The Inhabitants of the Philippines Part 24

MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIES.

Cigars and cigarettes--Textiles--Cotton--Ahaca--Jusi--Rengue--Nipis --Saguran--Sinamay--Guingon--Silk handkerchiefs--Pina--Cordage-- Bayones--Esteras--Baskets--Lager beer--Alcohol--Wood oils and resins--Essence of Ylang-ilang--Salt--Bricks--Tiles--Cooking-pots-- Pilones--Ollas--Embroidery--Goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work-- Salacots--Cocoa-nut oil--Saddles and harness--Carromatas--Carriages --Schooners--Launches--Lorchas--Cascos--Pontines--Bangcas--Engines and boilers--Furniture--Fireworks--Lanterns--Bra.s.s Castings--Fish breeding--Drying sugar--Baling hemp--Repacking wet sugar--Packing tobacco and cigars--Oppressive tax on industries--Great future for manufactures--Abundant labour--Exceptional intelligence.

The manufactures of the Philippines, such as they are, have been mentioned when describing the different tribes or peoples and only a summary is necessary here.

The making of cigars and cigarettes employs probably 30,000 people in the Province of Manila, the vast majority being women. But the best cigars are made by men who have been trained under skilled operatives brought from Havana.

A vast improvement has taken place since the Government monopoly has been abolished, and now the Manila cigars are as well-made and are put up in as tastefully decorated boxes as the Havanas.

Cigarettes are now largely made by machines; the Compania de Tabacos de Filipinas having rows of them in their factories.

Textiles are made in hand-looms all over the Archipelago by the women in their spare time.

But in certain Provinces large numbers of women are regularly employed at the loom-working for those who make a business of it. In Ilocos and Union very excellent coverlets, sheets, serviettes, handkerchiefs and towels are woven from cotton, as well as the fabrics called abaca, jusi or rengue, nipis, saguran, sinamay and guingon. This last is very suitable for military or naval uniforms; it is a blue cotton cloth similar to what sailors call dungaree.

In some of the towns of Pampanga and Bulacan, notably in Baliuag where the people are specially clever and industrious, excellent silk handkerchiefs are woven. In Camarines and Albay the fabrics of abaca are more commonly woven, and in Cebu the women are accustomed to work at the loom.

But it is from Ilo-ilo and neighbourhood that a very large trade is done with the other islands in many kinds of textiles. There also the Visayas work industriously at it as a trade and produce most beautiful fabrics of pina, silk, cotton, and abaca, as well as the cheaper sorts for the use of the working cla.s.ses. In some of the mixed materials a beautiful effect is produced by running stripes of silk, either white or of the most brilliant colours, lengthways through the piece. I have sent some of these jusi dress fabrics to ladies in England and they have been greatly appreciated when made up by a bonne faiseuse.

They are very suitable for wearing in the Philippines or elsewhere in the tropics, being light and gauzy. This material, as well as some of the other fine gauzy fabrics, takes a long time to make in a hand-loom, the advance is imperceptible. I should like to put some of the calumniators of the Filipinos to work a hand-loom and make a dress-length of jusi. I think every one would recant before he had made a yard.

At the Philippine Exhibition of 1887 there were more than three hundred exhibitors of textiles, and one of them, the Local Board of Namaypacan in the Province of Union, showed one hundred and forty-five different kinds of cloths.

There are several rope-works at Manila and the material used is abaca, the ropes produced are equal to any to be had anywhere.

In Camarines Sur both harness and hammocks are made from this material.

In the Provinces ropes are made of cabo-negro, a black fibre from the wild palm, said to be indestructible; of buri, of fibre from the anabo, of the bark of the lapuit, and of rattan. Bayones or sacks for sugar, esteras or sleeping mats, hats and cigar cases, and baskets of all sorts, are made at different places and from the commonest up to the very finest. That called the Tampipi is now regularly kept in stock in London, and is very handy for travelling.

There is a lager beer brewery in Manila that must have piled up money since the American garrison arrived.

Alcohol is distilled both from sugar and from the juice of the nipa-palm (Nipa fructicans).

The oils and resins of Ilocos have been mentioned when describing the Ilocanos; they are not exported, finding a ready market in the country.

Essence of Ylang-ylang is distilled in Manila and other towns; it used to fetch formerly 1000 francs per kilogramme.

Salt is made at many places between Paranaque and Cavite.

Bricks, tiles, cooking pots [bangas], stoves [calanes], sugar moulds [pilones], and draining pots for the pilones [ollas], are made in many provinces.

The industry of the women is also shown by the very beautiful embroideries of all sorts, either in white or coloured silks or in gold or silver. Some of this latter work, however, is done by men.

In some cases they introduce seed-pearls or brilliant fish-scales in their work. The slippers worn by the women on grand occasions are often works of art, being richly embroidered in silver and gold on cherry coloured velvet.

Some notable pieces of goldsmiths' and silversmiths' work have been done in Manila, and in the provinces some of the natives carve bolo handles and other articles out of buffalo horn and mount them in silver with much taste.

The salacots, or native hats, are beautifully woven by hand from narrow strips of a cane called nito [lyG.o.dium], and the headmen have them ornamented with many pieces of repousse silver (see Ill.u.s.tration).

Cocoa-nut oil is expressed in the province of the Laguna, in Manila and other places. Soap of the ordinary kind is manufactured from it.

