The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Vol. 7, No.4 (April 1927)

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Vol. 7, No.4 (April 1927)
Issue Date: Vol. 7, No.4 (April 1927)
Year: 1927
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extracted text: THE CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL. PLAZA McKINLEY. WALLED CITY. MANILA N THIS ISSUE: Rambling Through Our Interisland Seas—With the Name, Size and Age of Every Coastwise Steamer Director Hines on U. S. Veterans’ Insurance From Jagor to Major General Leonard Wood—“Henry’s” (Governor Allen’s) Philippine Impressions Editorials and Business Reviews Special Articles: Current Comment of Timely Interest and Permanent Value FOR OFFICE OR HOME ROYAL TYPEWRITERS LEAD ALL OTHERS In the office the Royal Standard typewriter sets the pace for fast, neat, accurate and easy work. In the home the Royal Portable, the same in all respects as the popular standard machine, with the same size and arranged keyboard, does all the work that is generally assigned to the big machine. Whether for home or office, you make no mistake in buying ROYAL typewriters they lead all others.Sold on Easy Payments TYPEWRITER DEPARTMENT CAMERA SUPPLY COMPANY P. O. Box 778 110 ESCOLTA, MANILA Phone 2-21-98 IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL THE ROTARY LETTERGRAPH Makes copies quickly, clearly and easily When you want copies of typewritten or handwritten matter and need them badly, you want a dependable machine that does not cost all you are going to make. I You want the ROTARY LETTERGRAPH. It’s a small machine with ability of j a big one. But it’s simpler, much simpler. It has all the disadvantages of some of the big ones taken out of it. Your office boy can run it without a preliminary course of ' training. The ROTARY LETTERGRAPH is the most dependable stencil duplicating , machine on the market. 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For 60 years the Vacuum Oil Company has specialized in the production of fine lubricants. The scientific accuracy of the Mobiloil Chart has won the approval of 609 automotive manufacturers. Let the nearest Mobiloil dealer fill up the crankcase of your car with the correct grade of Mobiloil. Then see for yourself how much longer Mobiloil lasts, how it increases power, cuts carbon and repair bills. I VACUUM OIL COMPANY IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL ^American Chamber of Commerce Journal PUBLISHED MONTHLY p. i. Page From Jagor to Major General Leonard Wood—Impressions of the Philippines {By Henry J. Allen)................................... 5 U. S. Veterans’ Insurance {By Director Frank S. Hines).. 7 African Palm Growing in the Philippines..................................... 7 Syllabi of the “Bank” and “Coal” Cases (First Publication). .. 8 Livestock Fair at the Carnival of 1927 {By Dr. V. Buencamino)................................................................................................... 9 Editorials {By Walter Robb): Human Freight................................................................................. 10 An Unprofitable Exchange........................................................... 10 Restored Constitutional Balance................................................ 10 Expansion............................................................................................ 10 After Five O’Clock: Speaking Personally....................................... 11 R. M. “Bob” McCrory: Fearless to the End.............................. 11 Rambling Through Our Interisland Seas {By Percy A. Hill) .. 12 Gas Company Bought in U. S........................................................... 13 Artesian Wells, by Provinces............................................................... 14 Lumbang Oil: Rivals Linseed {By E. M. Gross)...................... 15 Page Reviews of March Business: Railway Commodity Movements {By M. D. Royer)... 17 Sugar {By George H. Fairchild)............................................ 18 Real Estate {By P. D. Carman)............................................ 19 Rice {By Percy A. Hill). . : ................................................... 20 Exchange {By Stanley Williams).......................................... 20 Shipping {By H. M. Cavender).............................................. 22 Copra and Its Products {By E. A. Seidenspinner). ... 24 Tobacco {By P. A. Meyer)....................................................... 24 Manila Hemp {By T. H. Smith)........................................... 25 Statistical Review of Overseas Commerce: Imports and Exports from and to Atlantic and Pacific Ports by Nationality of Carrying Vessels...................... 26 Principal Exports............................................................................. 27 Principal Imports............................................................................. 27 Port Statistics................................................................................... 27 Carrying Trade................................................................................. 27 Foreign Trade by Countries....................................................... 27 incghSr™ 4 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 Commercial Printing is a silent but Powerful Messenger Your letter heads, bill heads, cards, envelopes, etc., when well printed, all help to build up that "feeling of confidence’’. Our reputation for producing GOOD PRINTING has been earned and merits your patronage. McCullough Printing Company 424 Rizal Ave. Phone 800 Luzon Stevedoring Co., Inc. Lightering, Marine Contractors Towboats, Launches, Waterboats Shipbuilders and Provisions SIMMIE & GRILK Phone 302 Port Area BAGUIO TRAIN SERVICE Daily train leaves Manila at 8:00 a. m. A night Special Train will leave Manila at 11 p. m. every Friday and will return Sunday night until June 10. Commencing March 14 and extending until the end of May, an extra night train will be run every week, leaving Manila Monday night to return Wednesday night. All night trains have standard sleeping cars with bathrooms and all conveniences of a de Luxe travel, and also carry first and third class coaches. Booking for Sleeper Berths at Tutuban Station or American Express Company, Plaza Moraga, Manila. RATES First Class Third Class Manila to Baguio one way _____ ¥17:60 ¥ 8.55 10 days, Manila to Baguio, round trip . - - ____ 11.84 60 days, Manila to Baguio, round trip - - - 27.60 12.94 Manila to Damortis, one way - ... - 11.10 5.55 10 days, Manila to Damortis, round trip - - - 15.54 8.88 60 days, Manila to Damortis, round trip - - - 16.04 9.13 60 days, Manila to Bauang Sur, round trip - - 18.21 10.37 Sleeper berth, each way ' ______ 5.00 MANILA RAILROAD COMPANY 943 AZCARRAGA, MANILA IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL i From Jagor to Major General Wood ♦ ❖ ❖ An Opinion and Impressions of the Local Situation By Henry J. Allen, Former State Governor of Kansas NOTE:—Governor Allen of Kansas is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the “Wi chita Daily Beacon", a leading midwestern paper of wide circulation and influence. He is active in public life and a well-known national figure—the “Henry" of William Allen White's “The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me." But he too is the author of several books; the following, from the Beacon of February 6, will no doubt form a chapter in still another. It is one of four crisp articles on the islands written by Gov ernor Allen for his paper after his visit to Manila late last year on the Ryndam, the “University Afloat.” It speaks for itself, and shows how one distinguished Republi can leader stands on the Philippine issue— hence its value in the islands.—ED. Fully fifty years before Dewey visited Manila Bay, Jagor, a German traveler, wrote, in his “Journeys Thru the Philippines,” these pro phetic words: “As the navigation of the west coast of America extends the influence of the American element over the South Sea, the magical and captivating influence exercised by the great republic upon the Spanish colonies will not fail to make itself felt in the Philippines. The Americans are doubtless destined to bring to its full develop ment the seed sown by the Spaniards. As modern conquerors representing the era of free citizens, in contraposition to the era of feudalism they go> with the hoe and the ax of the pioneers where the Spaniards went with the sword and under the sign of the cross.” It is doubtful if any man who had to do with American occupation in the Philippines had ever read this keen prophecy of a German traveler, uttered a half century before we were catapulted into Manila Bay. It is doubtful if many of our statesmen have possessed a full consciousness touching the significance pointed out by Jagor, although all realize that we did bring the ax and the hoe, likewise the tractor, the motor car and the electric crane, the radio and the air plane. We have always regarded ourselves as being in the Philippine' Islands by the design of Prov idence. As Dolliver of Iowa used to say, “They blew us up in Havana Harbor and, obeying the laws of gravitation, we came down in Manila Bay.” Our first instinct upon discovering that we were in possession of an ancient people was to disavow any intention of keeping sovereignty over them, after they had reached a point of capacity to govern themselves with honor at home and safety abroad. McKinley himself, with the gift he had for. making eloquent phraseology, used these words as pledge for the future: “Forcible annexation is criminal aggression.” He added that it was his desire .that “the American flag, symbolical of liberty, be not less beloved and respected in the fertile plains of Luzon and the mountain fastnesses of Mindanao than it is in America." In twenty-five years, nearly every body at home has forgc^en all this, but th^y remember it in the Philippines. The first question they ask an American visitipg the Islands is as to whether he still believes in the Mc Kinley pledge, and very frequently the good natured Amer ican, forgetting what the McKinley pledge was, says “Yes,” and then tries to remember. Parian Gale into the Wallc.I City Before the Moat Was Parked into a Public Playground We landed at the modern dock of Manila at a time when the controversy over independ ence is more acute than it has been since Aguinaldo signed the treaty of peace and surrendered his position as president of the Philippine Re public. Undoubtedly much of the present national consciousness of the Filipino is due to the Asiatic unrest which characterizes the entire Far East. They are weary of being governed by the West, irritated at the gunboats that go gesticulating up and down the shores of the islands of the far oceans and of China. Some of this reaction is that which would be natural to any people. Just now it is perhaps being given/ direction from organization by Russia and China, as well as the organized propaganda of Japan, thru her new irritation over our Exclusion Act. This, however, could not explain altogether the almost unanimous sentiment among the Phil ippine people, which approaches a point of frenzy when discussing independence. There have been no acts of tyranny, no citizen has been deprived of his right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”; in no instance has any property right been despoiled. The freest press I ever saw and the widest latitude in freedom of speech I ever encountered are here; yet they talk bitterly oi their oppression. I believe that some of the present excitement has been due to lack of tact in handling a purely civil administration as though it were a military matter. Governor-General Harrison, in his interpretation of the Jones Act, gave to it a latitude not contemplated even by the Filipino people. In creating the Council of State, which made^lhe President of the Senate, just then substituted for the Commission, and the Speaker of the House equal members with the GovernorGeneral of the Administrative Board of the Phil ippines, Governor Harrison allowed the estab lishment of a governing authority which took final powers out of the hands of the United States and lodged them within the legislative leaders of the Islands. He retained, it is true, under the provisions of the Jones Act, limited powers of veto, but this power he used only three times during the several years of his governorFor every Farm Job Fordsorv THE UNIVERSAL TRACTOR Economical, Dependable and Powerful Has the power of 8 carabaos, does every farm, ' road and belt job. Can be operated on any kind of vaporizing fuel, 24 hours a day if desired. Price 1’1,525.00 cash. Easy terms can be arranged. MANILA TRADING & SUPPLY COMPANY i MANILA I Iloilo Cebu Bacolod Legaspi Pulupandan I For every belt Job IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 ship. Senator Quezon, the President of the Senate, and Speaker Osmena, the head of the House, not only controlled the Council of State, but likewise directed the legislation. They created a condition held to be unconstitutional in our national and most of the states in our own country, which forbids the intermingling of executive, legislative and judicial powers. Har rison apparently was an easy-going, goodnatured man, who devoted much of his time to pleasure, and he gave extensions of authority which able Filipinos themselves admit were unwise. He created a condition whereby the National Bank of the Philippines lost $100,000,000 and the Board of Control was also dis sipating the 50,000,000 pesos created for the 'development of industry. He fed them a free dom more rapidly than they were able to digest the same, so far as capable business adminis tration was concerned. Then came General Wood, an able adminis trator, with a priceless record of service to a sub ject people in Cuba and with an accurate knowl edge of the Philippine Islands, gained first as an officer over here in the early days and later as a member of a commission appointed to in vestigate conditions, which investigation was concluded just before he was appointed Governor General by President Harding. In a people such as the Filipinos, rather small things often weigh more than larger issues. General Wood, trained all his life in the military, and coming out of army life, brought with him a military staff grown accustomed to regard the Filipinos as an inferior race, and exhibiting somewhat tactlessly the superiority complex familiar wherever the white man sets himself up to govern the Asiatic. These officers, having little taste for history and less for diplomacy, ignored entirely the three hundred years of cultural background which the upper class of Filipino society has enjoyed. There are in the Islands several thousand graduates of a university established in the sixteenth century. They are people of culture, yet they were ignored socially at the government house. One of their leaders tells me they were not invited to receptions and social affairs by the members of the military staff. It had been different under GovernorGeneral Harrison', who, however reckless and improvident his administration of affairs was, treated the Filipinos with great comradeship. There is no doubt of the fact that General Wood confronted at once the need of checking the riotous waste established under the criminally careless administration of Governor Harrison. Probably his first mistake was in not checking it at once. He condemned it and let it drag along. Whether this cautious policy was dic tated from Washington or was due to an un expected indecision on his own part, no one over here knows. Finally, when General Wood acted, by dissolving the Board of Control, it was like the sudden visitation upon a spoiled child of a discipline too long delayed. Presi dent Quezon, a brilliant orator and a cunning politician, and Senator Osmena, a statesman of genuine ability, who had been working some what apart, the former being a radical and the latter a conservative, joined forces in common complaint, and they have made this thoroughly justifiable act on the part of General Wood seem like an act of tyranny to the Filipino people. Several of the thoughtful Filipino leaders, who pretend to believe that the Filipinos should have immediate freedom, yet endorse General Wood’s abolishment of the Board of Control as a neces sary act for the checking of a program of waste and extravagance. We have probably been somewhat respon sible for the extravagant ideas so far as the use of money is concerned, which expressed them selves in the acts of these Filipino leaders so un expectedly made potent by Governor Harrison. We have had able men in the early days of our occupation—Taft, Wright, Ide, Smith, and Forbes. Accustomed to the best and used to conceiving everything on a large scale, they did not adapt themselves to the capacity of the country. As a proof of the prodigality of the govern ment in the Philippines, you notice the superb palace of the Bureau of Science. This edifice, planned by Bumham, the Chicago architect, evokes the grand figure of that artist, but it seems rather out of place in its native setting in Manila. The new Senate Building, just con structed at a cost of over $4,000,000, bears the same stamp of prodigality. We are perhaps somewhat responsible for the feeling that the number of dollars spent in government are not important. However, we are not responsible for the very evident graft which accompanied the administration of the Board of Control. Our expenditure has been lavish, but without corruption. One cannot visit the Islands today without the very conscious feeling that there has been a costly retrogression, and that both the Filipinos and the American government are paying heavily and will continue to pay heavily for the Harrison administration. A dozen years ago, Dr. Masujima, one of the most prominent lawyers in the Japanese empire, who received his brilliant education in Great Britain, and who represented the Bar Associa tion of Japan at an annual meeting in the Phil ippines, paid America this great compliment. He was addressing the House of Representatives of the Philippine Legislature. At that time the Philippine Legislature, the Commissioners and the Governor-General represented the legis lative and administrative functions of the gov ernment in lines of properly separated functions. Afternoon Shadows: Santa Lucia Gate into Walled City Said he, “I understand that this House has been in operation for a period of eleven years and that it has brought invaluable blessings to the people of these Islands. Permit me to congratulate this government for having established a popular system of government in these Islands. If the history I read does not err, this country had for three centuries labored under a very oppressive system of Spain. