402,998 1.7 21,290 54,544 0.6 58,028 202,929 0.6 82,507 0.3 65,484 59,172 0.6 58,726 64,901 0.2 122,807 0.5 598,232 99,121 0.8 578,588 106,165 0.3 873,252 3.8 4,061,289 20.6 545,274 1.9 Total Domestic Products....................................................................................... P22.721.823 99.1 P19.392.433 99.1 P28,300,382 99.5 United States Products........................................................................................... 161,860 0.7 111,758 0.9 136,193 0.4 Foreign Products....................................................................................................... 51,353 0.2 7,622 32,083 0.1 Grand Total.............................................................................................. P22,935,036 100 * 0 P19.511.813 100.0 P28.468.658 100.0 Note:—All quantities are in kilos except where otherwise indicated. PRINCIPAL IMPORTS CARRYING TRADE Articles Monthly average for July, 1929 July, 1928 12 months ending July, 1929 Value Cotton Cloths................... P 2,977,142 Other Cotton Goods........ 916,589 Iron and Steel, Except Machinery..................... 1,598,527 Rice..................................... 1,342,424 Wheat Flour..................... 917,154 Machinery and Parts of.. 991,083 Dairy Products................ 787,444 Gasoline............................. 458,399 Silk Goods......................... 776,190 Automobiles...................... 363,368 Vegetable Fiber Goods.. . 371,893 Meat Products.................. 832,385 Illuminating Oil................ 643,016 Fish and Fish Products. . 232,410 Crude Oil........................... 200,731 Coal..................................... 477,976 Chemicals, Dyes, Drugs, Etc.................................. 372,726 Fertilizers........................... 259,346 Vegetables......................... 245,655 Paper Goods, Except Books............................. 458,469 Tobacco and Manufac­ tures of.......................... 386,365 Electrical Machinery.. . . 330,327 Books and Other Printed Matters.......................... 238,338 Cars and Carriages........ 86,525 Automobile Tires............. 313,702 Fruits and Nuts.............. 91,343 Woolen Goods.................. 118,839 Leather Goods................. 198,523 Shoes and Other Foot­ ware....... ......................... 402,967 Coffee................................. 206,865 Breadstuff, Except Wheat Flour............................... 189,359 Eggs.................................... 227,926 Perfumery and Other Toilet Goods................ 115,269 Lubricating Oil................ 160,077 Cacao Manufactures, Ex­ cept Candy................... 91,559 Glass and Glassware.. . . 122,409 Paints, Pigments, Var­ nish, Etc. ..................... 157,285 Oils not separate 'r listed. 96,824 Earthern Star ; and Chinaware./ ............ 122,638 Automobile jy /’jories.. 172,199 Diamond and ^cher Pre­ cious Stones Unset.... 65,400 Wood, Reed, Bamboo, Rattan........................... 118,334 India Rubber Goods.. . . 109,694 Soap.................................... 75,356 Matches............................. 96,518 gattle................................. 56,912 Explosives......................... 43,457 Cement............................... 99,286 Sugar and Molasses........ 63,639 Picture Films.. . 35,342 All Other Imports........... 1,763,280 Total.................. P21,579,474 13.7 4.3 P 3,119,968 1,408,697 11.2 5.1 P 3,708,959 1,252,135 12.4 4.0 7.4 2,809,426 10.1 2,023,446 6.1 6.2 257,857 1.0 759,240 2.0 4.3 1,081,642 2,830,178 675,944 4.0 916,068 2.6 4.6 10.1 1,585,351 5.3 3.6 2.4 604,046 774,220 1.4 2.1 1,146,812 859,286 4.1 2.1 3.6 3.1 748,421 2.0 1.7 962,792 3.4 191,207 0.7 1.7 234,736 0.9 478,654 1.8 3.8 540,361 1.8 501,727 2.0 2.9 672,407 2.4 372,179 1.4 1.1 426,319 1.5 439,591 1.7 0.9 324,064 1.2 153,387 0.6 2.2 218,492 0.8 459,813 1.8 1.7 487,860 1.7 424,333 1.6 1.2 64,398 0.2 356,446 1.4 1.1 306,760 1.1 394,211 1.5 2.1 547,043 1.9 433,577 1.7 1.8 698,403 2.5 421,807 1.7 1.5 679,785 2.4 432,911 1.7 1.1 403,303 1.4 235,013 0.9 0.4 266,678 0.9 220,810 0.9 1.5 328,422 1.2 307,033 1.2 0.4 193,166 0.7 314,732 1.2 0.6 125,621 0.4 129,503 0.5 0.9 420,656 1.5 254,640 1.0 1.9 281,73.1 1.0 149,516 0.6 1.0 192,291 0.7 173,408 0.7 0.9 197,336 0.7 197,420 0.8 1.1 224,722 0.8 207,587 0.9 0. 