62 



Popular Science Monthly 



class Is common over the entire Philippine 

 archipelago. Due to this fact, practically 

 all of the hemp used in the world for rope 

 manufacture comes from Philippine ports. 

 Silk and hemp are the two commonest 

 cargoes carried by trans-Pacific ships when 

 coming our way from the Far East. The 

 British have always controlled the hemp 

 growing industry of the Philippines. They 

 controlled it in Spanish times, and they 

 control it now. The natives raise it and 

 the British buy and market it. Why this 

 is so is a long story. Briefly, the situation 

 may be traced to unsettled political policies. 



A small crop of hemp and the apparatus used by 

 the natives for stripping the threads from the stalk 



American firms hesitate to invest capital 

 in politically turbulent countries. 



Hemp grows wild in the islands, but it is 

 also cultivated to a large extent. Despite 

 the supervision of the British and the 

 stewardship of the Spanish, we found the 

 Filipinos handling hemp in 



the very crudest way when we became over- 

 lords. Stripping hemp by hand meant 

 hard work. Much of the crop was wasted, 

 too. For this reason prices were high. 



Hemp threads are stripped from the 

 trunk of the plant, a long green log, similar 

 to an overgrown cornstalk. The strip, or 

 bark, is drawn over a toothed knife, so that 

 the pulp is torn away from the threads. 

 Americans were quick to see that a machine 

 could be applied to do this work, and to do 

 it better and very much faster than by hand. 

 So alluring were the fortunes to be 

 made from such a machine and so great 

 was the need for it economically, that 

 several successful hemp-stripping machines 

 appeared on the market at about the same 

 time. These machines are doing good 

 work, but the poorer natives have been 

 slow to adopt them because of a lack of 

 money and because a machine that will do 

 the work of ten or twenty poor peasants 

 is looked upon as an industrial enemy. 



Hemp stripping by hand is healthful 

 work. It develops rolls of hard muscles and 

 afi^ords fresh air, as the operations are 

 usually carried on in the field. Pull- 

 ing the pulpy slabs across the toothed 

 knife is muscularly like boat-rowing. 

 Natives having a small crop, bale it 

 up and carry it into town on their 

 shoulders for sale to the nearest 

 agent of the British exporters. 



Native hand-made rope is too 

 loosely woven together to have much 

 commercial value outside the islands. 



Silk and hemp are the commonest cargoes from the Philippines. Hemp grows wild in the 

 islands and is also cultivated by the natives to a great extent. The British control the trade 