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to congratulate the people of the Philippines for having this system of popular government implanted here and in real izing the needs of this government under the protection of a people so generous as are those of the United States. For more than one hun dred and forty years the people of the United States have governed themselves, and accord ing to my best knowledge and belief they now have a form of government which guarantees and protects the interests of all the people. With a similar form of government here with you, I am certain that this popular system which you have implanted in your country will reach its culmination in a short time. The idea of democracy is embodied in the famous document —the Declaration of Independence of the United States. Looking at the subject from that view point, we, the Japanese, should look upon you as a model for a popular system of government. For example, Great Britain is a democratic country, though ruled by a king. Great Britain has been in possession of India for about one hundred and fifty years now, and yet after so long a period of English regime in India, the results obtained by that government can illy be compared with those accomplished in the Philippines by the United States in eleven years. For this reason, I declare and maintain that the United States of America understands better and is better imbued with the spirit of true democracy.” This whole hearted compliment, from a Japa nese statesman, was just when it was uttered. In its essence it is even more just today, but we have lost ground because we did not continue in the ways and careful policies through which progress was being made under the predecessors of Governor Harrison. Following his mal administration of the Jones Act, in itself an able organic law, native school teachers displaced the real teachers from the United States, trained to establish the program mapped out under the spirit of McKinley’s original pledge. Native judges supplanted American judges and the most ruinous result, which brought the crisis, was that native administration of the fiscal affairs of the Philippines supplanted American control. One of the misfortunes of the situation is that the checking of the reign of demoralization set loose by the Harrison administration created a definite split between the Philippine influences and the American influences and no tact has been employed to soften the strained relationship. Against the vituperation and extravagant mis representation of the brilliant Quezon no effort has been made on the part of the American administration to protect its side of the contro versy before the public. Every military aide stiffens when the word Philippines is mentioned. Every Filipino goes about regarding himself as oppressed, though in reality an abundant prosperity prevails and the people have no indi vidual wrongs so far as the government is con cerned. In the meantime, there is growing consciously and rapidly a sentiment on the part of the Americans not only in business but in the administrative circles that America should hold the Islands forever. They hark back to the extravagance and dishonesty prevalent under the Harrison administration as proof of a lack of self-governing qualities, and they have started a very attractive propaganda for the establishment of a territorial relation ship similar to that we have in Hawai^ as the permanent form of retaining the Islands. At present, under the Jones Act, with a Council of State, the government of the Philippine Islands has been much freer from federal authority than that of the Hawaiian Islands. I do not believe that such able statesmen as Senator Osmena believes that the Filipino people as a people are capable of self-government at this time. He doubtless believes that they are capable of being governed by men of his wisdom and leadership, but so far as the presence of a con scious middle class in the Islands is concerned, it does not now exist. However, this situation is growing hopefully and rapidly, under the ex cellencies of a school administration which was not hopelessly crippled under the Harrison administration. I believe that the purpose of the present turmoil, so far as the leaders themselvfes are concerned, is to obtain from the United States a showdown of future intention. These men are perfectly conscious of the power in the United States of the propaganda that is growing out of the present revolt in favor of permanent retention of the Islands. Therefore, their keenest anxiety is for a restatement of our future policy in definite official terms, so as to check the growth of the sentiment for retention. There are in the controversy three schools of opinion touching our future policy. The one which probably will grow the more rapidly at home is that being organized by the American Chamber of Commerce. This is for retention of the Islands. The hostile attitude of the Fili pinos is crowding the business men here all into this school. Joined with them likewise are most of the officers of the army and the members of various executive positions from the United States. April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 7 The other outstanding school is led by Presi dent Quezon and Senator Osmena. I should judge that it contains practically all the so-called body politic of the Filipino people, and is de manding immediate independence. Then there is the middle school, which is more sensitive of the sanctity of the pledge made by the United States to the Filipinos touching their independence as soon as they are capable of self-government. Aguinaldo himself belongs to this class and has a following which includes most of the veterans who fought in the war for Philippine independence, continuing their battle even under American domination until they were finally conquered by the United States. Agui naldo takes the position that the Filipinos are not yet ready for self-government, and that the period of preparation will move forward more rapidly under the able administration of such leaders as General Wood than under an auto nomy which gives wider latitude to Quezon. The followers of Quezon dismiss Aguinaldo with the declaration that he has a personal feud with Quezon. Joined to this class who take middle ground are the miss onaries from the United States, most of the iteachers from America who still remain in the service, and a minority of the American population of various vocations now amounting altogether to some three thousand people. (Governor Allen is below the figure here, which should be between 5000 and 6000). It is believed that the declaration of a definite policy touching the future of the Philippines and setting a term of years for fulfillment would settle the present furore. The people of the Islands will not continue long to worry about the fact that President Quezon has lost his job on the Board of Control. When the supreme court finally holds, as undoubtedly it will, that the Board ofControl was illegal under the organic act, this will cease to be an influential element in the present uproar, but the anxiety for a definite statement of purpose will continue. As I get it, from the cautious interviews which were accorded me with Senator Osmena and other members of his party who represent the better elements of Filipino leadership, their desire is for a relation ship similar to that we hold in Cuba. They do About Life Insurance for U. S. Veterans By Fi?ank S. Hines Director, U. S. Veterans’ Bureau 1. The United States Government Life Insurance is provided for by law, and the idea of granting such insurance to the ex-service persons of the World War who carried term or war time insurance and to those subsequently entering the military or naval forces of the country has become a fixed national policy. No greater or more advantageous privilege was ever granted by any nation to its soldier popu lation. 2. The premiums paid for this insurance are net level premiums according to the American Experience Table of Mortality with interest at 3-1 2% per annum. The Government bears the cost of administration and the extra hazard of the military and naval service. There is no legal reserve, level premium participating in surance, providing equal benefits with an equal guaranty of safety offered at a premium as low as the Government rate. Up to December 31, 1926, $13,148,290.53 had been disbursed by the Government to poli cyholders as dividends on account of Govern ment Life Insurance. 3. The Government issues seven forms or plans of converted insurance. They are the Ordinary Life, 20 payment Life, 30 payment Life, 20 Year Endowment, 30 Year Endowment, Endowment at Age 62, and 5 Year Convertible Term. Detailed information with reference to any one or all of these policies or plans of in surance may be obtained from the Central Office of the United States Veterans’ Bureau, Washington, D. C., or from any Regional Office of that Bureau. 4. The Five Year Convertible Term Policy was authorized by law and has been issued by not want the United States to give them their independence and sail away, leaving them naked prey for other powers of Asia to quarrel over. Even the realization of this danger comes down to the people themselves. I asked the chauffeur who drove me about in Manila what he thought would happen if the United States gave the Phil ippines their freedom and disavowed further responsibility. He said that he was afraid that in a short time it would mean that he would be “pulling a ricksha with a Japanese inside, rather than driving an automobile.” There is also a conscious feeling on the part of the better leadership that the Filipinos would need a fiscal censorship, under a law somewhat more comprehensive than the Platt Amendment, to keep the Islands from bankruptcy under any thing like present conditions of leadership in case we adopt a program similar to that in Cuba. Much interest is manifested in the forthcoming report of Colonel Carmi Thompson. From every source I heard the wish expressed that his report might lead to a definite policy, thus setting at rest controversies over future possibilities. We have obligations to meet in justice to the Filipinos, in justice to ourselves and in justice to those with whom we have relations in other parts of the world. We cannot sail away and leave them dependent upon their own resources. '.‘We would be shirking a duty,” said one prominent American. “It would be like throw ing raw meat to hungry wolves and leaving them to devour it.” We cannot be deaf to the ominous note with which the-Asiatic now challenges every person whom he classifies as a foreigner. This inter national obligation to others who have builded and sacrificed over here must be protected. It is hoped that Col. Thompson’s recommendation will lead to a fixed policy and that a procedure involving tact, consideration and patience will be adopted for it. Doubtless it is not impossible to create a condition where the Filipinos will trust the United States again. It is also possible to find some contacts among Philippine leader ship that will be capable of our own confidence and which apparently have been ignored some what in recent years. the Government for the special benefit of those ex-service persons who desire to carry Govern ment Life Insurance but at this time find it financially difficult or impossible to secure any one of the more expensive forms of insurance hereinbefore mentioned. The premium rates for this plan of insurance for the five year period are but slightly higher than for yearly renewable term insurance for the same period. 5. All the policies which are issued by the Government provide for permanent total disa bility benefits and no premium is charged there fore; neither is there any age limit fixed by the Government policies beyond which total per manent disability benefits will not be paid. This is as liberal a clause providing permanent total disability benefits as can be found in any con tract of life insurance. The policies, however, do not provide for the presumption of a per manent total condition after the lapse of any fixed period of time. 6. None of the policies contain any restric tion against engaging in hazardous occupations. Many contracts of life insurance do contain such restrictions but the law enacted by the Congress grants the right to Government Life Insurance tp the ex-service persons of the World War who carried war time insurance and to those in the military and naval forces of the country subse quent thereto without such restriction and there fore there are no limitations with reference to occupation. 7. Up to December 1, 1926, the Government had paid out as benefits to the veterans of the World War, or to their widows, children, fathers, mothers, and other relatives within the permitted class on account of war time or term insurance the sum of $819,018,461.95, and had paid to the same class of persons on account of Government Life—Converted Insurance—benefits in the amount of $45,958,362.13. 8. On December 31, 1926, there were 566,405 persons carrying Government Life Insurance, which amounted to $2,774,936,077.29. During the year 1926, 89,461 reinstated and converted, or converted their war time insurance into one or more of the forms of insurance provided by the Government. These conversions amount to the sum of $457,639,077. 9. It is estimated that about three million men and women who carried Government in surance during the World War have allowed it to lapse, which insurance amounts to approxi mately thirty billion dollars. 10. Section 304 of the World War Veterans’ Act of 1924 as amended grants to the disabled the right to reinstate their term (war time) in surance or Government Life Insurance upon compliance with its terms and provisions. Un der this section, the veteran must be unable to comply with good health provisions of Bureau regulations; his disability must have been con tracted in or aggravated by military service during the World War, and it must be less than permanent total in its nature. He is also re quired to pay all back premiums with interest at 5% per annum compounded annually. If finan cially unable to pay all the back premiums and proof to that effect, satisfactory to the Director of the U. S. Veterans’ Bureau, is furnished by the veteran, the back premiums may be charged against the face of the policy and later deducted in any settlement thereunder. . 11. Under existing law, all yearly renewable term insurance then in force ceases on July 2, 1927, and all such insurance in a state of lapse cannot be reinstated or converted after that date. It is imperative, therefore, that all those who value the insurance privileges which have been afforded by the Government should take advantage of existing law at once. Comrade Bartlett G. Long of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who weathered the hurricane that devastated portions of that state last year, wrote to the bureau, saying: “Sorry this was delayed, but the hurricane was a ‘buster’. When I was embracing a cypress tree and couldn’t breathe in the teeth of the wind—and when it seerfted inevitable that I’d ‘go west’—my gravest concern was th-'.t I’d not paid my September premium!” NOTE. — The above is published at the request of Dr. J. E. Reed, Jr., Manager, Philippine Sub-Office, U. S. Veterans’ Bureau, Old Custom House, Muelle de la Industria, P. O. Box 438, Manila, P. I.-Ed. AFRICAN PALM GROWING IN PHILIPPINES Four years ago 3,000 African Palms were planted in Tarlac, and 2,000 of them are reported by the Bureau of Agriculture to be growing but not as yet bearing. The grove is opposite the railroad station in Tarlac, capital of the prov ince, so it could be conveniently inspected by planters interested in learning how the palms are thriving. The soil is poor and very sandy. The palms are five meters apart each way. For three years they were cultivated without intercropping, the middles were simply kept plowed clean of weeds. All suckers and sprouts on the palms were removed last year, to stimulate growth. The Hacienda Luisita has promised to fertilize the soil of the grove this season. The Journal has this data from the Director of Agriculture through the farm extension agent at Tarlac, Leon M. Romero, who might be addressed for more detailed information supple mented with photographs. It would seem that a much wider experiment with the African Palm might be undertaken; it is certainly important to ascertain the advantages, if any there may be, of growing these palms in the Philippines. President Emeritus Hadley of Yale spent a day or two with Mrs. Hadley in Manila in March. He had been looking about in the Far East. He thinks the Philippines most valuable to the United States and that their place is with America. THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 Governor General Upheld in Bank and Coal Cases Resume: During the Harrison adminis tration of the Philippines a sum equal to the present total insular annual tax revenues was put by the government into majority-stock ownership in corporations organized to under take banking and the exploitation of the United States public domain in various parts of the islands, including valuable mineral deposits. One of these companies was the National Coal Company, which has now absorbed about 1’5,500,000 of public taxes and enjoys a franchise encroaching upon opportunities in coal mining that in the absence of this governmental instru ment would be open toprivateinitiative. Another is the Philippine National Bank, enjoying a franchise that includes the privilege of circulat ing its notes as legal tender, and the exclusive right in this territory (by ruling of the attorney general) to the word “national” in its name. It has dissipated an unknown sum, possibly 1 1 '2 times the annual insular tax revenues, in its adventures. The insular tax revenues are around 1’60,000,000 per year. The bank still operates, indeed asserts a profit on its transactions last year, and hopes eventually to collect on con siderable portions of its frozen credits and to recoup its losses altogether. It has about 1*50,000,000 involved in the sugar-making industry, representing loans for capital purposes to six sugar mills and other loans to planters served by these mills, of whose stock the bank holds about nine pesos to the ostensible owners’ one peso. So the bank is deeply in the sugar business. Similarly, and thus far unprofitably, the coal company is in the coal-mining business. It has surveyed valuable deposits at Malangas, Mindanao, but that it has mined coal profitably is officially disputed. Investigating the government by order of President Harding early in 1921, the WoodForbes Commission found a great deal wrong with its adventure? in business, and when Major General Leonard Wood became governor gen eral he advocated getting the government out of business—which he perhaps intended to come about through a conservative process of liqui dation. Whatever his attitude was, it was opposed by the two other members of the stock voting committee, the board of control. These members were the senate president and house speaker, members of the legislature which had created these executive posts, which also em braced control of the Manila Railroad Company. Such important executive functions having been lodged in a board of three wherein he had but one vote against two, were effectively out of the hands of the governor general until late last year, when, on November 10, basing his action upon opinions rendered by the judge advocate general of the United States Army and by the United States attorney general, the governor general issued an executive order, No. 37, series 1926, suppressing the board as constituted by the legislature and arrogating to himself all of its functions, in accordance with the islands’ organic act, the Jones Law of August 29, 1916. He thereupon caused stockholders’ meetings to be held for the bank and coal companies, voted the government’s stock at these meetings and effected reorganization of the companies’ directorates. By action at other meetings called in the name of the voting committee or board of control, the senate president and house speaker voted the government stcck for slates of their own; and in both companies the company of ficials recognized their action and took no official cognizance of the governor general’s action. Quo warranto proceedings-had to be instituted in behalf of the governor general (the plaintiff being stated as “The Philippine Government”) to oust the company directors chosen by the senate president and house speaker so as to seat those chosen by the governor general. Finally it may be stated as of general interest that a cabal has been effected, which has offices in the legislative building, that seeks to force withdrawal of American sovereignty from the Philippines by at least every possible moral pressure. This cabal is known as the National Supreme Council, and its decrees on public matters are supposed to prevail upon its adher ents. The senate president and house speaker are subscribers to this cabal and presumably amenable to its dictates. The fact has a bearing both upon their character as free agents in undertaking public duties and as mere agents of the legislature itself, which in theory is to put into effect the cabal’s conclusions. In the quo warranto decisions the supreme court upholds the governor general’s action restoring to his office the executive function of voting the coal company stock by holding unconstitutional and void “so much of section 4 of Act 2705, as amended by section 2 of Act 2822, as purports to vest the voting power of the government-owned stock in the National Coal Company in the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” and in the case of the bank, wherein the original charter law placed the voting power in the governor general, the court held invalid sub sequent amendments which “attempted to transfer this power to an illegally constituted Board of Control.” Justice George A. Malcolm’s majority opinions were concurred in by Justices Thomas A. Street, James A. Ost rand, Norberto Romualdez and Charles A. Johns, while Justice E. Finley John son wrote separate concurring opinions. Justices Antonio Villareal and Ignacio Villamor and Chief Justice Avancena dissented. Justice Villareal, who as attorney general had earlier ruled that the board of control was legal, writing the minority dissents. The Journal must content itself, because of the exactions of space, with quoting Justice Johnson’s summary of what the high court decided, together with the syllabi prepared by Justice Malcolm that will introduce the decisions into the reports.