5 197,889 0.7 147,429 0.6 0.8 280,245 1.0 197,268 0.8 0.4 134,491 0.5 136,281 0.6 0.6 208,639 0.7 178,955 0.7 0.7 239,858 0.8 153,789 0.6 0.5 384,305 1.4 145,686 0.6 0.6 169,526 0.6 140,869 0.6 0.8 159,000 0.5 176,147 0.7 0.3 145,738 0.5 128,069 0. 5 0.6 166,277 0.6 132,270 0.6 0. 5 154,451 0.5 123,213 0.5 0.4 138,451 0.5 183,268 0.8 0.5 76,757 0.3 70,746 0.3 0.3 73,916 0.3 32,933 0.2 0.2 85,632 0.3 46,004 0.2 0.5 97,183 0.3 99,588 0.4 0.3 79,446 0.3 26,110 31,806 0. 1 0.2 39,902 0.1 0.2 8.1 2,226,591 7.9 6,178,174 24.8 100.0 P28.045.453 100.0 P24,550,199 100.0 IMPORTS % Value % Value % Nationality of Vessels July, 1929 July, 1928 JMonthly average for 12 months ending July, 1929 Value % Value % Value % t American........................... P 8,148,845 37.3 P12,399,045 44.2 P10,710,404 43.0 British................................. 6,903,262 31.6 9,744,119 34.8 7,634,027 30.7 Japanese............................. 1,358,077 6.4 1,063,817 3.8 1,096,997 4.5 Dutch................................. 1,099,132 5.2 1,128,419 4.0 681,021 2.9 German............................... 1,621,550 7.6 1,827,700 6.5 1,677,645 6.9 Norwegian......................... 1,215,545 5.6 1,007,016 3.6 1,429,920 5.9 Philippine........................... 78,317 0.4 137,173 0.5 118,007 0.6 Spanish............................... 66,136 0.4 119,687 0.4 159,166 0.8 Chinese............................... 101,904 0.6 57,043 0.2 90,736 0. 5 Swedish............................... 12,791 0.2 12,169 0.1 Danish................................ 482,972 2.3 251,738 1.1 French................................ 56,277 0.3 By Freight........................ P21.088.531 97.6 P27,484,019 98.0 P23,890,025 97.3 By Mail............................. 490,943 2.4 561,434 2.0 660,174 2.7 Total.................. P21.579.474 100.0 P28,045,453 100.0 P24,550,199 100.0 EXPORTS Monthly average for Nationality of Vessels July, 1929 July, 1929 12 months ending July, 1929 Value % Value % Value % American................ .......... P12,566,910 54.7 P 8,460,657 42.6 P13,108,534 45.7 British................................ 5,784,594 25.3 6,467,140 32.4 7,443,894 25.4 Japanese............................ 1,378,497 6. 1 2,278,833 11.7 3,304,483 10.6 German................... .......... 874,997 3.8 676,085 3.7 959,986 3.4 Norwegian.............. .......... 470,205 2.0 66,525 0.6 919,200 3.2 Spanish.................... .......... 432,211 1.9 373,787 2.2 102,896 0.3 Dutch..................... .......... 398,019 1.7 452,832 2.6 783,129 2.7 Philippines............ . .......... 50,423 0.2 54,449 0.5 167,227 0.6 Chinese.................. . .......... 23,179 0. 1 26,400 0.1 Swedish................... .......... 203,197 0.9 356,742 1.2 French...................... 4,880 Danish..................... 931,309 3.3 By Freight........................ P22,182,232 96.7 P18,830,308 96.4 P27.458.421 96.5 By Mail.................. .......... 752;804 3.3 681,505 3.6 1,009,387 3. 5 Total.................. P22.935.036 100.0 P19.5U.813 100.0 P28.467.808 100.0 TRADE WITH THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES Monthly average for Countries July, 1929 July, 1928 12 months ending July, 1929 TRADE WITH THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES Ports Manila............. Iloilo................. Cebu................. Zamboanga... . Jolo................... Davao.............. Legaspi............ Total. Monthly average for July, 1929 12 months ending July, 1929 July, 1929 Value % Value % Value % ■ P30.012.132 66.9 P35.562.144 75.4 P36,185,218 68.1 6,259,460 14.1 3,470,755 7.2 7,042,424 13.2 5,605,184 12.7 5,856,698 12.2 6,492,457 12.1 572,737 1.4 697,045 1.3 610,397 1.1 82,171 0.3 122,011 0.2 87,346 0.2 1,440,695 3.3 1,186,459 2.4 1,413,376 2.6 542,131 1.3 662,154 1.3 1,260,223 2.7 P44.514.510 100.0 P47.557.266 100.0 P53.101.441 100.0 Total................... P44.514.510 100.0 P47.557.266 100.0 P53.101.441 100.0 Value % Value % Value % United States............... . . P28,896,895 64.3 P33,116,529 70.3 P36,178,014 68.2 United Kingdom.......... 2,099,979 4.8 2,021,665 4.2 2,160,822 4.0 Japan............................. 3,095,808 7.0 3,778,447 7.9 3,341,089 6.2 China............................. 