276 The Philippine Journal of Science i9i8 



will give an average yield of 75 kilograms of fiber, of which 65 

 kilograms are yarn fiber and 10 kilograms brush fiber. It has 

 been estimated ^ also that the husk of each nut gathered in the 

 Philippines in 1916 would have yielded O.I kilogram (0.22 pound) 

 of coir, and that in the same year there were harvested in the 

 Philippines 735,000,000 coconuts. On the last two basic yields 

 55,025 and 73,500 metric tons, respectively, of total coconut fiber 

 could have been extracted from the husks in the Philippine 

 Islands in 1916. 



Unquestionably one of the most important factors that has 

 prevented the development of the coir industry in the Philippines 

 is the large amount of manual labor required to extract a small 

 quantity of fiber that has a comparatively low market price. It 

 is doubtful if hand extraction in the Philippines will ever be 

 largely developed. The fact that the coir industry flourishes in 

 India and other tropical countries outside of the Philippines is 

 largely due to very cheap labor. In those places the extraction 

 of the fiber is largely practiced by women and children at home 

 during their spare time. The establishment of a paying coir 

 industry in the Philippines resolves itself into the installation 

 of an efficient power-driven plant situated within easy reach of 

 an adequate supply of cheap husks. In tropical countries out- 

 side the Philippines a great deal has been done in the design and 

 manufacture of power-driven extracting, cleaning, and baling 

 units, etc., for the extraction of coir on a large scale, in the 

 hope of increasing the production, lowering the cost, and ul- 

 timately becoming independent of the slow hand methods. Ma- 

 chines of several types have been built, altered, experimented 

 with, and offered to the public; yet much remains to be done 

 to perfect the most successful ones. Hamel Smith and Pape • 

 have described some of these together with their operation. 

 They say: 



Fibre engineers, especially those working to perfect coir fibre machinery, 

 are the first to agree that, although great improvements have been 

 introduced during the last few years, perfection has not been reached, 

 and so they are devoting their energies to further improve the appliances 

 for treating coir fibre that have already been placed on the market. 

 We are very interested in their efforts to do so, and believe that the 

 scientific development of coco-nut estates, backed up by ample funds, and 



• Commerce Reports, Washington, D. C, Saturday, July 14, 1917, No. 

 163, pp. 164-165. 



"Hamel Smith, H., and Pape, F. A. G., Coco-nuts: The Consols of the 

 East. "Tropical Life" Publishing Dept., London (1912), 250-462, describe 

 these machines and their operation. 



