ANNIVERSARY NUMBER 1919 



95 



The Coconut Industry of the Philippines 



By W. R. Babcock- 



mills. England, one of the largest users of 

 the oil did not engage in the oil-crushing 

 industry to any extent because their herds 

 of cattle were smaller, and their owners not 

 so readily adaptable to change in methods 

 of feeding. The following table shows the 

 imports by principal ports: 



The Philippines are so exceptionally favor- 

 ed by nature that they have a monopoly of 

 one great tropical product, Manila hemp, 

 and are the largest producer of another 

 great tropical product, coconuts. During 

 the past two years war conditions have so 

 accelerated the natural march of events that 

 all its coconut products are now shipped in 

 the shape of oil, whereas formerly they went 

 to Europe and the States in the form of copra. 

 Throughout the history of the Islands these 

 two items have constituted the only products 

 of the coconut tree that have entered its ex- 

 ternal commerce. 



Coconut trees are found all over the tropics 

 particularly in the South Sea islands and the 

 Philippine and neighboring archipelagos. 

 When Magellan, the first European, came to 

 the Philippines, the tree was already growing 

 luxuriantly throughout the islands, along 

 the seacoast. According to De Candolle, 

 it is very possible that the tree is indigenous 

 to the Philippines, and that the Visayan 

 islands are the focus from which were propa- 

 gated the groves of the entire world. Until very 

 recently, however, the tree and its products 

 were used only for domestic purposes by the 

 natives. The nut itself furnishes food and 

 drink and a fiber for ropes, while the tree is 

 used for houses and its leaves for the thatched 

 roof. A certain amount of fresh nuts was 

 exported to nearby Chinese ports but, except 

 for this, it did not enter into commerce. 



In the first half of the 19th century it was 

 discovered that the oil contained in the coco- 

 nut meat was especially suitable and desir- 

 able for the manufacture of soap. In order 

 to transport the meat economically, it was 

 necessary to extract it from the nut and it 

 then had to be dried in order to prevent loss 

 through the mold which attacked it when 

 wet. The resultant product, dried coconut 

 meat, is called coprax or copra, and large 

 quantities were exported to Europe from 

 Ceylon and India. 



In the late eighties, a British exporting 

 firm in Manila, brought in some of this copra 

 from Singapore as a sample to show the na- 

 tives how to prepare the article of commerce. 

 At that time other portions of the world 

 had a start of nearly half a century but the 

 climate of the Philippines is so favorable to 

 the growth of the nuts, that it was not long 

 before the Islands caught up with their clos- 

 est competitors and they have now been for 

 some years the largest single exporters of 

 copra. The following table shows that while 

 in 1905 Manila exported only 17 per cent 

 of the total copra shipped from the main 

 producing centers, by 1911, they were prod- 

 ucing almost a third of the entire produc- 

 tion of the world: 



The exports from the Philippine Islands 

 for subsequent years were: 



Tons. 



1913 82,219 



1914 87.344 



1915 139.092 



1916 72,277 



1917 92.180 



[From Manila Merchants' Association Report.] 



In reading these figures it should be noted 

 that other centers, notably Ceylon and 

 Macassar exported large quantities of oil, 

 desiccated coconut and fresh nuts in addi- 

 tion, to their copra. A further point of in- 

 terest is that Manila henceforth will figure 

 very largely as a point of origin for the oil, 

 but its export of copra and other products 

 is likely to be negligible for some time. This 

 is due both to the prohibition of copra ex- 

 ports by the local Government during the 

 war and to the fact that local oil mills can 

 almost certainly pay a better price for the 

 raw material than the exporter if, and when, 

 the local embargo is lifted. 



The second great boom in coconut products 

 came with the discovery by French and 

 German scientists that the residual press cake 

 after extracting the oil from the copra was an. 

 admirable cattle feed. France, Germany 

 and Holland invested large sums in erecting oil 



Early in the twentieth century it was dis- 

 covered that coconut oil could be refined so 

 as to serve as a base for margarine and artifi- 

 cial butter, and as a chocolate fat. Very 

 important factories were established prin- 

 cipally in Denmark and German Bohemia, 

 henceforth to be known to the world 

 as Czecho-Slovakia. The demand became 

 greater than the supply and much interest 

 was excited at centers of production in proj- 

 ects to express the oil in the tropics, instead 

 of shipping copra to Europe. As a result 

 of their investigation of the situation, Mr. 

 E. P. Thompson and Dr. Paul C. Freer, at 

 that time Director of Science for the Philippine 

 Islands, and a few associates built one of the 

 first, if not the very first, modern mills out- 

 side of Europe and the United States. 

 This mill, the Philippine Products Co., 

 was organized in 1905 and built in 1906 on 

 the Pasig River in the Pandacan district of 

 Manila, now the scene of a greater oil industry 

 than was then dreamed of. 



TRANSPORTING COCOXLTS BY RAFTS 



Exports of Copra 



(From Lcwkowits, Chem. Tech. of Oil Fats. Jc.) 



1905 



107,709 



58.915 



52,520 



7,582 

 25.961 

 19,514 

 17,739 

 10.000 



2,514 



Java Ton 



btralts, (Singapore, Penangl 



Manila 



Tongan Islands 



Macassar 



Sangar 



Ceylon 



Zanzibar 



Mozambique 



Federated Malay States . . . 

 German New Guinea .. . 



Unfortunately this mill was burnt to the 

 ground by a disastrous fire in 1908 so that 

 the question of the relative advantage of 

 manufacture in Manila and Europe was not 

 definitely decided for the business world, 

 and for some time the old method of ship- 

 ping the copra persisted. Copra shipments 

 could be made in bags which are a cheap 

 container and subject to no appreciable 

 leakage. Oil, at that time, had to be ship- 

 ped in special steel drums which were return- 