—ED. “The Supreme Court held that Milton E. Springer, Dalmacio Costas and Anselmo Hilario are unlawfully and illegally holding . posi tions as members of the Board of Directors of the National Coal Company and should be oust ed and excluded therefrom, and that Romarico Agcaoili, H. L. Heath and Salvador Lagdameo had been duly and legally elected as members of the Board of Directors of the National Coal Company and should be inducted into said po sition, to take charge thereof and to perform the duties incumbent upon them as members of said Board; that Gregorio Agoncillo, Baldomero Roxas and Catalino Lavadia are unlawfully and illegally holding and exercising the positions as members of the Board of Directors of the Phil ippine National Bank and should be ousted and altogether excluded therefrom, and that Manuel Iriarte, John Gordon and A. Gideon had been duly and legally elected as members of the Board of Directors of the Philippine National Bank and should be placed in said position, to take charge thereof and to perform the duties incumbent upon them as members of said Board of Directors.” SYLLABUS OF COAL CASE “The powers entrusted by the Congress of the United States to the Government of the Philippine Islands are distributed among three coordinate departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. “No department of the Government of the Philippine Islands may legally exercise any of the powers conferred by the Organic Law upon any of the others. “It is beyond the power of any branch of the Government of the Philippine Islands to exercise its functions in any other way than that pre scribed by the Organic Law or by local laws which conform to the Organic Law. “The chief exponent of autonomy in domestic affairs in the Government of the Philippine Islands is the Philippine Legislature. The Governor-General on the other hand is the head of the Government and symbolizes Amer ican sovereignty. Under such a political system, lines of demarcation between the legislative and the executive departments are ‘difficult to fix, and attempted encroachments of one on the other may be expected. It is, however, the duty of the Supreme Court, as the guardian of the constitution, to enforce fundamental prin ciples. “The Organic Act vests ‘the supreme ex ecutive power’ in the Governor-General of the Philippine Islands. The Governor-General since the approval of the last Organic Act has no prerogative powers. “The Congress of the United States clearly intended that the Governor-General’s power should be commensurate with his responsibility. The Congress never intended that the GovernorGeneral should be saddled with the responsibility of administering the government and of execut ing the laws but shorn of the power to do so. “The Organic Act grants general legislative power except as otherwise provided therein to the Philippine Legislature. The legislative power of the Philippine Government is granted in general terms subject to specific limitations. “Legislative power is the authority, under the constitution, to make laws, and to alter and repeal them. The Legislature cannot lawfully exercise powers which are in their nature essen tially executive or judicial. The Legislature cannot make a law and then take part in its execution or construction. (Cooley’s Consti tutional Limitations, 7th ed., pp. 126-131, 157— 162.) “The authorities on the question, Where does the power to appoint to public office reside? reviewed and certain principles deduced there from. The particular wording of the consti tution involved, and its correct interpretation predetermines the result. The selection of persons to perform the functions of government is primarily a prerogative of the people. The appointment of public officials is generally looked upon as properly an executive function. Appointments may be made by the Legislature or the courts, but when so made should be taken as an incident to the discharge of functions properly within their respective spheres. “The right to appoint to office has been con fided, with certain well defined exceptions, by the Government of the United States to the executive branch of the government which it has set up in the Philippines. Under a system of government of delegated powers, under which delegation legislative power vests in the Philip pine Legislature and executive power vests in the Governor-General, and under which dele gation a general power of appointment resides in the Governor-General and a specified power of appointment resides in the Philippine Legis lature, the latter cannot directly or indirectly perform functions of an executive nature through the designation of its presiding officers as major ity members of a body which has executive functions. “The Legislature may add to, but may not diminish, the power of appointment of the Governor-General. “The exceptions made in favor of the Legis lature as to appointments to office strengthen rather that weaken the grant to the executive. The expression of one thing in the constitution is necessarily the exclusion of things not ex pressed. “Appointment to office in the Philippines is intrinsically an executive act involving the exercise of discretion. “The decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Myers v. United States (1926, U. S. Sup. Ct. Adv. Ops. p. 27) followed. “Membership in the voting committee created for the National Coal.Company is an office or executive function. April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 9 “The incorporation of the National Coal Company has not served to disconnect the company or the stock which the Government owns in it from the Government and executive control. “The Legislature is empowered to create and control private corporations. “The National Coal Company is a private corporation. “By becoming a stockholder in the National Coal Company, the Government divested itself of its sovereign character so far as respects the transactions of the corporation. “The National Coal Company remains an agency or instrumentality of government. “The Government, like any other stock holder, is justified in intervening in the trans actions in the corporation, and in protecting its property rights in the corporation. “The duty of caring for government property is neither judicial nor legislative in character but is executive. “The striking out may not necessarily be by erasing words, but it may be by disregarding the unconstitutional provision and reading the statute as if that provision was not there. “A territorial statute invalid when enacted is not validated by the failure of the Congress expressly to disapprove it. “Although there may be a de facto officer in a de jure office, there cannot be a de facto officer in a de facto office. “So much of section 4 of Act 2705, as amended by section 2 of Act 2822, as purports to vest the voting power of the government stock in the National Coal Company in the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Repre The Livestock Fair—Manila Carnival, 1927 That there are wonderful possibilities for the livestock industry in the Philippines, was shown in the Livestock Fair, and if I should want to start raising or improving any one particular species of animals, be it cattle, horses, poultry, hogs, she.ep, goats, or dogs, I would get the opinion of the bureau of agriculture, college of agriculture, or private veterinarians available in the locality. Cattle: There were many types represented, but the best two were the beef work type and the dairy type. In the beef work type, the cross between the Indian Nellore bull with the Native cow is apparently the best, because the resulting product is satisfactory either for beef or work purposes. For beef, because the animal aver ages a good weight, matures young and is highly resistant to rinderpest; for work, because the animal is a fast walker, going twice the speed of the carabao, although unable to pull as heavy a load. In the dairy type there were Indian cows which would give from one-half to three-fourths as much milk as the Australian type, but this decrease of the quantity of milk offsets the fact that the Indian cow is highly resistant to rin derpest and will easily subsist on native forage. However, the Australian type, particularly the Ayrshire breed, is recommended as the best, provided it is vaccinated with rinderpest vaccine every year or two. It gives an average of 10 to 12 liters of milk daily during the milking period, and it is not so delicate to feed as other breeds. Carabaos: The carabao milk type was also represented in the Indian buffalo cow, which has more of the qualities of a milk producer than the native caraballa and is more gentle. The importance of this is that Filipinos consume mostly caraballa milk, preferring it to cow’s milk, because it is richer in butter fat, ranging from 9 to 25 per cent. The college of agriculture also showed the possibilities of checking horn growth in the carabao by cauterizing the horn growth with caustic potash when the animal is a month old. Caustic potash is applied every two or three days, three times or more, until the growth is stopped. Without the horns the carabao is sentatives, is unconstitutional and void. “In quo warranto proceedings, the failure of the defendant to prove his title does not establish that of the plaintiff. The inquiry may go in quo warranto proceedings to the extent of determining the validity of an Act authorizing offices.” SYLLABUS OF BANK CASE “The doctrines announced in the companion case of The Government of the Philippine Islands v. Milton E. Springer et al., No. 26979, followed and approved. What differences there are between the two cases on the principal question incline to strengthen rather than weaken the case at bar. In the case at bar, there is not alone a provision providing for a “Board of Control,” but other provisions directing and authorizing the “Board of Control” to perform many other functions. In the case at bar, also the doctrine relating to partial invalidity is fortified by the rule that where amendments to a statute are unconstitutional, the original statute as it existed before the attempted amendment remains in force. “The amendments to section 4 of Act 2612, made by section 1 of Act 2747 and section 1 of Act 2938, providing for a Board of Control for the Philippine National Bank, found invalid, and the defendants ousted from the offices of directors of the Philippine National Bank, and the directors selected by the Governor-General placed in possession of those offices.” SUMMARY OF LIVESTOCK SHOW Livestock fair expense........... 1*11,921.37 Income from all sources... 5,829.37 Made up by Carnival. ..... 6,092.00 Officials— Dr. Stanton Youngberg, Director of Agriculture Fred A. Leas, Chairman Dr. Victor Buencamino, Secretary Dr. G. San Agustin Captain R. S. Keiser, U. S. A. Dr. Franck C. Gearhart, Captain S. C. Dildine, U. S. A. Dr. M. Mondonedo Dr. F. F. Turla Dr. Julio Luz Mr. Alfonso Tuason Dr. E. A. Rodier, veterinary pathol ogist, bureau of agriculture, delivered daily illustrated lectures upon animal diseases and their prevention. Much of the actual work of the exhibition fell upon Dr. Victor Buencamino, practicing veterinarian, the writer of the Journal article. Much praise is given him for the success of the show. harmless, and it does not affect the labor effi ciency of the animal. There were many other cross-breeds repre sented, but the above are what can be recom mended to breeders. Horses: There were only three horses repre sented in the permanent exhibit, and these?were the beautiful bay Arabian stallion, the Welsh pony, and the grade Arabian-Kentucky-Native pony. At the livestock fair it was explained that stallions are placed in the different stations of the bureau of agriculture, and service is given gratis, only a report being requested when the mares have foaled. This is a rare oppor tunity, in most other countries a fee is charged for stud service. The result of the cross between Arabian and Native was exemplified by the bay grade Arabian Kentucky-Native. Very many tempting offers, from 1*1,000 to Pl,500 were made, although this colt is just coming to be three years old. The bureau of agriculture, however, would not let him go, because they desire to use him for stud purposes. With more pure bred stallions distributed in the Bureau of Agriculture stations and the promulgation of a general castration law, horse flesh in the Philippines would be greatly improved. There were not more horses represented in the permanent exhibit, because the majority of good horses were racing ponies and the date was in conflict with the holding of the official races of the Manila Jockey Club, where there was an opportunity to win as much as 1*5,000 in prizes. Poultry Exhibit: Besides being a practical exhibit, it was also a beautiful display of birds, and it made one realize the great possibilities of poultry farming in the Philippines. I learned that the White Leghorns are the best layers (average of 150-180 eggs in a year), but are not fit for setting, it being necessary to use either native hens or incubators for chick raising. The most popular bird apparently is the combination of Rhode Island Red rooster with Cantonese hens, because they are resistant to disease and serve a dual purpose, both for laying (although not as heavy layers as the White Leghorns) and meat pur poses. The Plymouth Rock also serves the dual purpose, but is not as resistant to disease as the former. The other classes of birds were: Black Langshans, Buff Orpingtons, Light Brahmas, Cantonese, Chinese Silkies, and Rhode Island Reds. Mention might be made of the mestizo Cornish with Joloano—the fighting bird. The fowl is apparently small in stature, but upon picking him up and weighing, he proved to be heavier than the year old Rhode Island-Cantonese capon. He is all muscle, and wiry at that. Fighting birds bring from f*50 to 1*250. There was a good exhibition of artificial raising of chicks with incubators and specially trained capons. A capon placed in a small box and made to sit down for three hours or more during the day can be taught to rear chicks. After the second or third day chicks are placed under the capon, and if he does not peck the little ones, it shows he will rear them. This exhibit interested many. The display of what feeds should be given to poultry, such as chicks, laying hens, and poultry in general, was very instructive. The main basic feeds are binlid, palay, ground corn, ground mongo, and tiqui-tiqui or rice bran. The minerals which poultry should have, such as salt, charcoal, grit, shell, and grass, was not forgotten. Sheep and Goats: The Shropshire sheep is highly recommended by the bureau of agri culture to raise in Mountain province, and the 25 pure bred specimens at the carnival were distributed to the Trinidad school farm, which is at 5,000 feet elevation, and Heights Place, at 8,000 feet. Some were also sent to Mindanao. The bureau had pure bred and grade Shropshire sheep, which had been in the country for the last three years, and they are apparently doing well. If this experiment is a success, and the inhabitants will ever take to mutton, it might relieve to a certain extent the meat problem. The Indian-Nubian goat represented in the fair is recommended, because the she-goat will give one to two liters of milk a day, and the humblest Filipino family can be the proud posses sor of a couple of these she goats and thereby fuinish milk to the whole family and raise better children. Pigs: There were represented the Berkshire, Durok-Jersey, Berkjala, Poland China, York shire and Native breeds. The first prize went to the Poland China of the bureau cf agriculture, but the Berkshire breed seems to be the most popular among the Filipinos, and the flat-nose characteristic of the hog is what the people want. However, the college of agriculture has started a new breed called the Berkjala, which is a cross between a Berkshire and the famous native Jala-jala hog of Laguna. This new breed has (Court urleil on ptige 1 J) 10 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 EDITORIAL OFFICES American Chamber of Commerce 14 CALLE PINPIN P. O. Box 1638 Telephone 1156 HUMAN FREIGHT Last month we demonstrated in this column that the Philippines are vital to maintenance of the American merchant marine on the. Pacific. We reckoned the yearly tonnage of outward freight, 1,112,000 tons, but we left out one item which classifies by itself. This is human freight, the steerage passenger traffic. The steerage passenger rate to Honolulu is 1*120, to the Pacific coast 1*175. Such business is so well worth the having that general agents of passenger lines have been visiting the populous provinces to drum it up—bring it to the maximum. They visited the Ilocos region, where the density of population exceeds 400 inhabitants to the square mile. No doubt they got new business. Opportunities are pretty limited up in the Ilocos country for young men, but these young men are nationals of the United States and free to go to America where they can certainly find work at good wages. They are principally farmers and unskilled workmen, America can use every honest man of them. Steerage isn’t luxurious travel, practically the emigrants go out of the islands as human freight. Ever since America became America, by making human freight of themselves peoples from all lands have sought the opportunities of her mobilized wealth—for she bent her inventive and mechanical genius to the job of making her natural wealth available to mankind. Like the Phil ippines, she had insufficient capital for the job, but she invited it freely into the country, which is unlike the Philippines. In the course of time, the exigencies arising from popular government operated to prevent oriental immigration and a deal of European too, but the Philippines, favored as always as a territory of the United States, were not affected. Their boys can go to the mother country, where they most certainly will go while the present blind policy persists in the islands. Yet every man prefers his homeland, and if capital were to be encour aged to undertake the rational exploitation of natural resources here, under the judicious restramt of our conservative laws, few indeed of our young men would freight themselves to the United States or anywhere else. They should find at home plenty of work at liberal wages. Now we have to let them go, they have the right; and the class that excludes them from ample opportunities to work at home, try as it may, cannot deprive them of the right to seek the mother land. Last year 5,046 went to Hawaii, and 4,384 to the United States mainland, a total of 9,430, net 5,491 when returning Filipinos, 3,939, are deducted from those who went away. During the first three months of this year, 2,046 went to Honolulu and 1,552 to the United States mainland, a total of 3,598. The rate of emigration this year, up to date, is about 60 per cent in excess of that of last year for the entire twelvemonth. The ukase cannot stop this, under the Constitution the ukase non est: here are nationals, if not citizens, and they are free to go where the Flag floats in sovereignty. No, the gates are open, wide open, we would advise our law makers, and the outgoing stream cannot be checked save by turn ing the waters inland, as it were—save, that is, by economic development commensurate with the demands of population and the latent resources of the land. As long as this is not done, men will ship themselves out of the islands as simple human freight. AN UNPROFITABLE EXCHANGE In exchange for emigrant labor the islands are receiving immigrant oriental merchants, Chinese, fast bound together by the laws and tradi tions of their ancient philosophers. Chinese who live as the tribe and work and cooperate as the tribe—and as the tribe conceived by its members to be the most exalted social unit in the world. This is an unprofitable ex change, since these merchants will live, and many become wealthy, from the products o' the soil which they do not till. It is true that their eminent consul general urges Fi’ipinos to migrate to China, to marry there and abide there. But have Filipinos the means of doing so? The strangely comforting philosophy, the pertinacity of will, the physical endurance; in a word, have they the capacity to subsist themselves in China? Hardly, for no other race ever has had it: China has even absorbed her numerous conquerors throughout history. The proffer of hospitality is therefore meaningless, however well intentioned it may be reckoned. If Filipinos could compete successfully with the Chinese in China, ten times more easily might they compete with them here, and the painful experience has been that they cannot do it here, where the Chinese find the pickings so lucrative that they dare all risks and flaunt