1,357,167 3.1 1,786,606 3.7 1,798,344 3.4 French East Indies. . . 1,316,933 3.0 246,973 0.4 761,354 1.4 Germany........................ 1,449,777 3.3 1,209,401 2.4 1,339,260 2.5 Spain............................... 997,473 2.3 580,409 1.1 1,096,532 2.1 Australia........................ 930,787 2.2 543,716 1.1 455,559 0.9 British East Indies . . . 545,379 1.3 408,876 0.8 753,575 1.4 Dutch East Indies.. . . 750,908 1.8 952,611 2.0 577,113 1.1 France............................ 351,044 0.9 720,309 1.5 815,629 1.5 Netherlands................... 333,999 0.4 269,484 0.5 366,257 0.7 Italy............................ . . 690,227 1.7 178,276 0.4 358,657 0.7 Hongkong...................... 114,434 0.3 190,927 0.4 224,737 0.4 Belgium......................... 331,431 0.8 545,107 0.1 455,029 0.9 Switzerland................... 310,196 0.7 324,123 0.6 284,044 0.5 Japanese-China............ 168,287 0.4 110,988 0.2 140,700 0.3 Siam............................... 31,496 0.1 30,153 0.1 36,253 0.1 Sweden........................... 190,874 0.4 75,966 0.2 107,993 0.2 Canada........................... 99,895 0.2 126,012 0.3 102,010 0.2 Norway.......................... 59,331 0.2 72,730 0.2 90,658 0.2 Austria........................... 8,789 25,549 0.1 10,505 Denmark....................... 20,951 0.1 43,597 0.1 35,366 0.1 Other Countries.......... 362,450 0.8 198,812 0.4 1,611,941 3.0 inz AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL October, 1929 BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY Kerr Steamship Co., Inc. General Agents “SILVER FLEET” Express Freight Services Philippines-New York via Java and Singapore Roosevelt Steamship Agency Agents Chaco Bldg. Phone 2-14-20 Manila, P. I. Myers-Buck Co., Inc. Surveying and Mapping PRIVATE MINERAL AND PUBLIC LAND 316 Carriedo Tel. 2-16-10 STA. POTENtHANA 32 TEL/ 22715 CUTS COLOR PLATES HALF-TONES ZINC-ETCHING JM PHILIPPINES COLD STORES Wholesale and Retail Dealers in American and Australian Refrigerated Produce STORES AND OFFICES Calle Echague Manila, P. I. MACLEOD & COMPANY Manila Cebu Vigan Davao Iloilo Exporters of Hemp and Maguey Agents for INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER CO. Agricultural Machinery UNIVERSAL BATTERIES F26.50 One Year Guarantee CARO ELECTRICAL SERVICE 110 P. Faura Tel. 5-69-44 fí ® CHINA BANKING CORPORATION MANILA, P. I. Domestic and Foreign Banking of Every Description “LA URBANA” (Sociedad Mútua de Construcción y Préstamos) Préstamos Hipotecarios Inversiones de Capital 111 Plaza Sta. Cruz Manila, P. I. P. O. Box 1394 Telephone 22070 J. A. STIVER Attorney-At-Law Notary Public Certified Public Accountant Investments Collections Income Tax 121 Real, Intramuros Manila, P. I. HANSON & ORTH, Inc. Manila, P. I. Buyers and Exporters of Hemp and Other Fibers 612-613 Pacific Bldg. Tel. 2-24-18 BRANCHES: New York—London—Merida—Davao SALEEBY FIBER CO., INC. Fiber Merchants P. O. Box 1423 Manila, P. I Room 318, Pacific Building Cable Address: “SALEFIBER” >------------------------------TAILORING CO., Inc. 73 Escolta 73 MADRIGAL & CO. 8 Muelle del Banco Nacional Manila, P. I. Coal Contractors and Coconut Oil Manufacturers MILL LOCATED AT CEBU Derham Building Phone 22516 Manila P. O. Box 2103 MORTON & ERICKSEN, INC. Surveyors AMERICAN BUREAU OF SHIPPING Marine and Cargo Surveyors Sworn Measurers MR. MANUEL VALENTIN TAILOR Formerly Chief Cutter for P. B. Florence & Co. 244 Plaza Sta. Cruz Manila, P. I. Phone 2-61-30 THOMAS BRESLIN MINING ENGINEER Qualified Private Surveyor Room 6, Borromeo Building 15/ CaHe Norte America, Cebu Residence: abolo, Cebu Tel. 372-L The Earnshaws Docks and Honolulu Iron Works Sugar Machinery Slipways Machine Shops Port Area Manila, P. I. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL | ' RIU HERMANOS—623-ESCOLTA-623 Manila Wine Merchants Limited 174 Juan Luna Manila, P. I. P. O. Box 403 Phones 2-25-67 and 2-25-68 WEANDSCO Western Equipment and Supply Co. Distributers in the Philippines for Western Electric Co. Graybar Electric Co. Westinghouse 119 Calle T. Pinpin P. O. Box C Manila, P. I. > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------—-----------------------------------------------------------Recommended By Leading Doctors NOW’S THE TIME! 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