There is also room for paper-mills, rice-mills, cotton-mills, and saw-mills, but all these, especially the last, need careful consideration for the selection of the locality where they are to be placed. The manufacture of various kinds of leather could be greatly extended and improved. There is employment for more coasting steamers and schooners. The latter and hulls of small steamers can be built in the country from the native timber.
Although the development of means of communication is all-important, it is evident from the configuration of the Archipelago that no great length of railway is required, nor would it pay to construct them in so mountainous a country. Water-carriage is all-important. In Luzon a line of railway might be made from Manila to Batangas with a branch into the Laguna province. It would traverse a fertile and thickly-populated country.
A short line of railway or electric tramway from near Siniloan on the Lake to the Pacific would be most useful in giving access to and developing the eastern coast, or contra costa, as it is called. This coast is very backward in every way, indeed from Baler to Punta Escarpada on its extreme north, it is quite unknown, and remains in the possession of the Dumagas, an aboriginal tribe of heathen savages of low type, just as at the time of the Spanish conquest; and it would be worth while to study the question of cutting a ship-canal through this narrow strip of land if the mouth could be protected from the Pacific surf. There is also Bishop Gainza’s project that might be revived, that of cutting a canal for country craft from Pasacao in Camarines Sur to the River Vicol. In Negros and Panay some short lines from the ports through the sugar lands might pay if constructed very economically.
Tramways between populous towns not far apart in Luzon and Panay would probably pay very well, as the people are fond of visiting their friends.
It will probably be many years before Mindanao will be in a position to warrant the construction of railways. The island has relapsed into barbarism as a consequence of the withdrawal of the Spanish garrisons and detachments, and of nearly all the Jesuit missionaries.
It could, however, give employment to a flotilla of small steamers and sailing vessels on its northern and southern coasts.
Such is my opinion in brief upon the possibilities of the development of industries and commerce.
That the commerce of the islands, now mainly British, will ultimately pass into American hands, can scarcely be doubted. They are not yet firmly seated in power, but their attitude to British and foreign firms is already sufficiently pronounced to allow an observant onlooker to make a forecast of what it will be later on.
Dominating Cuba, holding the Philippines, the Sandwich Islands and Porto Rico, the Americans will control the cane sugar trade, the tobacco trade, and the hemp trade, in addition to the vast branches of production they now hold in their hands.