all restrictions in order to come here and establish them selves. Taking the customs figures alone, we find that in 1925 the net increase in the Chinese community in the Philippines from immigration was 2,189, and that last year it was 4,071, or more than 6,000 added to the merchant Chinese class here in the brief space of two years. Nor is the movement aimless or haphazard; rather is it well directed and intentionally astute. The Chinese know full well what they are doing, for themselves individually and for China. Why censure them? They take the means available to better their opportunities. Men will do this everywhere: Filipinos do it when they flee from unemployment here, to employment in Hawaii and in America’s mainland. By every means, of course, the opportunities to the Chinese should be restricted; but the best restriction of all would be a better and more hearty welcome of Ameri cans. See how advantageous to China the Chinese are in the Philippines. In the five years ending with 1925, the apparent balance of trade against China in her own export-import commerce was $1,200,000,000. Her actual imports of gold and silver were, however, $200,000,000 in this same period, so that the true balance of the trade was to this great measure in her favor. Surely no little of that gold and silver derived from this arch ipelago, surely it was commercial profits made here and sent to China. As a matter of plain fact, to go farther with our economic reflections—for we deal with the subject reluctantly and only in the economic sense— China, feeling nationhood upon her, has already begun her aggressions upon this territory. There can be no doubt of it. The fact must be faced. It is the history of nations that when they achieve nationhood, they become aggressive toward their neighbors. So did Greece, Rome, Spain, France, England, Japan and Germany. So did America, and dis placed Europe from her frontiers. China's history, if she achieves forth right nationhood, will not be different. Therefore America, resourceful and yet the traditional friend of China, is and will be needed in the Phil ippines for a long time to come. Again and the inhabitants’ and America’s true and lasting interests are seen to be mutual. Would that our statesmanship manifest in the big Bagumbayan building might slip its blinkers and view things as they RESTORED CONSTITUTIONAL BALANCE The most fundamental decisions rendered by the Philippine supreme court since the organic act of August 29, 1916, went into effect, are those of which the syllabi are published elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, since they restore a great degree of constitutional balance to the organic law of the islands by returning to the governoi general the executive author ity over the several governmental companies that had been (the court says illegally) taken from him and lodged in the legislature through its two execu tive officers that formed the majority in the stock-voting committee known as the board of control—the committee suppressed by the governor gen eral’s order of November 10, which action the high court sustained. This is what we see in the decisions. We do not see a vindication of the chief executive, as some have, for courts do not do that; nor a defeat of the legislature, since courts do not do that either. We see the decisions as the court itself viewed them, as an interpretation and clarification of the organic law under which all branches of the government function here. And we see them five years late, too; valuable as they may be, they are five years tardy, though the fault may lie in Washington rather than in Malacanang. The court divided six to three. From false premises, the minority decision evolved in most logical manner; false premises, we say with the majority subscribing to Justice Malcolm’s decisions, because nothing could be plainer than that seats in the board of control were offices, on the one hand, and that the companies are governmental instruments, on the other. We wish to repeat that the official who has labored as Gov ernor General Leonard Wood has for more than five years for the best interests of everyone in these islands, needs no vindication and probably seeks none. We congratulate him that the high court majority’s decisions in this vital matter coincide with the view he has consistently taken of the true authority attaching to his most responsible post. Congress did intend to establish an American form of government here, and no other. At last the branches are separate. EXPANSION Anyone buying commodities in the Philippines will find the supply each year greater than it was before. Anyone selling here will find the demand each year greater than it was before. We experienced but one boom, to our temporary disaster, but we constantly experience a gradual and persistent expansion of markets. Not a bad place to do business, and the period is but the threshold of the future. Money gradually cheapens, wages gradually rise. The leaven works, thp monopolists squirm, the masses slowly benefit. April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 11 AFTER FIVE O’CLOCK Robert E. Murphy, of the Robert E. Murphy Embroidery Company, Inc., is leaving Manila April 16 for a vacation and business trip to the United States. Mr. Murphy is a director of the chamber of commerce and one of the most experienced men in the embroidery business in the Philippines, having the reputation in the trade of maintaining standards of the highest quality in the product of his factory. Rolland S. Parker, representing the Garlock Packing Company in the Far East, has been in Manila conferring with the local agents, Edw. J. Nell Co., Ltd. Mr. Parker makes head quarters in Japan but will be making occasional trips to the Philippines, his company enjoying a growing volume of business here. George B. Wicks died Saturday, April 2, at Sternberg General Hospital, after a prolonged illness. No near relatives are in the islands. Mrs. Wicks died some three years ago. They had no children. Funeral services were conducted at the Army Morgue, Wednesday, April 6, under the auspices of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, of which organization Mr. Wicks was a member, as he was of various clubs in the city. He came to the islands as a soldier during the early campaigns. He was afterward in _ the bureau of audits, but left the government service when the auditing firm of Clarke (former insular auditor) and Larkin was organized. More recently he had had his own business as an auditor and public accountant. R. M. “Bob” McCrory: Fearless to the End Neighbors, our old friend—the old comrade of many of you, but to the writer just a friend—R. M. “Bob” McCrory has kept his rendezvous with death.' The cable brought the word Sun day, March 27, at 9 a. m., that he had died in Lane Stanford Hospital, San Francisco, that day. The body has been cremated, the ashes are to rest in the homeland. Bob had spent many years here, where his most cherished associations are. Mrs. McCrory and their daugh ter are here. She was Miss Ida Beachman and she and Bob were married in Manila June 7, 1910. Their daughter, Fiola Charlotte, is 3-12 years old and was, of course, very much her daddy’s idol. Bob was a Manila Elk, a Mason and member of a number of other Manila clubs and Veteran organizations. He was one of the first directors of the chamber of commerce. His acquaintance in every element of the business community was wide, practically his friends were numbered by those who knew him. Bob was forty-nine years old. Sprue and pernicious anemia had attacked him in 1920 at the height of his success; he had gone to California helpless from disease and returned to Manila with his health restored but his business impaired, owing to the market break that oc curred in 1921, when all he was able to do was to lie on a |iospital bed and fight for every breath. His health apparently restored at last, he came back to town and began over again. There was no quit in Bob. Men in Manila who knew Bob longest are the men who were in the old 16th U. S. Infantry (regulars) during the Spanish-American War. Wm. J. Ellis is one, and Patrick Shea, chief guard at the treasury bureau, is another. Shea was a corporal and used to drill Ellis and Bob with their company, which was Company H. But Bob rose in rank, he was made company sergeant. The outfit, like the others in Uncle Sam’s forces of the period, had some nasty engagements in the islands; and Bob was in the worst of them. One who remembered him in his last illness, as he never fails to remember the veterans, was Simon Erlanger paid the Philippines a visit in March, and left for the United States two weeks ago after renewing old-time friendship here. He is one of the founders of Erlanger and Galinger, well known American importing and wholesale retail house. Leo K. Cotterman, Mrs. Cotterman and their children left Manila early in April for a vacation in the United States and Europe. Mr. Cotterman is the head of the Philippine Acetylene Company, a director of the Philippine Trust Company and one of the city’s most enter prising young business men. His Grace, Michael J. O’Doherty, arch bishop of Manila, was ill from bacillary dysen tery at time of going to press, but his physicians were sanguine as to his recovery. He has been overworking, visiting the parishes of the diocese. Manley O. Hudson, professor of international law in Harvard, spent the greater part of March in the islands as a station on his world itinerary to which he is devoting his sabbatical year. He was an adviser to Wilson at Versailles and has since been prominently associated with the League of Nations, on which he delivered lectures in Manila. The New Orleans Association of Commerce is desirous of getting a comprehensive exhibit of Philippine products for its new commercial museum, according to Colonel J. N. Wolfson, who came to the islands from New Orleans and. addressed the association on the importance of Philippine and general oriental commerce when he visited there recently. He is now trying to get the government to aid the project, which it is understood has the approval of the governor general. Major General Leonard Wood, the governor general. BoTj was grateful for General Wood’s interest in getting him into Sternberg General Hospital, where for a time they were patients in adjacent rooms. But Bob didn’t want for friends, both high and low. Bob deserved them, and anyhow it is Manila's way. Bob enlisted in the 16th infantry in January, 1898. The regiment landed in Cuba June 24, 1898, and participated in the Santiago cam paign. In this action Bob was stricken with yellow fever while on the field. He had a long convalescence, from this malady of the western tropics that kills most men, and it was January, 1899, before he rejoined his regiment, then at Huntsville, Alabama. From Huntsville the regiment went to Fort Crook, at Omaha, and later in the spring of the same year it came out to the Philippines. It campaigned in the north and Bob’s company was stationed for some time at Aparri, the islands’ northern seaport. He left the regiment at the end of his enlistment, January, 1901. After that he served in the ordnance depart ment, then for a time he was a yeoman in the navy; and then, after leaving the navy, his Manila business career began. He became manager of the Hike Shoe Com pany when its factory, the first little one, was in the old block opposite the Kneedler building where a concrete office building is now being built. The business grew enormously under R. A. McGrath’s ownership and Bob’s faithful management, so that for many years it has been rumbling prosperously away in the big place on Calle San Marcelino. Afterward, Bob entered the partnership of Roberts and McCrory and managed their RoMac store on the Escolta. After becoming the principal owner, he disposed of his interests to enter a larger field of trade. He was alone in the ownership of R. M. McCrory, Imports and Exports, on Plaza Moraga where the offices of the American Express Company now are. When the German properties were sold, he also acquired Froelich and Kuttner, and Struckmann and Company. Bob knew the trade, the volume of business was large, he became a wealthy mer chant. Then * * * his first attack of ane mia came on. He had to leave the islands, on a stretcher and in a hospital berth, at a very critical business period. After his health seemed restored he once more took up the management of the Hike Shoe Company. This was in January, 1923. His old trouble came on after the hunting season of 1925; it took him to the hospital, after the middle of last year, and in October he went to San Francisco to make his last stand. He was never discouraged; when friends called at the hospital in Manila, he told of the paroxysms through which he had passed as if they were some pleasant incidents of the day; and he smiled through it all. Death never took quarry more game, and game to the very last. Bob had talents other than those of business, though he excelled in business capacity. A son of Indiana soil, he was a writer with the magic point to his pen. From a very early age he had made his own way, his self-reliance was astonish ing. One of Bob’s several admirable hobbies was the collecting of carved elephants. A giant of a man himself, with kindly indulgent strength, the effigies of the big pachyderms seemed to intrigue him. He came to have more than eight hundred in his collection, including many rare and valuable examples of the carver’s art—some of gold, some of silver, some of bronze or brass, and others of oriental hardwoods, ebony, iron wood and the like, but perhaps the finest of them of ivory. They were of all sizes, grand and diminutive. He was also a capital raconteur. Here is a delightful boyhood incident: Back in Indianapolis they were having one of their typical white Christmases and at the Benjamin Harrison home a big children’s party was romping around a Christmas tree in the basement. Bob came by, a newsboy plowing his jaunty way through the drifts, and was singularly attracted by the merriment in the basement. He watched the children, enjoying their fun, and finally clambered over the chain loop fence and squatted outside a window, the better to see. He laughed with the children inside, until presently a flunky of some kind came out, bearing a dish of something hot out to the summer house; and this fellow cuffed Bob away. Bob’s papers were scattered, and the party had to go on without him. Boy-like, he would have revenge on the flunky. As he gathered his scattered papers he spied out the place and concluded that the Harrison’s Newfoundland bitch must have a litter of pups in the summer house, which was probably serving as her kennel. That night the best boy pup of the litter trans ferred its affections from its mother to Bob, and grew up in another part of town. No one, after that, cuffed its young master or scattered his papers. If Bob took an errand job, the dog’s paw was on his papers until he got back; but men coming along and dropping any silver money could have a paper, though coppers didn’t go. James Whitcomb Riley was great friends with both Bob and his dog. He would tease Bob by asking him how much he would take for the dog, offering $100. “No,” Bob would say, “No, Mr. Riley, I , don’t know how much $100 is. I never saw so much and it seems a lot, but all the money in the world can’t buy that dog!” Then Riley would laugh, his poetic spirit highly exuberant that faithful dogs and faithful boy masters were still to be found. Once the dog, often petted and made over by the Hoosier Poet, was missing. Bob thought if he could find Riley he could find the dog. It turned out to be true. Riley wasn’t at the moment quite in condition to take care of himself, and Bob’s dog had risen to the emergency. But, Bob! We can’t hear you tell these tales anymore. You don’t come back, Bob. Where shall we search for you? Ah, but we know, after all! Where the Hoosier Poet sleeps, where the bravest souls lie down as if to pleasant dreams. That’s where our friend and neighbor Robert M. McCrory is tonight! That’s where God has laid him. That’s where his friends will find him. — W. R. 12 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 Rambling Through Our Interisland Seas Lazy Boats, Weary Boatmen, and Somnolescent Ports By Percy A. Hill Note.—Hill writes of interisland travel in the Philippines 25 years ago, but the reader may see from the accompanying table that improve ment has practically been confined to the ports, for the ships are for the most part just the same old ships. The ports too are wretched enough, their partial awakening has come chiefly from the outport calls of ocean steamers.—Ed. Twenty-nine years is not a long period in the life of a country in the process of evolution, but it is quite a part of an ordinary lifetime. That far back in things Philippine brings us to the time when Spain ceded the territory to the United States lock, stock and barrel, without any more reservations than attached to Mexico’s ceding California with its Mexican hidalgos and Indians, or to Russia’s cession of Alaska, with its gold washings and the Aleutians. American ideas and ideals began making their impression from the first; such things as freedom, equal oppor tunity and liberty, and there was much to be learned both by Americans and Filipinos. Lib erty is a word popularly supposed to justify all things, but as many crimes are committed in its name as in the name of autocracy, for the reason that human nature is the same in an uncrowned demagogue as in a crowned autocrat. In those old days the coastwise ports of the archipelago were still slumbering in the sun. Their feeders were the slow-sailing lorchas, or small schooners, piled high with yellow hemp, brown sugar and grimy copra. Visiting them was like stepping into another world or back into forgotten centuries. Characters now dead with their memories were landmarks, as much as were their godowns, or camarines, bulging with plantation commodities. The blue and translucent seas that laved then, as they do now, the thousands of islands and islets that make up the Philippines, were enchanted wa ters in calm weather; but under stress of storm were as wild and fickle as the uncharted seas of chance. Reefs, sandbars and typhoons took their annual toll of shipping, a much larger toll than they take today. Seas that when calm changed from sapphire to beryl and emerald; skies through which floated whole argosies of fleecy clouds before the monsoon winds; long monotonous days, and nights when the lambent stars hung low over the brooding waters. Old crazy steam boats, of the vintage of the seventies, their most modem equipment a screaming whistle, prowled their way along to the distant ports as feeders to the big tramp freighters which loaded only at Manila. There was nothing unusual, save their de crepit apathy, about the Santa Catalinas, San Pedros and Santa Teresas, or other ports with other Castilian cognomens. Their common and most distinctive feature was a rambling area of sun-warped, wind-twisted nipa shacks, countless coconuts in nondescript groves around a weather beaten church centuries old, and possibly a big deserted cantina that harked back to the empire days, the period of the American mili tary regime. A few Chino general stores, with bamboo bars to prevent customers filching anything bigger than a peanut, an all-pervading reek of copra, the pungent odor of wet-bamboo smoke, and a few fishing craft rising and falling on the tide typified and illustrated the industry of these ports. Brown Caballeros in threadbare drill represented the governing class, and a larger listless mass of scantily clad natives the main population. Few things happened save the recurrent clanging of the cracked bells in the campanario. Sinuous lines of mafianetes bore in the coconut sap to make the heady tuba wine. Discussion confined itself chiefly to the price of hemp, copra or sugar, depending some what upon the locality. These old Philippine towns were ports of many mananas and innumerable siestas—diseaseridden with hookworm and fevers. Though the Stars and Stripes might be seen, drooping from a tall bamboo flagpole, yet they held nothing American within their confines. The ports were Malayan with a slight Spanish flavor. The rust-pitted docks caught vagrant wafts of breeze. Leaving one of these docks, one landed in a swaying banca or baroto, and was Ancient Mariners of Our Philippine Coastwise Shipping The data below cover coastwise steamships in the marine register of the Bureau of Customs for 1926. The number of steamships listed in the register is 116. Of these, 24 are below 100 gross tons, 29 between 100 and 200 tons, 13 between 200 and 300 tons, 22 between 300 and 500 tons, six between 500 and 1,000 tons and 22 above 1,000 tons. Fifty-•seven are wooden ships, 16 iron, 40 steel and three of mixed materials. Only 14 were built in the last decade, and only 25 in the last fifteen years. Eighty-four are more than 20 years old, 73 more than 25 years old, 41 more than 30 years old, and 19 more than 40 years old. With coastwise shipping in such a shabby state, Mr. Hill’s story, though it dates some ’time ago, really has a current and unsavory application. Those who travel into the provinces by sea may pick out in the list their favorite ships: Sl«. Mal.nnl Tmuw Hi.. It Mat. rial 7<Xr I),, lit Alabama................. wood 50.47 1902 Samar . . mixed 301.19 1903 Albay....................... .steel 1114.79 1883 San Antonio........ . steel 104.79 1913 Antonio................... .wood 73.59 1897 Research.............. . .wood 67.39 1897 Antonio Lopez . . . unstated 136.09 1886 San Nicolas......... . wood 385.06 1896 Antipolo.................. .wood 178.59 1895 San Pedro........... wood 814.98 1899 Aurora C................ .wood 287.98 1918 Serantes............... . .wood 198.57 1924 Bataan.................... . steel 190.74 1925 Gintano................. . . iron 2639.87 1919 Bertie...................... .wood 352.61 1917 Sorsogon............... iron 1236.06 1880 Bicol........................ . steel 367.65 1901 Sugbo.................... . .steel 560.17 1898 Bohol........................ .iron 895.38 1882 Tagadito............... . .steel 105.73 1902 Bolinao.................... .iron 247.46 1884 Tamaraw............. . .wood 168.07 1901 Bucal........................ . steel 105.73 1901 Tong Yek............. . wood 446.25 1906 Cebu.................. •• . . 1408.67 1900 Ulises..................... . .steel 461.68 1912 Cia. de Filipinas. . steel 797.91 1890 Ventura................. . .wood 41.74 1899 Dona Dominga.. . . wood 111.12 1891 Venus.................... . . steel 1050.53 1883 Dona Paula........... .wood 198.15 1893 Vigilante............... . .iron 99.20 1909 Dona Ramona.. . . . steel 183.67 1914 Visayas.................. . .steel 516.74 1884 Dos Hermanos . . . iron 838.21 1882 Vizcaya................. . . steel 1248.99 1890 Euskadi............... iron 866.59 1884 Y. Sontua............ . . steel 1027.65 1892 Florence D............. steel 2638.72 1919 Ebisu Maru......... . steel 215.69 1907 Gral. Lawton........ . steel 124.67 1909 Anita...................... . wood 8.95 1914 Helen C.................. . steel 2638.72 1919 Asturias II........... . .wood 136.47 1900 H. S. Everett. . . . . steel 1843.97 1890 Camiguin............. . .wood 59.57 1899 Isidoro Pons......... . steel 1027.06 1896 Dalopaon............. . .wood 92.83 1902 Islas Filipinas. . . . iron 1014.33 1886 F. Escano............. . .wood 453.21 1911 Jolo.......................... .iron 825.31 1887 Gifford Jones.. . . . . steel 208.51 1875 Kim Kiat............... . wood 107.58 1909 Hawaii................... . .wood 99.69 1904 Kaibigan................. .wood 123.53 1901 Isabela.................. . wood 179.98 1893 Leyden .................... .wood 76.59 1922 Mariano Yaptico . .wood 98.20 1898 Luzon ...................... . steel 1679.78 1905 Mindanao............. mixed 341.95 1903 Mabait.................... . steel 105.73 1902 Misamis............... . . steel 222.49 1895 Madali..................... .wood 105.73 1901 Mondaca............... . .wood 99.17 1865 Magallanes............. iron 1375.52 1880 Pelayo.................... . steel 147.59 1915 Magapit.................. .wood 135.09 1901 Picket.................... . .wood 99.41 1899 Masbate.................. .wood 305.23 1924 R. Molliza........... . .wood 184.05 1889 Mauban.................. . steel 1252.61 1900 Robert L............. . .wood 9.11 1914 Mayon..................... . steel 277.24 1911 Ortiga Hermanos . . iron 474.96 1874 Micaela.................... .wood 166.16 1899 San Rafael II . . . . wood 135.78 undated Midget.................... . steel 498.23 1902 Tirso Lizarraga.. . .wood 123 65 1893 Mindoro.................. .iron 91.54 1888 Victoria................. . .wood 136.74 1886 Montanes............... . steel 385.06 1889 Campeador........... . .steel 392.10 1916 Naga........................ .wood 51.13 1900 H. I. R................. . .wood 249.90 1902 Negros..................... wood 312.43 1924 Hoiching............... . .wood 199.30 1912 Neil Macleod........ . steel 1076.85 1875 Maria.................... . .wood 44.34 1901 N. S. de Alba.. .. iron 1343.85 1873 Pacita.................... . .wood 66.36 1887 N. S. de Begona. . steel 496.51 1899 Palawan............... . .wood 69.29 1898 N. S. de la Paz. . .steel 248.00 1925 Reinita................. . .wood 54.96 1893 N. S. de la Soledad.wood 107.05 1921 Salvador II......... . .steel 322.51 1904 N. S. del Carmen . iron 316.76 1890 San Fernando... . .wood 237.36 1908 Pan’ay...................... .steel 1871.92 1913 San Isidro........... . . steel 367.65 1901 Panay...................... . steel 2218.24 1895 San Jacinto......... . .wood 331.68 1925 Paz............................ . steel 3563.27 1913 San Miguel IX.. . .wood 244.91 1902 Peking...................... .wood 152.82 1901 Trueno.................. . .wood 24.36 1894 Perla........................ iron 325.58 1912 Yng-An................. . .wood 91.63 1901 Pompey................... . steel 1303.52 1897 Callao.................... . . steel 178.48 1923 Restless................... wood 29.88 1898 Mindanao III. . . . .wood 86.67 1901 Roger Poizat......... .wood 497.13 1903 Saban .................... . .wood 211.86 1904 Samal...................... .wood 320.86 1905 Saban (Jolo)........ . . wood 211.11 1904 leisurely sculled ashore; or he might mount the shoulder of a man and be carried like a child to tierra firma. Here the sun, a glorious tyrant beneath whose brassy glare the sandy beach fairly cowered, made helmets a real necessity. The breathless heat of the little ports had to be felt, for it could not be imagined. Drink, drink: the thought became an obsession in the mind of the thirsty traveler melting in the terrific glare. No whisp of indifferent natural beauty in the towns diverted him from the cool bowl; he gave no second look at the blood-red hibiscus against their green foliage, for the bloom and leaf alike were scorching. Dust devils congered by whirlwinds would swirl furiously at intervals, and suddenly die in April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 13 a scattering of dead leaves, straw and settling grime. One such port left behind, another would presently come into view down the torrid coast. A wooden pier sprawling like a gigantic centipede across the mud flats left by a receding tide, coi rugated iron roofs fringing a perspective of feather-duster palms—these denoted the new town. If the hour was near noon, a few listless figures on the ambling wharf, rubbing sleep from their eyes and frowning a natural dissent to the screaming whistle, spoke vividly of the slipshod commerce. By plodding through the sandy streets, keep ing safely to the shady side, one eventually reached the dwelling house and office of the local factor, or agent, and climbed the creaky stair. These factors were often fat dyspeptic men, always in soiled whites, despondent and depres sed. A fat man in the tropics seems more miser able than a fat man anywhere else. The factor’s graceless form would bulge over the narrow arms of easy chairs built by local craftsmen foi men of average weight. He might be an Englishman, or a Spaniard of the former regime, or, more often, a mestizo. He would have a numerous household, heard but not always seen. After all, the civilized man, the product of modern centuries, may be tossed back into the primitive by a single year of misfortune; for it is easier to retrograde than to progress in climes where the struggle for existence is not competitive. The visit to the factor being a fact, drinks were in order. With a “Pst! Pst!” he would summon a slipshod servant. It is the perpetual call of the East. “Pst I Pst!” Sybilant, soft, penetrative and peremptory The servant would materialize with sloppy tray and generous glasses parked around a quart of whiskey. From its convenient place on the verandah railing, the gorgoreta could be reach ed—the universal earthen waterbottle—by a languid sweep of the arm. Contentment. The latest news from Manila would be dis cussed between drinks. Business would be attended to, papers signed and exchanged, and the visitor, responsive to the boat whistle, would take his departure. In other ports to the south, on the shadowy border of Mindanao, agents were a more aggres sive type. They had to be, to transact business, endure the climate and combat their surroundings. One of these was indeed a type to remember, a swarthy man of immense build, whose bull neck and deep chest told of his tremendous physical strength. His eyes were small, and as cruelly direct in their gaze as the eyes of a bird of prey. His grizzled hair, dense black mous tache and full lips showed sensuality and power. He was a Moslem, however, and this power was rather implied than tangibly expressed. Woman he held, of course, a very inferior creature. A cautious glance into his quarters revealed prayer rugs and mats, and out of the gloom exuded the stifling smell of incense—so heavy as to be almost narcotic. Drugged though he might be, he never failed to have the regular shipment ready. This could always be confidently relied upon. Other coast ports clung uncertainly to un healthful saline flats mattressed into solidity by the stilt-like roots of mangroves in the swamps of estuaries. In every one of these queer halting places there would be a sprinkling of whiter men, more ambitious than the easy-going Malayans. There was an infusion of Caucasian blood down through the ages, from the army, the state, and even, the tale runs, from the church. Sons of the army became de Leons and Castillos. Sons of the state, de los Reyes and Martins, while a de la Cruz sprang from other loins. So the story goes, some mischief and perhaps more malicious ness mingling with the truth. The church was more popular than its rivals. It was but natural that in these far-away islands and far-flung ports of Spain, there was never lacking the adventurous and pioneer element in search of the fabled El Dorado. This contributes, perhaps, to the explanation of the decline suffered by the great mother country, her best sons expatriating themselves over such a prolonged period. For the most part, the men who sailed from Spain never returned to Spain again. Their eager eyes were upon horizons that forever receded, seeking the prosRecommended By Leading Doctors Drink It For Your Health’s Sake TEL 1106 Nature Best Mineral Water perous tomorrow just beyond the soul-trying present. They may have chased rainbows, may be all this reaching after the future is more or less of an illusion anyway; but in all the wide and secluded places of the earth they left the signs of their passing. Getting back to the shabby Philippine coasts, the cargoes awaiting the little steamboats would be lightered out alongside to the accompaniment of terrible Castilian oaths. Ashore, at the factor’s, the cumbrous bills of lading would be duly signed. Later all hands ashore got into the bancas and were paddled out to the littered ship, rising and falling lazily on the groundswell. After a long delay—cost sheets being unknown in the islands then—the old hooker hauled up her mooring chains and throbbed along to another somnolescent port. The steady lap of the waves upon the prow would keep up a monotonous rhythm, broken by the clanging gong’s announcement of dinner. The strange soup, the hard salt-rising buns, the plates for each course stacked at each place, the audible gust,o of every appetite, the general want of strict confidence in the galley—manifested in each passenger’s massaging his cutlery and china with his napkin—the tinned butter, the multiple courses of fowls and meats indifferently prepared and more indifferently served, the vino tin to, really a godsend with so much grease, finally the bananas, the guava jelly and coffee, with leche condensada, and the Londres cigars. This on the most pretentious ships. Upon moonlit nights the pathway in the sea became silver, a shimmering stream through the broken waves. Shoreward at intervals, below the shadowy bulk of forested mountains, the faint beams of a lonely light told of another squalid village on a cove, too small as yet to command a vapor’s services. INEVITABLE It was inevitable that style should enter into glasses. Discerning people no ticed how becoming certain eyeglasses were on their friends and began to seek some thing similar for their own use. CLARK 8b CO., Optometrists, can assist you in selecting the right kind of glasses. 30-94£SCOLTA Always the best in quality MASONIC TEMPLE but never higher in price. GAS COMPANY BOUGHT IN U. S. Press despatches bring the news that the United Utilities Service. Inc., a United States public utilities finance corporation, is buying the Manila Gas Corporation, the stock of which has been chiefly held in Switzerland and has paid dividends of eight per cent for 1925 and 1926. The company enjoyed nearly an eight per cent increase in its sale of gas last year, and gained 1386 new customers. Its capital stock is Pl,500,000. It also carries a long-term debt of P3,000,000 in twenty-year first mortgage bonds bearing 6 per cent, issued July 1, 1926, to absorb the former thirty-year five per cent bonds and other indebtedness. Phil C. Whitaker is president of the company, M. H. O’Malley is treasurer, and Erich Odrich is managing director. It is likewise announced in the press that additional capital will be put into extensions of the company’s service to Manila suburbs. The company was organized in 1912, and got underway in 1913, but 1914 was its first full year of operations, when it sold 1,183,000 cubic meters of gas to 1,700 customers. In 1923 business had increased to 8,173,000 meters of gas sold to 8,700 customers, while last year the output was 9,607,000 cubic meters of gas and customers numbered 12,400. The service has recently been extended to Pasay, but new business in considerable volume should be avail able in other thriving suburbs. The despatches say the present officials are to be retained. Mr. Odrich as managing director spares no pains to maintain satisfactory service. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 14 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 192 LIVESTOCK FAIR—(Continued) the size of the Berkshire without the short nozzle and is more resistant to disease than the pure Berkshire. It offers a very good prospect, and the college of agriculture has already estab lished the Berkjala as a distinctive pure bred hog. The hog industry in the Philippines is a large one, and it could be built up into a two million peso industry. Right now there is a daily slaughter of 300 hogs in Manila alone, outside of the large amount of cured meat from abroad. Horse Show: It is a pity that the horse show was not better attended, but it was held from three to six o’clock, under scorching sun and when people were still in their offices. The horse show should have been held at night, with proper lighting distribution, but unfor tunately the place was also being used by the Army for their show, A Night in Flanders. However, the Army horse show was one of the best ever given here. The other horses were fair. Other Exhibits: There were two other important sections which the observer should not have left out. One was the veterinary research laboratory of the bureau of agriculture exhibit of rinderpest vaccine manufacture. The control of infectious diseases (rinderpest, anthrax, foot and mouth disease, surra, hemorrhagic septicemia, glanders, hog cholera, etc.) revealed that it will not be long before the above diseases can be either controlled or eradicated if the people will only cooperate. The other was the exhibit of the college of veterinary science of Los Banos, Laguna, showing the different dis eases encountered in the provinces. The livestock fair was made possible by the whole-hearted cooperation of Director Youngberg of the bureau of agriculture and his staff, and the college of agriculture. These two government entities made known to the car nival visitors the great work now being under taken and justified their existence to the legis lators and the people. As a whole, the livestock fair was a very instructive exhibit, and all who took the time to spend an hour or two there, learned the large possibilities of the livestock industry in the islands. —Dr. Victor Buencamino. March port collections were 1*2,005,911. In March last year they were 1*1,922,535. This year’s March collections were below last year’s at Cebu, Iloilo and Zamboanga, and more at Manila, Jolo and Davao. Railway—Material Locomotives—(Steam and Alcohol) Track—(Permanent and Portable) Cars—(All Types) Switches, Etc., Etc. Inspection Cars (Hand and Motor) Machinery “Atlas Polar” Diesel Engines “Skandia” Semi-Diesel Engines “Pyle National” Turbo Generators “Asea” Electrical Equipment Koppel Industrial Car & Equipment Co. Manila A. H. BISHOP, Manager Iloilo Three judges of the court of first instance are under administrative investigation on charges of grave misconduct including immorality, neglect of official duties and bribery. Upon petition of leading members of the bar associa tion at Iloilo, Judge Fernando Salas of that district is being investigated at the instance of the governor general by the justice department. A year ago, the Journal recalls, Justice E. Finley Johnson of the supreme court was as signed to a general survey of the courts of first instance. He examined one court, found enough to stagger the blind maiden, and was called away to China upon the Shanghai riot cases. Internal tax collections are off 1*1,068,564 for the first two months of the year as compared to the same period last year. Sales tax (the rate is 1-1 2 percent, and cumulative with every change of hands), 1*3,607,485 this year against 1*4,550,630 last year, decrease in collections during the first two months, 1*943,145; and income tax, 1*116,507 this year against 1’242,456 last year, decrease in collections during the first two months, 1’125,449. These are the main slumps, but all; and the col lector is circularizing agents to ascertain the causes of the decreases. |i II i! A Brief Summary of Artesian Wells Sect! - Activities from 1904 up to and Including August, 1926 From one drilling machine in 1904, the G< v ernment has gradually increased its drillactivities, and now keeps an average of twei drilling machines continuously drilling ar sian wells throughout the year in the differ*. provinces of the Philippine Islands. From 1904 up to and including August, 19. ■ there have been 2,049 artesian wells drilled. aggregating a total depth of 695,853 feet, at total cost of 1’5,124,276.78, or an average 1’7.36 per foot. Artesian Wells Drilled Number of Number of Successful Success ’ 1. Province Antique........................ Wells 3 Well? 2. Albay............................ ... 29 3. Agusan.......................... 9 4. Bataan.......................... ... 81 5. Batangas. . ............. ... 155 a 6. Bohol............................. ... 63 7. Bulacan........................ . . 129 8. Cagayan....................... 2 9. Camarines Norte.. . . . . 15 10. Camarines Sur........... ... 69 11. Capiz............................. . . . 17 12. Cavite........................... ... 99 13. Cebu............ 298 14. Cotabato...................... 2 15. Davao........................... 0 16. Isabela.......................... 0 17. Ilocos Norte............... . 36 18. Ilocos Sur.................... 8 19. Iloilo............................ . . . ■ 27 20. Laguna.......................... . . . 72 21. 7 22. La Union..................... 6 23. Leyte............................ ... 33 24. Masbate....................... 0 25. Manila.......................... . . . 35 26. Marinduque................ . . . 17 27. Mindoro....................... 8 28. Misamis........................ 2 29. Mt. Province............. 4 30. Nueva Ecija............... . . . 136 31. Nueva Vizcaya.......... . . 4 32. Occidental Negros.. . . . 128 33. Oriental Negros........ . . 29 34. Palawan................. 4 35. Pampanga............. 20 36. Pangasinan................. . . 178 37. Rizal.............................. . 128 38. Surigao. 0 39. 3 40. Sorsogon...................... 31 41. Tarlac........................... . . . 20 42. Tayabas........................ 6 43. Zamboanga.................. 5 44. Zambales . 1 Total.......................... 