Saddles and harness are made in all the leading towns, and the ordinary country vehicle, the carromata, is made in the chief towns of provinces and some others; but some of the components, such as the springs, and axle-arms and boxes are imported. But in Manila really elegant carriages are constructed, the leather for the hoods, the cloth for the linings, the lamps, as well as a good deal of the ironwork, being, however imported.

In former years large frigates have been built, armed, and fitted out at Cavite and other ports, but at present the ship-building industry is in decadence, and the shipwrights capable of directing so important a job have died out. The increasing scarcity and high price of timber is now a difficulty, and sailing vessels are in little demand. Small steamers and launches are now built, but larger steamers are ordered from Hong Kong or Singapore, or, in case of vessels well able to make the pa.s.sage, the order goes to England.

The native craft called lorchas, pailebotes, pontines, barotos, paraos, cascos, guilalos, barangayanes, bangcas, vintas and salisipanes are still built in large numbers. The last are very light and fast craft used by the Moros on their piratical expeditions.

Engines and boilers for steam launches are made in Manila, church bells are cast of a considerable size; iron castings are also made.

Amongst the miscellaneous articles manufactured are all sorts of household furniture, fireworks and lanterns. Dentists, painters, sculptors and photographers all practise their trades.

There is no doubt that the Filipinos have learnt a certain amount from the Spaniards as regards their manufactures; but, on careful consideration, I think they have learnt more from the Chinese. Their first sugar-mills were Chinese and had granite rollers, and from them they learnt the trick that many a moulder might not know, of casting their sugar-pans in a red-hot mould and cooling slowly and so getting the metal extremely thin yet free from defects. The casting of bra.s.s cannon and of church bells has been learnt from them, and doubtless they taught the Igorrotes how to reduce the copper ores and to refine that metal. Again, the breeding of fish, an important business near Manila, and the manufacture of salt round about Bacoor comes from them. I am not sure whether the hand-loom in general use is of the Chinese pattern, but I think so.

Distilling the nipa juice is certainly a Chinese industry, as also the preparation of sugar for export. This is done in establishments called farderias, and is necessary for all sugar made in pilones or moulds. The procedure is described under the head of Pampangos, and an ill.u.s.tration is given of the process of drying the sugar on mats in the sun.

Many native men and women and numbers of Chinese coolies are employed in Manila, Ilo-ilo, and Cebu in preparing produce for shipment.

The hemp used to come up from the provinces loose or merely twisted into rolls to be pressed into bales at the shipping ports, but of late years several presses have been erected at the hemp ports in Southern Luzon and on the smaller islands.

There are a number of hemp-presses in Manila, each requiring about sixty coolies to work it, and one or two clerks to attend to the sorting and weighing.

They were paid so much per bale pressed.

Steam, or hydraulic presses, would long ago have been subst.i.tuted but for the fact that the clerks or personeros were each allowed one or two deadheads on the pay list, and this was so profitable to them that they strongly opposed any changes, and none of the merchants cared to take the risk of the innovations.

Two presses were set in line, astride a pair of flat rails, a small one called the Bito-bito for the first pressure on the pile of hemp, and the large one to squeeze down the bale to its proper size.

They were simply screw presses having hardwood frames set deep into ma.s.sive stone foundations and surrounded by a granite pavement.

A pair of these presses, i.e., a Bito-bito and a press erected in Manila under my direction in 1888, cost $4400, the woodwork foundation and pavement costing $2850, and the screws, nuts, capstan-heads, etc., costing $1550. The small press had a screw 4 inches diameter and 6 feet long, and was worked by two or four men. The large press had a screw 8 1/4 inches diameter, and 12 feet long.

Both screws worked in deep gun-metal nuts and had capstan-heads. When the large press was near the end of its travel the capstan bars were manned by forty coolies putting out their utmost strength and shouting to encourage each other as they tramped round on the upper floor keeping step.

The turn out was about 250 bales from daylight to dark. Each bale weighed 2 piculs, say 280 lbs., or eight to the English ton. The bales should measure 10 cubic feet, that is a density of 28 lbs. per cubic foot. The hemp could be pressed into a smaller volume, but it is a.s.serted that the fibre would be seriously damaged. Sometimes from careless pressing the bales measure 12 cubic feet. They swell after leaving the press and after being moved.

At the date I have mentioned, the charge for screwage was 50 cents per picul, but it has been raised since then.

Dry sugar was exported in its original bags, and loading and shipping cost 12 cents per picul. Wet sugar usually required repacking for export, and the charge for discharging the coaster and rebagging was 17 cents per picul, as well as 12 cents for loading and shipping.

It lost 2 per cent. in weight in repacking and 10 per cent. during the voyage in sailing vessel to Europe or America. So that altogether one-eighth of the total was lost to the shipper, and there was a good perquisite to the skipper or mate in pumping the mola.s.ses out of the bilges.

The repacking was usually done by natives, and the old mat bags sc.r.a.ped by women who receive half the sugar they save. The mats are sold to the distillers and are thrown into their fermenting vats, to a.s.sist in the manufacture of pure Glenlivat or Bourbon whisky, Jamaica rum or Hollands gin.

In 1891 I saw on board a steamer just arrived from Antwerp hundreds of cases containing empty gin bottles packed in juniper husk, the labels and capsules bearing the marks of genuine Hollands.

They were consigned to one of the Manila distillers, and must have enabled that respectable firm to make a large profit by selling their cheap spirit as imported liquor.