July 1, 1917.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



569 



What I Saw In the Philippines — I. 



By the Editor of The India Rubber World. 



Primary Reasons for the Trip. — The Influence of Smith. — Mine Own and Others' Ignorance. — Honolulu in Passing. — The Venezuela. — History of 

 the Philippines. — A Day in Yokohama. — Smoking Room Wisdom. — Side Lights on the Filipinos. 



IN the month of December, 1916, a man threatened to cut my 

 throat and I fled to the Pacific Coast and there embarked on 



the Pacific Mail steamship "Venezuela" for the Philippines. 

 I should perhaps explain that he was neither insane nor blood- 

 thirsty, but simply a surgeon who collected tonsils. Mine were 

 a bit bothersome, but as they were the only set I had I did not 

 feel like sparing them, particularly as he had plenty of others in 

 glass jars accumulated during years of predatory physicianing. 

 So I fled and before I got to Manila my throat was in such good 

 shape that I had to hire a Chinese steward to cough just to make 

 me feel that I was back enjoying a New England winter. 



Of course, "it wasn't the cough that carried me off" entirely. 

 1 really had a 

 very definite ob- 

 ject, indeed a se- 

 ries of objects. 

 For a long time 

 1 had been gath- 

 ering in the opin- 

 ions of long 

 distance experts 

 upon conditions 

 in the Philip- 

 pines, and it was 

 slowly dawning 

 upon me that it 

 was possible that 

 they did not 

 wholly know 

 what they were 

 talking about. 

 The statements 

 that no white 

 man could live 

 there, that no la- 

 bor was avail- 

 able, that Para 

 rubber could not 



be successfully cultivated, and so on, struck me as not being 

 backed up by facts. Besides there was Smith. He always has 

 definite ideas, and is always wrong. For example, he predicted 

 in 1904 that plantation rubber would never reach 1,000 tons a year; 

 that it would never really pay any rubber company to employ a 

 chemist ; that the double tube tire would never be adopted by 

 American motorists; and in 1911 that rubber would never again 

 go above 60 cents a pound. As a final test I had therefore gone 

 to him with : 



"I wonder if it would be possible to cultivate Para rubber in 

 any part of our Philippine possessions !" 



"Not a chance. I looked into that thor " 



I knew then that it was well worth my while to see the land 

 that would one day produce most of our plantation rubber. 



There was also my belief that the psychological time had ar- 

 rived for such a trip. My visit to Ceylon and Singapore in 1904 

 bore some fruit in the United States, much more in Europe. 

 With the greatly increased knowledge of American rubber men 

 concerning foreign parts, would not an impartial view of pos- 

 sible rubber planting sections be at least readable and possibly 

 profitable? 



Pondering my fellow countrymen and their knowledge of the 

 Island Empire of the Pacific, they group themselves about as 

 follows : 



Those who do not know whether the Philippines is one of 

 Paul's epistles, or the plural of philopena. and — 



Real observers, scientific and commercial, whose conclusions 

 are in the main sound and anyhow are always worthy of careful 

 attention. 



Of course, between these extremes is to be found a host that 

 possess a weird and appalling variety of misconceptions concern- 

 ing the islands and the people. 



Speaking of the ignorance of others I must fain confess that 



my own was con- 

 siderable. It is 

 difficult for me 

 to get an idea of 

 size from a map. 

 As an extreme 

 example I know 

 that Australia is 

 vast. Its meas- 

 urements tell one 

 so. but until I 

 visit it and ex- 

 p e r i e n c e the 

 magnificent dis- 

 tances it will al- 

 ways remain sub- 

 conscious- 

 ly a small square 

 daub down in a 

 lower corner of 

 the map. So it 

 was with the 

 Philippines. Un- 

 til I visited them 

 they were big 

 islands accord- 



HONOLULU FROM THE GoLF ClUB. 



ing to description, but my imagination relegated them to the little 

 things like the lesser Antilles or the Azores. Further than this 

 there was always the mental effort in locating Manila, as to 

 whether it was on Panay or Luzon ; whether it was Mindoro or 

 Mindapao that was the big southern land, and if Cebu were a 

 hump-backed ox and Zebu an island. 



It is. of course, exceedingly difficult to get accurate informa- 

 tion concerning matters at a distance on any subject, but concern- 

 ing rubber it is almost hopeless. From what I knew of the 

 southern of the Philippine Islands I was convinced that there 

 were great plantation possibilities, but it was difficult to prove. 

 I had paid a goodly fee to a young man who was voyaging thither 

 to gain for me accurate information regarding conditions, but 

 his report, long delayed, was of no value. He began by believing 

 what someone in Manila told him, that rubber could not be 

 grown, and nothing else mattered. During his journey through 

 the Southern islands he found nothing, because that was what 

 he expected to find. He acknowledged that soil, climate, rain- 

 fall, everything pointed to a paradise for Hevea but "it wouldn't 

 grow !" .As to the "why" he had no adequate answer. 



To my surprise I found that many business and scientific men 