1,919 ~~2 j IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OE COMMERCE JOURNAL 1.5 Lumbang Oil: A Local Product: Rivals Linseed By E. M. Gross, Commercial Chemist A tree is found throughout the Phil ippines known as the candle tree, botanically Aleurites Moluccana (L). It produces the lumbang nut. For many years the Chinese in the islands have been pressing out the oil of these nuts -manufac turing in a primitive way. They put the product on the market as what it is, lumbang oil, used in the manufacture of paints. As manufactured by the Chinese, this oil is dark and ill smelling, often containing as much as 16 to 18 per cent of free fatty acids which impair its quality. The dark color, odor and high acidity are due to the defective methods of extraction. To save labor, the nuts are pressed hot instead of cold: and before the pressing is undertaken the nuts are crushed and may be left in the mealy state for some time. One method is to spread the nuts on the ground, cover them with straw or other dry rubbish, which, when fired, heats the nuts. Heavy rollers, crushing the nuts, are then pulled over them by means of carabaos. The meal resulting is subjected to pressure in a hollow log by means of wedges and a windlass device. The yield is generally about 30 to 40 per cent. Recent studies by a group of investigators in Manila, most notably Dr. A. P. West, professor of chemistry in the University of the Philippines, bring out the fact that the nuts should be cold pressed, when the yield of oil is about 50 to 60 Chinese Lumbang Oil Mill in Calle Tetuan: Hand Power and Long. Patient Hours per cent of the whole weight of the kernel. When the nuts are pressed in this way, the oil obtained is pale yellow with an agreeable smell. It is a high quality drying oil, favorably comparing with linseed oil for use in the manufacture of varnishes, paints, stamping inks, etc., in fact for all purposes to which linseed oil is put. Analysis has shown that the nuts as they come from the trees are about 66 per cent shell and 34 per cent kernel. Due to the high nitrogen Lighter Shop— Heavier Production ; On a factory production graph, the line is helped upward by good lighting. Fixtures that cut down shadows and direct light to machines, enable workers to see what they are doing and to work more quickly and more safely. By these means one factory, and a typical case, increased its production 25% without adding a man or machine. Thus in wiring a shop or office, and installing lighting equipment, the work of the electrical con tractor decidedly influences the progress of in- 1 dustry. He should not be left out in that con- ' ference on how to increase production and cut | down waste. I Manila Electric Co. (MERALCO) j 134 San Marcelino Tel. 2-19-11 | AtlanticGulf and PacificCo. OF MANILA ENGINEERS MANUFACTURERS CONTRACTORS 71-77 Muelle de la Industria MANILA, P. I. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 16 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL Apri', 1927 content the oil cake compressed in the process of extracting the oil is a valuable fertilizer. It is not a suitable stock feed, however, since it contains a poisonous glucocide. Lumbang trees begin bearing within four or five years after planting; they reach maximum production in about eight years from the time of planting, when the yield from a single tree is 150 to 200 kilograms of nuts. This is equivalent to 20 to 30 kilograms of oil and about the same amount of press cake. At present the oil sells at about 20 to 25 centavos per kilogram, the cake at ten centavos. Commercially, lumbang oil can be made more profitable than coconut oil. There is an advantage, too, in the fact that lumbang trees are more resistant to disease than coconut palms are, and require even less care and cultivation. They are also less subject to typhoon damage. They will thrive in any soil, and forest inves tigators assert the tree has a fruit-bearing life of about fifty years. Two species are found in the islands: Aleurites Moluccana (Lumbang), and Aleurites Trisperma (Bagilumbang). The former yields the better nut. Lumbang oil makes a very useful and good strawhat varnish, in substitution of gelatin, of which latter substance the Philippines are now consuming some 20 tons annually i.i their straw hat industry, the average cost being 1*1.20 per kilogram. To use lumbang oil ins.ead of gelatin in stiffening strawhats, the following formula is recommended: Castor oil, 15 grams; copal, or almaciga (spirit soluble, that is, surface resin, not fossil), 16 grams; alcohol, 51 grams. Mace rate by gentle heat and add lumbang oil, 15 grams. Dip the hats into the heated varnish mixture described in this formula, drain, and dry. The process takes about two hours. The lumbang varnish imparts to strawhats a brilliant glossy finish which is not affected by humidity and doesn’t become sticky; and its cost is materially less than gelatin. Lumbang nuts should not be shelled until just before pressing, as oxidation takes place rapidly when the naked kernels are exposed to the air. The shelled nuts are also readily attacked by Calle Tetuan Lumbang Oil Mill: Crushing the Nuts. Inset shows meal being pressed in hollow log. insects, which causes acidity and a loss in oil content. The release of the fatty acids darkens the color of the oil, as already explained. The commercial demand for lumbang oil is at present much greater than the supply. An American firm has recently offered to contract for 5,000 tons monthly over a long period of time. A local manufacturer is utilizing lumbang oil, exlusively of linseed oil, in the making of paint and with excellent results. Varnishes and paints made with lumbang oil give a more elastic and glossy coating than those made from linseed oil. Lumbang oil has also a great advantage over linseed, in that once planted and in bearing it will continue regularly to yield oil for many years—the lifetime of a man, almost. Flax has of course to be planted and cultivated annually. The forestry bureau of the Philippines is plant ing lumbang trees in some of its reforestation areas, from which there may be hope that in the not distant future the product will come intoits own. INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL (paid in cash)............................................U. S. $5,000,000.00 SURPLUS and UNDIVIDED PROFITS - - U. S. $9,000,000.00 Head Office Barcelona Batavia Bombay Calcutta Canton Cebu Dairen Hankow Harbin Hongkcng BRANCHES Kobe London Madrid Manila Osaka 60 Wall St., New York Peking Rangoon San Francisco Shanghai Singapore Tientsin Tokyo Yokohama Commercial Banking and Foreign Exchange Current accounts opened, savings and fixed deposits received in pesos and other currencies at favorable rates. Manila Office - Pacific Building S. Williams, Manager IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 17 ANOTHER OLD TIMER GONE MONEY CIRCULATION U. S. (P. I.) PUBLIC DOMAIN W. J. White, “Capitan Blanco,” who came to the islands in the early days as the captain of Company “H,” 31st U. S. Infantry, died of apoplexy April 4 at St. Luke’s. Funeral services were at the Army Morgue Sunday, April 10, under the auspices of Stotsenburg Camp No. 2, United-Spanish War Veterans. White was widely known in the islands. He made a recent visit to the United States in a futile effort to regain health. Dining Car Service of Surpassing Goodness Report of March 12 from the insular auditor: Philippine coins, 1*21,326,063.11; treasury cer tificates, 1*86,626,389; bank notes, 1*35,999,233; total circulation, 1*143,951,684.11. Government reserves: Gold standard fund, treasury, Manila, 1*5,162,267.32; same, New York, 1*16,667,288.26; treasury certificate fund, Manila, 21,251,281; same, New York, 65,375,105; total reserves, 1*108,455,943.58. The insular auditor’s reports carry the United States public domain in the Philippines at one peso, adding a statement from the 1918 census containing the following data: Extent, 86,000 square miles, or nearly 3/4 of the area of the archipelago. Commercial forest, 16,609,000 hec tares; noncommercial forest, 2,097,000 hectares; cogon-grass and open lands, 4,553,000 hectares; mangrove swamps, 262,000 hectares; unexplored. 1,541,000 hectares. A hectare is 2.471 acres. There have been accretions to the public domain since 1918, land reverting because of unpaid taxes, and also some decrease on account of homesteading, leasing and purchasing; but the figures quoted still remain approximately correct. NEW NAVY BUILDING JOB A letter from the Cavite Naval Station, Com mandant (Rear Admiral) Sumner E. W. Kittelle’s office, refers to "Specification No. 5326, Junior Officers’ and Nurses’ Quarters, Naval Hospital, Canacao. The letter says: “The Commandant invites your attention to the proposed work mentioned above. The work includes plain and reinforced concrete; asbestos shingle roofing and sheet metal work; steel and iron work: mastic flooring; metal lathing and furring; plastering; wood framing, doors, sash and trim; and plumbing and elec trical systems. “In the event that this work is of interest to your firm, you should forward to the Command ant, Naval Station, Cavite, P. I., a check or postal money order for $20.00 payable to the Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks as security for the safe return of the drawings and specification. “Inasmuch as the specifications and accom panying drawings are expected to arrive from the Bureau of Yards and Docks in the near future, it is suggested that you submit your application as soon as practicable in order that the bidding data may be forwarded immediately upon, receipt at Cavite.” The Oriental Limited In your journey across America enjoy the mauy good things to eat served in the handsome dining cars of the finest train between Seattle and Chicago., Ser vice table d’hote or a la carte as you please, at reason able prices. Convenient Connection at Chicago for Eastern Points The Oriental Limited is operated through from Seattle to Chicago via St. Paul and Minneapolis in 69 hours 55 minutes without change. Get our folder “Through the U. 3. A. via Seattle Gateway. ” It will help you plan your trip Aek A. G. HENDERSON. AGENT. Chaco Building o R AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. Manila, P. I. Great Northern A Dependable Railway RAIL COMMODITY MOVEMENTS By M. D. Royer Traffic Manager, Manila Railroad Company The following com modities were received in Manila, February 26. to March 25, 1927,. both inclusive, via Ma-, nila Railroad: 1927 Rice, cavans....................... Sugar, piculs. . . ............. Tobacco, piculs................ Copra, piculs...................... Coconuts.............................. Lumber, B. F..................... Desiccated coconuts, cases March 281,250 300,480 6,300 95,700 2,261,000 335,000 9,900 February 320,125 296,000 6,580 175,845 2,926,000 197,500 12,150 18 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 MARCH SUGAR REVIEW By George H. Fairchild cents to 5.90 cents. The decline in prices during the month under review was puzzling to many in view of the reported decrease of over 1,000,000 tons in the world’s sugar production this year as compared with the production last year. Authorities claim that the importance of this decrease as a market factor is due not so much to the reduction in the world’s production as it is to the fact that the decrease in sugar supplies exists almost wholly in producing countries having an ex portable surplus after supplying domestic require ments and their permanent markets. The following statistics show the decrease of 1,090,000 tons in the exportable surplus this year as compared with that of last year: 19261927 New York Market: With the exception of a slight improvement on the 8th when the quo tation for Cubas ad vanced to 3-5 32 cents c. and f. (4.93 cents landed terms duty paid for Philippine centri fugals) caused by the substantial purchases of Cubas by foreign coun tries, the American sugar market was quiet and practically inactive throughout the first half of the month under review, with small sales of Cubas on the basis of 3- 1 8 cents c. and f. equivalent to 4.90 cents landed terms duty paid for Philippine centrifugals. The course of the American sugar market in the latter half of March was irregular with a downward trend and quotations for Cubas fluc tuated 2 7 8 cents to 3.00 cents c. and f. equiv alent to 4.65 cents and 4.77 cents landed terms duty paid for Philippine centrifugals. At the end of the month the market closed weak after being strong, undoubtedly due to the report that there would probably be an increase over last year of 12 per cent in the European beet crop sowings. Quotations on the New York Exchange fol lowed the fluctuations in the spot market. Compared with those of the previous month, these are as follows: Cuban Crop............................ 4,500,000 Less local consumption. . 150,000 4,350,000 Plus carry-over Jan. 1st, 1927............... 70,000 4,420,000 Est. requirements U.S.A. (1926—3,750,000)......... 3,500,000 1926 Available for countries other than U.S.A......................... Central and South America. San Domingo.......................... Java (1,954,957) .................. Czecho Slovakia.................... Poland....................................... 920,000 1,600,000 190,000 320,000 5,000 0 10,000 100,000 335,000 250,000 200,000 50,000 1,445,000 2,535,000 May........... July................................. September...................... December January, 1928. March, 1928................. High Low Lates 3. 22 2.91 2.92 3.33 3.02 3.04 3.42 3.11 3.14 3.28 3.05 3. 17 3.04 2.85 2.95 2.94 2.74 2.82 As compared with previous month High 3.28 3.39 3.46 3.34 3. 16 Low Latest 3.18 3.18 3.29 3.29 3.37 3.38 3.18 3.28 3.08 3.12 Trade demand for refined continued poor and as a consequence there was a further decline in the quotations, the latest ranging from 5.75 According to a New York firm, the foremost reason for the decline in the American sugar market is the over-stimulation it received for WELCH - FAIRCHILD, LTD. SUGAR FACTORS AND EXPORTERS MANILA, P. I. Agents Hawaiian-Philippine Company Operating Sugar Central Silay, Occ. Negros, P. I. Cable Address: WEHALD, Manila Standard Codes New York Agents: Welch, Fairchild & Co., Inc., 135 Front Street San Francisco Agents: Mindoro Sugar Company Welch & Co., San Jos4, Mindoro, P. I. 215 Market Street Have you seen the new some time past: first, by a decree from the President of Cuba forbidding the cutting of cane before the first of January of this year, and then limiting the Cuban crop to 4,500,000 tons. This firm states: “A commodity market, in some respects, is similar to a human being: over-stimulation is fine as long as the stimulant is actively at work; but once the effects have died out the patient becomes depressed. Another feature that has added to this overstimulation depression has been the per diem production of sugar this year in Cuba, which is now the equal, if not in excess, of previous records. * 1 ' There is a very considerable amount of sugar en route to New York at the present time, and certainly all scarcity so far as this market is concerned is a thing of the past for the present campaign.” It is interesting to note that the sugar stocks at the Atlantic Coast at the end of the month were still abnormally large, there being 218,000 tons as compared with 207,987 tons in 1926 and 127,529 tons in 1925, which naturally had a depressing effect upon the New York market, despite the fact that the stocks in the world’s statistical countries at the same time were 4,282,000 tons as against 4,512,000 tons in 1926 and 3,394,000 tons in 1925. During the month under review 18,000 tons of Philippine centrifugals, near ai rivals and afloats, were sold in the New York market at prices ranging from 4.65 cents to 5.10 cents landed terms. Approximately one-third of the Philippine 1926-27 sugar crop was already sold at an average price of 4.82 cents. The monthly sales of the Philippine 1926-27 sugar crop in the New York market with the corresponding average prices are as follows: 1926: September............................ November............................ December............................. 1927: January................................ February.............................. March................................... Total and Average.. . . 32,000 65,000 18,000 24,000 42,500 18,000 4.51 4.68 5.02 5.15 5.04 4.82 189,500 4.82 Local Market: The local market for cen trifugal sugar was moderately active during March. Fair quantities of centrifugals ex changed hands at prices ranging from 1’10.75 to 1’12.25 per picul. The market for muscova dos however was quiet with small transactions on the basis of from 1’6.05 to 1’7.25 per picul for grade No. 1, the Chinese doing most of the buying in Manila and Iloilo. The milling season of 1926-1927 is almost over. Mindoro Sugar Company was the first to finish milling on February 19 with an outturn of 5,321 metric tons of sugar. Other Centrals will complete their milling operations by April. According to the last estimate of the Philippine Sugar Association, the final outturn of the crop being harvested will be 8,504,194 piculs or 537,892 metric tons of sugar. This will be a record crop of the Philippines, exceeding the bumper ERSKINE SIX? The classy European type American Car just brought in- a marvel of efficiency and economy 1927 is another Studebaker Year PHILIPPINE MOTORS CORPORATION IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 19 crop of 1924-25 by 40,000 metric tons, and that of the previous crop of 1925-26 by 157,000 metric tons. The following is the estimated individual production for the 1926-27 of the various Centrals in Negros, Luzon, Panay and Mindoro. Miscellaneous: Cable advices received from Cuba state that three Centrals have already stopped grinding and it is expected that a fur ther eleven Centrals will.................... during the next few days. similarly close down Reports also indicate REAL ESTATE By P. D. Carman San Juan Heights Addition NEGROS Bacolod-Murcia Milling Co., Inc........................................ Binalbagan Estate, Inc............................................................ Central Azucarera de Bais..................................................... Central Azucarera de La Cariota....................................... Central Bearin (Kabankalan Sugar Co.).......................... Central Palma............................................................................. De la Rama Centrals (Bago, Escalante and Talisay). Hawaiian-Philippine Co........................................................... Isabela Sugar Company, Inc................................................. Ma-ao Sugar Central Co. ............................................ North Negros Sugar Co.......................................................... San Carlos Milling Co., Ltd................................................. San Isidro Central.................................................................... Talisay-Silay Milling Co. Victorias Milling Co................................................................. LUZON Bataan Sugar Company Calamba Sugar Estate........................ Central Luzon Milling Co............ . El Real..................................................... Luzon Sugar Company...................... Mabalacat Sugar Co........................... Manaoag Sugar Mills......................... Nueva Ecija Sugar Mills, Inc. Pampanga Sugar Development Co. Pampanga Sugar Mills....................... Roxas Centrals—Nasugbu................. Calatagan............... Phoenix Central. PANAY Asturias Sugar Central . Central Azucarera de Pilar. MINDORO Mindoro Sugar Company. Reports received from various sugar districts of the Islands indicate that the condition of the young cane plant is more promising than it was last year at this time. It is, however, too early to make estimates of the 1927-28 crop since much depends upon the weather from now on until September. According to the recent compilation of the Philippine Sugar Association the average Philip pine sugar yield for the year 1925-26 was 53 piculs of sugar per hectare as compared with 75.21 piculs in 1924-25, 60.52 piculs in 1923-24 and 37.99 piculs in 1922-23. The average comparative yields by islands are as follows: Metric Piculs Tons 560,000 35,420 550,000 34,790 400,000 25,300 900,000 56,925 167,000 10,560 130,000 8,223 90,000 5,693 660,000 41,745 360,000 22,770 500,000 31,625 500,000 31,625 450,000 28,462 120,000 7,590 550,000 34,790 339,920 21,500 6,276,920 397,018 18,000 1,138 374,700 23,700 70,000 4,427 47,430 3,000 64,000 4,047 ' 60,000 3,795 25,000 1,581 14,000 886 426,880 27,000 699,730 44,258 78,000 4,934 31,500 1,992 1,909,240 120,758 173,913 11,000 60,000 3,795 233,913 14,795 84,121 5,321 8,504,194 537,892 1 Cuba for the planting import sugar duties were recently passed \1 Sta. Cruz . Malate.......... Paco.............. Sampaloc Ermita......... Tondo........... Sta. Ana.. . . San Nicolas. Binondo. .. . Quiapo.......... Intramuros. San Miguel Pandacan... Sta. Mesa. 1925 1926 Negros........ 