“Of the coarser fibres, mats, cordage and sail-cloth are made. M. Duchesne states that the well-known fibrous manufactures of Manila have led to the manufacture of the fibres themselves, at Paris, into many articles of furniture and dress. Their brilliancy and strength give remarkable fitness for bonnets, tapestry, carpets, network, hammocks, etc. The only manufactured articles exported from the Philippine Islands, enumerated by Thomas de Comyn, Madrid, 1820 (translated by Walton), besides a few tanned buffalo-hides and skins, are 8,000 to 12,000 pieces of light sail-cloth and 200,000 lbs. of assorted Abacá cordage.”
Manila-hemp rope is very durable; it is equally applicable to cables and to shipsʼ standing and running rigging, but wanting in flexibility.[3]
Hemp-growing, with ample capital, appears to be the most lucrative and least troublesome of all agricultural enterprises in staple export produce in the Colony, whilst it is quite independent of the seasons. The plant is neither affected by disease nor do insects attack it, and the only ordinary risks appear to be hurricanes, drought, insufficient weeding, and the ravages of the wild boar.
Planted in virgin soil, each shoot occupies, at first, a space of 20 English square feet. In the course of time, this regularity of distribution disappears as the original plant is felled and the suckers come up anywhere, spontaneously, from its root. The plant requires three years to arrive at cutting maturity, or four years if raised from the seed; most planters, however, transplant the six-month suckers, instead of the seed, when forming a new plantation. The stem should be cut for fibre-drawing at the flowering maturity; in no case should it be allowed to bear fruit, as the fibre is thereby weakened, and there is sometimes even a waste of material in the drawing, as the accumulation of fibre with the sap at the knife is greater.
The average weight of dry fibre extracted from one plant equals 10 ounces, or say 2 per cent, of the total weight of the stem and petioles; but as in practice there is a certain loss of petioles, by cutting out of maturity, whilst others are allowed to rot through negligence, the average output from a carefully-managed estate does not exceed 3–60 cwt. per acre, or say 4 piculs per caban of land.
The length of the bast, ready for manipulation at the knife, averages in Albay 6 feet 6 inches.
The weight of moisture in the wet fibre, immediately it is drawn from the bast, averages 56 per cent. To sun-dry the fibre thoroughly, an exposure of five hours is necessary.
The first petioles forming the outer covering, and the slender central stem itself around which they cluster, are thrown away. Due to the inefficient method of fibre-drawing, or rather the want of mechanical appliances to effect the same, the waste of fibre probably amounts to as much as 30 per cent. of the whole contained in the bast.
In sugar-cane planting, the poorer the soil is the wider the cane is planted, whilst the hemp-plant is set out at greater space on virgin land than on old, worked land, the reason being that the hemp-plant in rich soil throws out a great number of shoots from the same root, which require nourishment and serve for replanting. If space were not left for their development, the main stem would flower before it had reached its full height and circumference, whereas sugar-cane is purposely choked in virgin soil to check its running too high and dispersing the saccharine matter whilst becoming ligneous.
A great advantage to the colonist, in starting hemp-growing in virgin forest-land, consists in the clearance requiring to be only partial, whilst newly opened up land is preferable, as on it the young plants will sometimes throw up as many as thirty suckers. The largest forest-trees are intentionally left to shade the plants and young shoots, so that only light rooting is imperatively necessary. In cane-planting, quite the reverse is the case, ploughing and sunshine being needful.