CHAPTER XIV.

RESOURCES.

THE principal resources of the Philippines are in her rich soil. Minerals there are, and these will be mentioned in this chapter; but it is by her agriculture that she has flourished in the past, and it will be by the development of her agricultural possibilities that she will come to the front as a prosperous country in the future.

Let it be remembered that the world is increasingly dependent upon the tropics for its food supply, and for the thousand articles of manufacture and commerce without which the wheels of modern business enterprise would stand still. Then let it be remembered that nowhere in the tropics is there a better climate, or a more fertile soil, or more abundant forests, and the resources of these Islands will take on a new meaning. Kidd, in his "Control of the Tropics," says:

"If present indications are not entirely misleading, we are about to witness an international rivalry for the control of the trade of the tropics on a far vaster scale than any which has hitherto been imagined. It is remarkable that, in the midst of other matters which hold the public mind, but the importance of which is trivial in comparison, the large issues which are involved under this head should have as yet occupied so little attention.

"If we turn at the present time to the import lists of the world and regard them carefully, it will soon become apparent to what a large extent our civilization already draws its supplies from the tropics. Of recent years we

have been largely occupied in discussing questions affecting the conditions of our own industrial production. Yet it is curious to reflect to what a large extent our complex, highly-organized modern life rests on the work and production of a region of the world to which our relations are either indefinite or entirely casual-a region which has, it must be remembered, hitherto produced no example of native government successful in the European sense, but towards which, nevertheless, no political party and no school of thought have so far set forth any scheme or policy either consistent in itself or possessing the merit even of being generally accepted in principle.

We have heard from time to time, recently, a great discussion concerning the trade of the United Kingdom with the British colonies and dependencies. The total of this trade (exports and imports) for the year 1896 amounted, if we include Egypt, to some $953,480,000. It is somewhat startling, when we come to analyze the figures, to find that some $498,680,000 of it was trade between the United Kingdom and the British regions of the tropical belt. . But it may be said that Great Britain is exceptionally situated as regards the currents of trade, and the nature of its imports and exports. If, however, we turn to the United States of America, it is only to find the same lesson more strongly emphasized. Looking down the import list for 1895, and taking the fifteen heads under which the largest values have been imported, we find they include some two-thirds of the total import of the United States. A glance at the principal comodities to show to what an enormous extent the produce of the tropics is represented,-here the two items which stand at the top of the list are coffee and sugar, of which the imports are valued, respectively, at $96,000,000 and $76,000,000. The value of imports of these two articles alone does not fall very far short of one-fourth of the total value of the imports of the United States for the year in question. If we add to it the values of three other heads-viz., (1) india-rubber, (2) tobacco, and (3) tea-we have a total of some $220,000,000. If we endeavor to deal with the whole import list on the prin

ciple followed in the case of Great Britain, and seek to distinguish what proportion of the total imports of the United States comes from the region embraced between latitude 30° north and 30° south of the equator, we get a total value of approximately $250,000,000 from tropical regions. This is over one-third of the entire imports of the United States, the total for that year from all sources being $731,000,000.”

The chief farm crops of the Philippines are hemp, rice, sugar, tobacco, copra, and, in the past, as explained in the previous chapter, coffee. The peculiar crop is hemp. Manila hemp holds the world's market in this article, and will likely continue to hold it against all comers. Singularly enough, it is not grown in or very near Manila, though it bears the name of the city from which it is chiefly exported.

Hemp (Musa textilis)—referred to by some writers as M. Troglydyarum-is a wild species of the plantain. It greatly resembles the M. paradasaica, which bears the edible banana. Experts only can tell the difference between the hemp-tree and the banana-tree. The notable thing that marks them from one another is the color and size of the leaf. It grows best on well-drained slopes, and flourishes where soil is shallow, even where evidences of volcanic action are abundant. It demands plenty of shade, like the rubber-tree. The tree averages ten feet in height. It is an endogenous plant, the stem of it being inclosed in layers of half-round petioles. The fiber of commerce is extracted from these petioles. When the trees are cut down, they are cut into strips from five to six inches wide and drawn under a knife attached at one end to a block of wood by a hinge, while the other end is hung from the end of a flexible stick. This bending stick raises the knife, and, by a simple treadle at