56.55 Luzon......... 47.57 Panay......... 58.37 Mindoro. . . 29.91 1923 1924 71.63 38.24 77. 10 48.66 46.20 The following reasons were „___ __ decrease in yields for the 1925-26 crop: Unfavorable weather conditions during the planting season. Inefficient planting, cultivation and fertil ization, due to unduly prolonged milling season with previous “bumper crop” year. Financial difficulties of the planters. Shipping statistics from the Philippines from January 1, to March 25, 1927, are as follows: given for the that rain is much needed in of next season’s crop. The proposed revised for the Japanese Empire ■ , . by the Imperial Diet and made effective April 1, 1927. The new import tariff schedule is as follows: Sugar under No. Dutch Standard duty at Yen 2.50 per picul. Sugar under No. 15 to 21 Standard duty at Yen 3.95 per picul Europe reports considerably increased sowings for the 1927-28 crop: Italy with a prospective increase of 35%, Russia of 25%, and Germany, Belgium, France and other countries of 10%. Apparently influenced by the American sugar market, the Java market ruled quiet throughout the month, latest quotations for Superiors being as follows: Spot................... Gs. 12.................................. May...................Gs. 19-1 4 (per 100 kilos) June....................Gs. 18-5 8 (per 100 kilos) July & forward.Gs. 18-1 2 (per 100 kilos) I 1’10.24 10.09 9.76 9.70 ^U. s. Centrifugals 143,087 Muscovado.-----Refined. ... -----5,741 Total 179,649 5,784 282 The first estimate of the present crop was issued placing it at 2,150,000 tons of which 1,235,000 tons were Superiors and 684,000 tons head sugar. This compares with the outturn of the 1925-26 crop of 1,955,000 tons, or an increase of 195,000 tons in this season’s crop over that of last year. This is the largest month’s business since 1920 with only two exceptions: January, 1924, Pl,879,030; July, 1926, 1’1,843,930. Sales, City of Manila February ’ 143,885 39,538 54,883 53,022 14.559 11,587 15.560 31,000 208,000 853 1’ 26,400 616 March 1’292,082 200,663 178,576 239,377 288,593 77,231 59,791 81,800 141,000 70,900 93,000 7,418 2,500 174 The following are the yearly totals for the months of January, February and March: 2,979,880 2,621,551 2,499,948 3,856,879 3,539,851 3,421,002 3,543,539 1921. 1922. 1923. 1924. 1925. 1926. 1927. P Sales of 1’50,000 or over during March: Intramuros. . Ermita.......... Sta. Cruz . . Sta. Cruz . San Nicolas. Binondo.... Paco.............. 1’60,000 175,000 65,000 55,000 52,000 66,000 150,000 INFORMATION FOR INVESTORS Expert, confidential reports made on Philippine projects ENGINEERING, MINING, AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY, LUMBER, ETC. Hydroelectric projects OTHER COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES BRYAN, LANDON CO. Cebu, P. I. Cable address: “YPIL,” Cebu. i J IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 20 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE RICE INDUSTRY By Percy A. Hill o/.UkiIoj, Nueva Ecija. Director, Rice Producers' Association. There has been no change since last review relative to either prices or supply. Prices for both the unhulled and milled product will re main approximately the same for the next thirty days. Terminal storing facilities are rather con gested by the arrival of the bulk of the crop and shipping to dis tributing centers is the order of the day. With the banner crop at hand and with prices approximately 20% to 25% less than last year, it is expected that there will be a considerable carryover both as to storers and in the producer’s camarines. This we may say is the sign of a healthy industry. If the carryover is held yearly it will help stabilize stocks and do away to a certain extent with the lost motion of shipFOR SALE Second Hand Machinery One Alternator, 250 KW; 2200 volts; 60 cycle, 3 phase, direct connected to cross compound Hamilton-Corliss Engine 12-24X36; with generator panel and rheostat. Two 100 KW 'Alternators; 2200 volts; 60 cycle, 3 phase; belted, 18" pulley; direct connected exciters; with gen erator panels. Two Venn-Severin Crude Oil Engines, 60 H.P. each. One Worthington surface condenser, 400 H.P. One Scotch Marine Boiler, 400 H.P. 50—100-kilo Ice cans; new. (Knocked down.) 4 Galvanized steel brine tanks; 2500 kilo capacity each; ammonia fittings. Steam pipe and fittings up to 10". Tube bender for sterling boiler tubes. Tube cleaner, Lagonda, water driven, for 4" tubes; with extra parts, new. Steam and Oil separator. Steam Traps. Marine Engines: (1 Union, 50 H.P., distillate) (1 Quayle, 25-35 H.P., crude oil.) Meters, Electric, Transformers. For Prices, etc.. Apply BRYAN, LANDON CO. Cebu or Iloilo ping out palay and shipping in rice in the pro vincial regions. The depression in other agricul tural crops due to the values of the last two years has caused many farmers to embark in the rice industry. However a rise in values may cause them again to plant sugar, copra, or tobacco. The rice regions which have the one crop per year are at present beginning to utilize part of the area for the secondary crops of tobacco, legumes, vegetables and watermelons, all of which tends to help the food supply, with a con sequent gain to the producer. Transportation, however, is the greatest factor in this multiple cropping, a quick and stable market being neces sary, which is solved by the motortruck more than by the railroad. Several of the local producers’ associations are intending to reduce to a nominal number the varieties of rice planted, with a view to finding the kind which will produce the most cash per hectare, and with the additional urge of select ing the ones that will supply from 67% to 70% of milled rice from the unhulled product. This is a most praiseworthy effort. The combined labors of each community ought to have an effect in standardizing production. It is a task ignored by the entities that should take the lead, but who are woefully deficient in doing so. It is for this reason that no one takes the bureau cratic reports with any seriousness, for they are not only ignorant of field conditions, and regional climatic differences, but know nothing of cost production, milling values, and the diverse factors that obtain to make a crop profitable or not. Part of the success of the handsome trade balances of the countries of Indo-Asia are due to the painstaking efforts of that function which we style bureaucracy. In the Philippines, on the contrary, we have the bureaucracy without the effort, hence the actual producers are solving their problems, and incidentally carrying the bureaucracy as an extra burden. This could not be otherwise in a country whose prime slogan is “Let George do it.” The Economic Council called the Amigos del Pais, a century ago, was infinitely superior to all the modernized bureau cratic attempts to get on the right track. And the humorous part of it lies in their eternal sur prise because the actual producers of our two hundred million peso crop do not take them or their reports seriously. Summed up they have a long, long way to travel before they can do any thing to benefit the industry, although to be sure they have good intentions. REVIEW OF THE EXCHANGE MARKET By Stanley Williams Manager International Banking Corporation. Telegraphic transfers on New York were quoted at 12% pre mium with possible sell ers at 3 8% premium on February 28th. The market was unchanged until March 5th when the rate was nominally called 5 8% premium although there were pos sible sellers at 12% premium. On the 7th the market rate was raised to 3 4% pre mium and there were a few sellers at 5 '8% pre mium. On the 8th and 9th important lots of export exchange for both near and forward deliveries were thrown on the market and on the 11th the selling rate was lowered to 5 8% premium with possible sellers at 1 '2% premium and buyers not keen. On the 12th the rate was called 12% premium and there were sellers at 3 8% premium. On the 15th the rate was lowered to 3, 8% premium and there were sellers at 1/4% premium. By the 22nd the market was slightly firmer and sellers would not do better than 3 8% premium. The market then firmed up by easy stages being called 12% premium on the 25th, 5 ’8% premium on the 30th and 3 4% premium on the 31st, with buyers at 3 8% premium at the close. Sterling cables were quoted at 2 0 5 8 on February 28th, buyers at 2 0 3/4. The market was unchanged until March 5th when both rates were lowered 1 16th. Rates were unchanged until the 11th when buyers would not do better than 2 0 3 4 and there were possible sellers at 2 0 5 8. On the 15th buyers’ ideas were raised to 2 0 13 16, but on the 19th were again lowered to 2 0 3 4. On the 24th sellers would not do better than 2 0 9 16 and buyers would do 2 0 11 16. On the 30th the market was down 1 16th on both sides and it closed on the 31st with sellers at 2 0 1 2 buyers at 2 0 5 8. Three months sight credit bills were quoted at 2 1 1/4 and 3 m s D P bills at 2 1 3 8 at the close on February 28th. On March 2nd these rates were raised 1 16th and on the 5th lowered 1 16th. On the 15th they were again raised to 2 15 16 and 2 1 7 16 and remained unchanged until the 25th when they were again lowered to 2 114 and 2 1 3 8 at which level they were unchanged throughout the balance of the month and closed on the 31st. The New York London cross rate closed at 485 1 8 on February 28th, touched a low of 485 1 16 on March 1st and rose gradually throughout the month to a high of 485 3. 4 on the 25th, 26th, 28th and 29th. It closed at 485 11/16 steady on the 31st. London Bar Silver closed at 26 1/8 spot 25 7 8 forward on February 28th, touched a high of 26 1 4 and 26 on March 1st, a low of 25 3/16 and 25 on March 16th and closed at 25 7/8 spot 25 11 16 forward on March 31st. New York bar silver closed at 56 1/8 on February 28th and after touching 56 1/2 on March 1st fell away to a low for the month of 54 18 on the 16th and reacting it touched a high for the month of 56 5/8 on the 30th and closed on the 31st at 56 14. Telegraphic transfers on other points were quoted nominally at the close as follows: Paris, 11.85; Madrid, 183 1/4; Singapore, 113 1/4; Japan, 99 1.2; Shanghai 79 3 '4; Hongkong, 100; India, 136 1,4; Java, 123 1/2. OXYGEN Electrolytic Oxygen 99% pure HYDROGEN Electrolytic Hydrogen 99% pure ACETYLENE Dissolved Acetylene for all purposes WELDING Fully Equip ped Oxy-Acetylene Weld ing Shops BATTERIES Prest-O-Lite Electric Stor age Batteries Philippine Acetylene Go. 281 CALLE CRISTOBAL MANILA IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 21 The Opportunity of a Life Time SHAKESPEARE COMPLETE P2 to Subscribers P4 to New Subscribers and I I THE MANILA DAILY BULLETIN FOR ONE MONTH This cut is less than one-fourth the size of the beautiful big book, which is 6 x 9 inches. ALL IN THIS ONE VOLUME This work comes to you now in handy form -one splendid volume handsomely bound—containing the comedies, tragedies and poems, all complete, as they were written by the hand of the super-master. An added feature is an introduction to each play in which the subject matter is introduced and thoroughly explained in such a clear and explicit manner as will give an impetus to its study. Get your copy of this great book at once This is a large volume of superior quality and finish- -a de luxe edition—bound in pebbled dahlia maroon soft and pliable -embossed design with gold inlay effect—the most attractive book for home and library table the complete works of the greatest literary genius the world has known. THE MANILA DAILY BULLETIN Send money by money order or registered mail. Address your letter to: Cayetano Ramirez, Circulation Manager, Manila Daily Bulletin, Manila IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 22 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 SHIPPING NOTES SHIPPING REVIEW By H. M. CAVENDER General A.jrat, I).,liar Stea ,,,sl,. p L„ The freight market in the Philippines is firm. While there has been occasioned no in creases in rates, there is an upward tendency and increases in several of the more important commodities exported from the Philippines are expected. There con tinues a heavy move ment of cargo to the Atlantic seaboard. Cargo offerings somewhat ex ceed the tonnage available. The reverse is true to the Pacific coast, however. Many ships are returning to the Pacific coast with small cargoes. As reported in the last issue, during February there was excess tonnage on the berth to the THE YOKOHAMA SPECIE BANK LTD. ======== (ESTABLISHED 1880) HEAD OFFICE: YOKOHAMA, JAPAN Yen Capital (Paid Up) - - - - 100,000,000.00 Reserve Fund - . . . 92,500,000.00 Undivided Profits .... 6,142,357.99 MANILA BRANCH 34 PLAZA CERVANTES,, MANILA K. YABUK.I Manager PHONE 1759—MANAGER PHONE 1758 —GENERA L OFFICE United Kingdom and Continent. This was likewise true during March. Passenger ships are returning to the United States and Europe loaded to capacity. This period compares with the post war traffic to and from the Far East in that it is difficult to arrange any accommodations whatever. This condition has arisen wholly as the result of conditions in China. In some instances hundreds of people, foreign to China, are traveling in steerage ac commodations in order to return to native lands. Duiing March a total of 2613 passengers, all classes, are reported to have departed from the Philippines (first figure represents cabin pas sengers, second figure steerage): To China and Japan 205-590; to Honolulu 3-709; to United States 142-744; to Singapore 12-37; to Europe and miscellaneous ports 51 -116. Filipino emi gration during the month to Honolulu increased somewhat and the movement to the Pacific coast is nearly double the number in February. The comparison shows Honolulu February 612—March 709; Pacific coast, February 496— March 744. From statistics compiled by the Associated Steamship Lines there were exported from Philip pine ports during the month of January, 1927: To China and Japan ports 8242 tons with a total of 36 sailings, of which 5585 tons were carried in American bottoms with 13 sailings; to Pacific Coast for local delivery 35,861 tons with 13 sailings, of which 28,481 tons were carried in American bottoms with 11 sailings; to Pacific Coast for transhipment 1266 tonswith lOsailings, of which 1199 tons were carried in American bottoms with 8 sailings; to Atlantic Coast 69,864 tons with 16 sailings, of which 44,243 tons were carried in American bottoms with 8 sailings; to European ports 19,608 tons with 14 sailings, of which 146 tons with 2 sailings were carried in American bottoms; to Australian ports 548 tons with 5 sailings, of which American bottoms carried none, or a Grand Total of 135,393 tons with 62 sailings, of which American bottoms carried 79,654 tons with 42 sailings. From statistics compiled by the Associated Steamship Lines there were exported from the Philippines during the month of February, 1927: To China and Japan ports 10,027 tons with a total of 32 sailings, of which 3742 tons were carried in American bottoms with 11 sailings; To Pacific Coast for local delivery 31,081 tons with 12 sailings, of which 27,472 tons were carried in American bottoms with 10 sailings; to Pacific Coast for transhipment 1569 tons with 7 sailings, of which all were carried in American bottoms; to Atlantic Coast 69,366 tons with 15 sailings, of which 31,211 tons were carried in American bottoms with 4 sailings; to European ports 13,431 tons with 12 sailings, of which 120 tons were carried in American bottoms with 1 sailing; to Australian ports 1,216 tons with 3 sailings, of which none were carried in American bottoms; or a Grand Total of 126.690 tons with 81 sailings, of which Amer ican bottoms carried 64,114 tons with 33 sailings. Shippers, consignees and transportation men in the Philippines observe with much interest the recent trip of the President of the Emer gency Fleet Corporation to the Pacific Coast as it is expected the result of his visit will be mergers or change in control of the Shipping Board lines from the Pacific coast serving the Philippine Islands. The Government shipping lines oper ating out of the Pacific coast are American Oriental Mail Line, the Oregon Oriental Line and the American Australian Orient Line. The American Oriental Mail Line, which includes seven cargo ships, is being operated by the Admiral Oriental Line. The Oregon Oriental Line, which includes ten bottoms, is operated by Columbia Pacific Shipping Co. The Amer ican Australian Oriental Line, of seventeen craft, is managed by Swayne & Hoyt. While no changes have been intimated or announced, it is expected, following the return of President A. C. Dalton to Washington, after he has had an opportunity to complete his survey, there will be reassignment of Shipping Board Lines on the Pacific Coast. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 23 SHIPPING PERSONALS R. C. Morton, Director for Orient, U. S. Shipping Board, is spending a three-week's holiday in Baguio with his family. Mr. Morton left Manila Saturday, March 26. Geo. J. McCarthy, Asst. General Passenger Agent, Dollar Steamship Line and American Mail Line, with headquarters in Shanghai, together with H. M. Cavender, returned to Manila Saturday, March 26, from a ten-day’s automobile trip through the northern provinces, having visited the principal provincial towns as far north as Bangui. A. H. Terry, formerly connected with the Los Angeles office of the Dollar Steamship Line, has been transferred to the Manila office of the Dollar Steamship Line and occupies the position of chief clerk. Mr. Terry, accompanied by his wife, arrived at Manila aboard the President Cleveland March 17. C. C. Black, representative of the Prince Line in Hongkong, was a recent visitor to Manila. W. J. Adam of the firm of W. F. Stevenson 6s Co., Ltd., accompanied by his wife, left Manila March 25 for a holiday in England and the United States. Mr. Adam is being relieved by F. M. Chalmers. Geo. J. McCarthy is leaving Manila Wednes day, March 31, for Cebu, where he will look over the territory in the interests of the passenger department of the Dollar Steamship Line and American Mail Line. Mr. McCarthy expects to return to Manila April 4. Ralph Applegate, son of “Bill” Applegate of the Luzon Stevedoring Company, accompanied by his bride, arrived at Manila March 31 aboard the President Hayes. Mr. Applegate will be connected with the Luzon Stevedoring Company. H. M. Cavender, General Agent, Dollar Steamship Line and American Mail Line, Manila Office, left the city on a business trip to China and Japan, Saturday, April 2. Mr. Cavender expects to be away from Manila three or four weeks. Officials of the Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, the Tabacalera, have been invest igating prospects in Cotabato for the growing of fine wrapper leaf. The party included the Conde de Churruca, general manager of the company’s interests in the Cagayan valley, the company’s secretary, D. Adrian Got Insausti, and Mr. Hussleman, soil expert from 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 Knobelsdorff Agents 90 Rosario, Manila Phone 22324 Sumatra. The Tabacalera officials were im pressed with the possibilities in the Sarangani bay district, according to the Mindanao Herald. In Zamboanga they weie guests of Major Fletcher, at the suggestion of Malacanang, and they returned to Manila on the tourist ship Resolute as the guests of the captain. They have announced no plans. Laguna is issuing 1*196,000 in bonds for public improvements and the governor urges the inhabitants to take up the bonds so as not to increase the islands’ bonded debt to the United States. AMERICAN MAIL LINE (ADMIRAL ORIENTAL 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 Polk - - - Apr. 15 President Adams - - Apr. 29 President Garfield - - May 13 President Harrison - May 27 President Monroe - - June 10 President Wilson - - June 24 president Van Buren - July 8 Sailings every fortnight 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 24 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 COPRA AND ITS PRODUCTS By E. A. SEIDENSPINNER Vicc-l’residtnl and Manager, Capra Millinu COPRA 1 J The Manila copra mar ket has been unusually quiet during the entire month of March at prices varying between 1’12.25 and 1’12.625 for resecado stocks. There has been a decided lack of interest displayed by sellers in future business at current prices due pri marily to the very short supplies from the Laguna-Tayabas district. The arrivals from this section during the month were almost 5,000 tons less than for the month of February, with