Cigarettes are now largely made by machines; the Compañia de Tabacos de Filipinas having rows of them in their factories.
Textiles are made in hand-looms all over the Archipelago by the women in their spare time.
Group of women making Cigars.
To face p. 158.
But in certain Provinces large numbers of women are regularly employed at the loom-working for those who make a business of it. In Ilocos and Union very excellent coverlets, sheets, serviettes, handkerchiefs and towels are woven from cotton, as well as the fabrics called abacá, júsi or rengue, nipis, saguran, sinamay and guingon. This last is very suitable for military or naval uniforms; it is a blue cotton cloth similar to what sailors call dungaree.
In some of the towns of Pampanga and Bulacan, notably in Baliúag where the people are specially clever and industrious, excellent silk handkerchiefs are woven. In Camarines and Albay the fabrics of abacá are more commonly woven, and in Cebú the women are accustomed to work at the loom.
But it is from Ilo-ilo and neighbourhood that a very large trade is done with the other islands in many kinds of textiles. There also the Visayas work industriously at it as a trade and produce most beautiful fabrics of piña, silk, cotton, and abacá, as well as the cheaper sorts for the use of the working classes. In some of the mixed materials a beautiful effect is produced by running stripes of silk, either white or of the most brilliant colours, lengthways through the piece. I have sent some of these júsi dress fabrics to ladies in England and they have been greatly appreciated when made up by a bonne faiseuse.
They are very suitable for wearing in the Philippines or elsewhere in the tropics, being light and gauzy. This material, as well as some of the other fine gauzy fabrics, takes a long time to make in a hand-loom, the advance is imperceptible. I should like to put some of the calumniators of the Filipinos to work a hand-loom and make a dress-length of júsi. I think every one would recant before he had made a yard.
At the Philippine Exhibition of 1887 there were more than three hundred exhibitors of textiles, and one of them, the Local Board of Namaypacan in the Province of Union, showed one hundred and forty-five different kinds of cloths.