every indication that April receipts by railroad will be still furthet diminish ed. On the other hand, anything in excess of 1’12.25 for Warehouse stocks amounts to speculation on the part of buyers, as compared with quotations from the Continental and U. S. markets. There seems to be no doubt but what the local market will be extremely spotty during the next several months. Total arrivals at Manila for the month of March were 229,250 sacks as compared with 307,368 sacks for Febru ary and 165,619 sacks for March, 1926. The U. S. copra market remained practically unchanged during March, opening at 4-13 16 cents and closing at the same figure. Scattered sales were reported at slight premiums but the bulk of trading passed at 4-7, 8 cents or under. The London market has likewise ruled quiet but at this writing it is reported steady at £25/12/6 for Cebu sundried. Latest advices follow: San Francisco, 4-13 16 cents to 4-7 8 cents; London-Cebu, £25 12 6; Manila, Buen corriente, 1’11.00 to 1’11.125; resecado, 1’12.25 to 1’12.625. COCONUT OIL The U. S. market for this item continues to be characterized by narrow trading, which is quite unusual for this time of the year. While nearby oil was sold as low as 7-7 8 cents f.o.b. tank cars West Coast, the greater part of the month’s business was done at prices ranging between 8 and 8-1,'4 cents. The month’s outstanding feature in connection with the market for com peting fats and oils was the bullish Government report on March 15th, showing Cotton seed oil consumption for February as 346,000 barrels and a later reduction in the estimated Cotton Crop of 700,000 bales. Although the month closed with the majority of fats steady at current prices, there has been very little business to test the volume that con suming buyers will absorb. Coconut oil stocks in America are well maintained and despite local conditions as regards copra supply, sharp advances in coconut oil cannot be hoped for. Latest advices from U. S. and foreign markets follows: San Francisco, 8 cents f.o.b. tank cars; New York, 8-1,4 to 8-3/8 cents f.o.b. tank cars. COPRA CAKE There has been renewed activity in the Con tinental market for copra cake during the month of March with increased inquiry at slightly better prices. A fair amount of business was done for shipment to Hamburg at prices ranging from £7 to £7/5, the latter figure being freely offered for futures. The U. S. market is reported quiet and unchanged. Latest quotations follow: Hamburg, £7/ nearby; £7 5 for futures; San Francisco, copra meal S27.70 per short ton, nominal. Manila, P. I., April 5, 1927. TOBACCO REVIEW By P. A. Meyer Alhambra Cigar and C Manufacturing Raw Leaf: In those sections of Isabela and Cagayan where the transplanting of the to bacco was delayed too much, the plants have suffered somewhat through the prolonged dry spell. Unless the usual afternoon showers set in soon, the 1927crop will, as far as quantity is concerned, be below the average. Any prognosti cation regarding quality would be too premature at this time. Of im portance to the local trade is the recent invita tion for bids of. the Spanish Monopoly Office, Madrid, calling for about 27,000,000 kilos of Philippine tobacco for the next 2 years, from September 1st, 1927, until August 31st, 1929. This quantity amounts to about one-fourth of the average 2 years’ production. Shipments abroad during March, 1927, are as follows; £< >/ T"'i Belgium................................ 38,085 Germany.............................. 123,568 Holland................................. 16,937 Hongkong............................ 22,590 Japan and Korea............. 36,874 United States.................... 46,195 Various................................. 2,107 286,356 Cigars: Export to the United States con tinues very unsatisfactory, with.no prospects of improvement in sight. Compared with the corresponding last year's period, shipments during March, 1927, show a decrease of about 20%. To what reasons at least the greater part of this slump is attributed, has been indicated repeatedly in these columns. Comparative figures for the trade with the United States are as follows: March. 1927, 14,151,294; February, 1927, 13,553,309; March, 1926, 17,699,008. 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 ow 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 Bldg. P. O. Box 128 Manila, P. I. Mgr's. Tel. 22110 Main Office Tel. 441 Increase the value of your house —Use PLATE GLASS windows— Save your Furniture - Use PLATE GLASS table tops— Get more light in factory or home —Use CORRUGATED WIRE GLASS skylights— Ask us for prices Squires Bingham Co. SPORTSMEN'S HEADQUARTERS I MANILA 15 Plaza Goiti Phone 300 For More Than 27 Years Discrimi nating men have found that we do the best tail oring and have the largest selection of good suitings. New York-Paris-Manila 12 Escolta Phone 706 IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 25 REVIEW OF THE HEMP MARKET By T. H. SMITH Macleod &• Company This report covers the markets for Manila hemp for the month of March with statisticsup to and including April 4th, 1927. U.S. Grades: A dull market in New York featured the opening with values nominally on the basis of F, 15-1 8 cents; I, 13-3 Scents; JI, 9-7 8 cents, business being transacted in small lots at 1 8 cent to 1 4 cent lower as buyers appeared from time to time. The market in the second week steadied up somewhat principally owing to more reserve being shown by shipping houses in their offerings, prices being firmly held on the basis of F, 15-3 4 cents; I. 13-3 4 cents; JI, 10-1 4cents. Busi ness at the advance was of quite a retail char acter, the advance checking business. A qu'et period then set in. More offerings appeared on the market which declined to a basis of F, 15-1 2 cents; I, 13-1 2 cents; JI, 10-1 8 cents. In the last week of the month a much improved demand was experienced in the U. S., there being more business doing and values steadily appreciated to a basis of F, 16 cents; I, 14 cents; JI, 10-3 4 cents at which prices the market at the close developed a rather quiet tone. Business in high grade hemp has again been very restricted, D Good Current being sold from 16 cents at the opening to 16-3, 4 cents at the close. F Midway 15-3 4 cents to 16-1/8 cents. The Manila market for U. S. grades opened steady on the basis of D, 1*38; E, 1’37; F, 1*36: G, 1*21; H, 1*19.50; I, 1’31; JI, 1’22.4; SI, 1*35; S2, 1*30; S3, 1*23. Buying on the part of export houses being general, dealers advanced prices 4 reales; a restricted business passing at the advance as offerings were in a small compass. By the middle of the month values were nomi nally D, 1’38.4; F, 1’36.4; G, 1’22; H, 1’20; I, 1’31.4; JI, 1’23; SI, 1’35.4; S2, 1’31; S3, 1’24; but business actually transacted was mostly at an increase of 2 reales on these prices. The latter two weeks of March featured a fully steady to firm market on dealers refusing to sell except at high prices. At the close one or two attractive parcels changed hands on the basis of D, 1’39; E, 1’38; F, 1’37; G, 1*22; H, 1’20; I, 1*32; JI, 1’23.4; SI, 1’36; S2, 1’31; S3, 1’24.4 at which prices the market closed firm. Sales of single grades have been made here and there during the month at very substantial premiums over prices ruling for similar grades in combined parcels. U. K. Grades: Opened very quiet with sellers in London market at J2, £42.10; K, £41.15: LI, £41.15; L2, £39; Ml, C39; M2, £36, March-April shipment. Some shipping houses took advantage of this range of prices but not to any extent. '‘Bear” coverings then firmed the market up from 15 to £1 per ton and, demand continuing, values quickly appre ciated toa basis of J2, £44.5; K, £43.5;L1 £43.5; L2, £39.3; Ml, £'39; M2, £36.10; business being restricted even at this level owing to firmness of sellers, shippers holding off from offering. By the middle of March the market turned quiet to dull with buyers holding off but shipping houses only offering small quantities at full prices. “Bears” then took the market in hand again offering down tc J2, £43; K, £42; LI, £42; L2, £39; Ml, £39; M2, £36, March-May shipment. The last week of March shows a further reduction in prices, a fair business passing in London at J2, £41; K, £40; LI, £40; L2, £39; Ml, £38; M2, £36 April June shipment. The market closed steady at the last prices for early shipment but rather quiet for distant shipment at 10 - per ton discount. Manila market for U. K. grades ruled quiet but steady, values being on the basis of J2, 1’21; K, 1’20; LI, 1’20; L2, 1’18.4; Ml, 1*18.4; M2, 1’16.4; DL, 1*15; DM, 1*13; there being rather buyers thereat. Very little business passed on this level owing to firmness of dealers and by the middle of March the market was firm at from 4 reales to 1*1.00 advance according to grade. The market soon turned quieter, however, in sympathy with the London market, values de clining again to a basis of J2, 1*21; K, 1*20.4; LI, 1’20.4; L2, 1’18.4; Ml, 1’18.4; M2, 16.4; DL, 1* 15; DM, 1’13. The closing weeks regis tered a further decline in values, prices being on the basis of J2, 1’19.4; K, 1’18.4; LI, 1’18.4; L2, 1’16.4; Ml, 1’16.4; M2, 1’15.4; DL, 1’14.4; DM, 1*13 to 4 reales more. Enquiry on Japanese account has been quiet but prices fairly well sustained. Freight Rates: Nothing fresh to report in this connection. THE NEWEST EQUIPMENT IS ON THE NORTH COAST LIMITED SEATTLE TO CHICAGO (DIRECT CONNECTION TO THE EAST AND SOUTH) “NEWEST” means an Observation-Lounge Car surpassing all others heretofore designed. Barber, Valet, Ladies Maid, Bath, Library, Smoking and Card Rooms, Writing Desk, inviting lounge and wide observation platform. “NEWEST” means Pullman sleeping cars different from any you have seen on any other train. Permanent head-boards divide the sec tions for greater privacy. Interior Decorations in soft, new colors. Here is luxury unlimited for sleeping car passengers. All Steel Construction Means Safety. In the Dining Car are those “famously good” Northern Pacific meals, served with deft courtesy and skill at low prices. Daily from Seattle to Chicago IN 70 HOURS. No change of cars. For rates and literature write R. J. TOZER GENERAL AGENT NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY "2000 MILES OF STARTLING BEAUTY” Statistics: We give below the figures foi the period extending from March 1st to April 4th, 1927, in bales; 1927 Stocks on January 1st . .. 112,382 Receipts to April 4th......... 323,741 Stocks on April 4th............. 109,325 Shipments To April To April 4, 1927 5, 1926 To the— United Kingdom............... Continent of Europe . . . Atlantic U. S..................... U. S. via Pacific.............. Japan.................................... Elsewhere and Local.. . . 74,507 44,488 108,126 31,419 39,527 20,068 91,937 36,627 84,060 30,048 57,451 26,675 Total.......................... 326,798 318,135 609 Robert Dollar Bldg. Shanghai, China. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 26 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 27 PRINCIPAL EXPORTS Quantity February, 1927 Value % Quantity February, 1926 Value Monthly average for 12 months previous to February. 1927 % Quantity Value Coconut Oil.......................................... Cigars (Number)................................. Embroidery........................................... LMfUTobacco....................................... Desiccated and Shredded Coconut. Hats (Number)................................... Lumber (Cubic Meters)................... Copra Meal.......................................... Cordage................................................. Knotted Hemp.................................... Pearl Buttons (Gross)....................... Canton (low grade cordage fiber).. All Other Products............................. Total Domestic Products................. United States Products..................... Foreign Products................................. Grand Total........................................ 4 2 5 5 9 9 9 3 5 1 % 26 22 16 14 3 3 Cotton Cloths................... Other Cotton Goods. . . . Iron and Steel, Except Machinery..................... Wheat Flour..................... Machinery and Parts of.. Dairy Products................ Gasoline.............................. Silk Goods......................... Automobiles...................... Vegetable Fiber Goods. . Meat Products................. Illuminating Oil............... Fish and Fish Products. . Crude Oil........................... Coal..................................... Chemicals, Drugs, Dyes, Etc................................... Fertilizer............................. Vegetables.......................... Paper Goods, Except Tobacco and Manufac tures of.......................... Electrical Machinery.. . Books and Other Printed Matters........................... Cars and Carriages, Ex Automobile Tires............. Fruits and Nuts.............. Woolen Goods.................. Leather Goods.................. Shoes and Other FootBreadstuffs, Except Wheat Flour................. Eggs..................................... Perfumery and Other Toilet Goods................. Lubricating Oil................ Cacao Manufactures, Ex cept Candy................... Glass and Glassware . . Paints, ^Pigments. VarOils not separately listed.. Earthen Stones & ChinaAutomobile Accessories.. Diamond and Other Pre cious Stones Unset.. . . Wood, Bamboo, Reed, India Rubber Goods. . . . Matches............................. Cattle and Carabaos. . . . Explosives.. ....................... Sugar and Molasses........ Motion Picture Films. . . Al! Other Imports........... Total 2 6 5 6 5 0 8 2 5 2 8 P30,543,507 100. NOTE:—All quantities are in kilos except where otherwise indicated. PRINCIPAL IMPORTS February, 1927 Value r 11 3 5 9 7 1 8 9 5 2 2 3 2 2 7 2 6 5 8 2 1 0 7 1 0 0 9 2 8 5 3 2 3 1 2 7 2 P25,147,015 100 0 CARRYING TRADE 237,975 155,177 235,708 221,983 647,940 659,509 87,708 74,267 97,202 352,334 47,952 120.359 145,951 137,032 148,292 126,276 71,948 79,571 5 0 S 2 3 0 6 0 2 0 0 5 6 3 3 8 0 9 9 0 0 3 0 0 6 0 0 5 5 0 6 7 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 7 0 0 2 3 3 1 0 . 7.6 Monthly average for February, 1926 12 months ending February, 1927 IMPORTS Value Value 13 7 3 8 2 5 2 2 2 2 4 16 5 7 9 7 3 3 Nationality of Vessels February, 1927 Value 362,378 317,173 358,567 375.633 450,303 256,212 119,665 142,424 137,020 140,646 165,366 119,202 126.379 84,827 2 1 0 7 0 0 2 1 7 0 0 2 5 6 8 0 0 0 0 0 8 7 0 0 0 0 8 9 0 0 8 6 0.6 0.7 0.5 0 0 6 0 0 1 2 0 3 1 3 362,064 359.680 303,403 228.436 207,845 143.454 118,766 65.509 108,035 141,163 120,370 120.465 1.8 0 9 0.8 10 0. 7 0 6 0 3 OS 0 7 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.2 5 0.4 0.2 0.3 0 3 0 2 0 2 9.9 PORT STATISTICS TRADE WITH THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES February, 1927 Value Monthly average for February, 1926 12 months previous to February, 1927 Value Value 70 1 8 Total. 1.7 0.4 2 1 0 0 0 2 2 6 3 3 9 7 5 8 8 8 6 1 8 6 1 3 6 3 r23.625.385 100 0 Monthly average for February, 1926 12 months ending February, 1927 Value American.......... Japanese.......... Dutch............... German............ Norwegian. . .. Philippine........ Spanish............. Swedish............ Finnish............ Italian............. Russian.......... Portuguese.... By Freight..,. By Mail........... Total. 8 2 0 Value 8,426 19 EXPORTS Nationality of Vessels February, 1927 Value 52 28 5 3 3 0 8 7 2 2 6 51 30 5 3 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 11,125 485 Monthly average for February. 1926 12 months ending February, 1927 Value Value American... Japanese... Swedish.. . . German.. . . Norwegian. Spanish.... Dutch......... Philippine.. Finnish.... Belgium . . . By Freight. By Mail... P16.198.810 9,411,699 3,500,261 830,359 72,022 0.2 0.6 0. 1 510 Total. 32 31 13 5 2 1 45 29 8 2 3 3 0 0 0 TRADE WITH THE UNITED STATES AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES February, 1927 Value Monthly average for February, 1926 12 months previous to February. 1927 Value Value United States........... United Kingdom.. .. Japan.......................... China.......................... French East Indies. Germany.................... Australia.................... British East Indies. Dutch - East I ndies.. Netherlands.............. Italy............................ Hongkong.................. Belgium...................... Switzerland................ Japanese-China........ Siam............................ Sweden....................... Canada....................... Norway...................... Denmark.................... Other Countries. . . . Total.......... 80 2 9 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 2 1 0. 3 5 3 6 I 8 I 2 0 2 68 4 4.9 2 9 7 2 6 5 3 2 1 1 1 1. . 0 9 1.0 0.8 0.8 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0. 28 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1927 BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY B. A. GREEN REAL ESTATE Improved and Unimproved City, Suburban and Provincial Properties Expert valuation, appraisement and reports on real estate Telephone 507 34 Escolta Cable Address: “BAG” Manila Manila, P. I. Philippine Islands Myers Buck Co., Inc. Surveying and Mapping PRIVATE MINERAL AND PUBLIC LAND 230 Kneedler Bldg. Tel. 1610 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 Rosenberg’s Garage TELEPHONE 209 f CHINA BANKING CORPORATION •MANILA, P. I. Domestic and Foreign Banking of Every Description 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 INSURANCE FIRE MARINE MOTOR CAR F. E. ZUELLIG, Inc. Cebu Manila Iloilo Phone "El Hogar Filipino” 2 - 22 -33 Building WARNER, BARNES & CO., LTD. Insurance Agents Transacting All Classes of Insurance P. O. Box 1394 Telephone 22070 J. A. STIVER Attomey-At-Law Notary Public Certified Public Accountant Investments Collections Income Tax 121 Real, Intramuros Manila, P. I. SANITARY - CONVENIENT - SATISFACTORY! Five European Barbers Special attention given the ladies Shampoos, facial massage and hair cuts under skilled management LA MARINA BARBER SHOP 117 Plaza Goiti Jose Cortina. Prop 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 M. J. B. The Quality Coffee F. E. Zuellig, Inc. Cebu Manila Iloilo S. W. STRAUS & CO. BONDS J . A . STIVER P. O. Box 1394 Telephone 2-20-70 121 Real, Intramuros, Manila Forty-four years without a dollar loss to any investor Quality Shirts TOYO jttIRT FACTORY 1044 AICADRAGA, MANILA. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL LA NOBLEZA CIGAR AND CIGARETTE FACTORY 409 Tayuman, Manila Cable address L.N. Tel. No. 2-78-53 Manila Wine Merchants, Ltd. 174 Juan Luna Manila, P. I. P. O. Box 403 Phones: 2-25-67 and 2-25-68 WEANDSCO Western Equipment and Supply Co. Exclusive distributers in the Philippines for Western Electric Co. Graybar Electric Co. 119 Calle T. Pinpin P. O. Box 2277 Manila, P. I. || Tel. 2-26-89 P. O. Box 997 THE 11 FILIPINO GUN STORE I 702 Rizal Avenue ! We wish to announce that we have U just opened a complete PHOTO SUPPLY i| DEPT., offering to the PUBLIC, free of charge. Developing, Adjusting and I Cleaning Kodaks. Come and see us for ! Instruction. I Give us a trial and be satisfied. M. A. Guieb, II Manager and Prop. For 1*4.00 Per Year you can keep your home-town editor in America conversant with the Philippines by sending him The Journal THE AMERICAN EXPRESS CO.. INC. International Banking, Shipping, Travel CITY TICKET OFFICE Manila Railroad Company American Express Travelers Cheques Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, Limited Phone 858 P. O. Box 461 Telegraphic Address: “MITSUI, MANILA” Metal work for con tractors, builders and engineers turned out promptly according to specifications Our shops are under the direction of a capable superintendent who has had experience in some of the largest sheet metal plants of Europe and Amer ica. He will give expert advice regarding your particular problems. Quotations and estimates on your work are solicited P. C. C. SHEET METAL SHOPS FAROLA, MANILA IN RESPONDING TO ADVERT ISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL BUSINESS Appreciates this Car Sole Distributors ILOILO A body for practically every requirement is now availableeither produced by the factory or built locally to meet parti cular needs. The notable records of Dodge Brothers Commercial Car have proved its capacity for greater burdens over longer periods than most vehicles of similar or higher-rated capacity. Today throughout the world this car is used in large fleets by the greatest public utility organizations, newspapers, depart ment stores, oil companies and other whose test of a car is its dependability, economy of operation, low repair cost, high resale value. ESTRELLA AUTO PALACE LEVY HERMANOS. Inc. 536-568 Gandara MANILA ( CEBU □0D6& Brothers COMME-RCIAL CARS