In the Cigarillo manufactory about 2000 workmen find employment.
Here also there is felt in the workshops the same clammy, sultry atmosphere. A workman can make about 150 packages of 25 cigarettes, or 3750, per diem, for which he is paid four reals[95] (1s. 7d. English). Most extraordinary is the rapidity, bordering almost upon the magical, with which the cigarillos are counted, divided into packages, bound up, and stamped. The unpractised vision of the visitor is hardly able to follow the celerity of motion of the workman's hands and fingers.
Besides the two factories already mentioned, there is yet a third cigarillo manufactory in Cavite, which employs 4000, and a fourth in Malabon, employing 5000, workwomen. The quantities annually produced by these various manufactories amount to about 1,200,000,000 cigarillos. If we deduct the numerous holidays of the Church, on which no work is done, we shall find that about 5,000,000 must be made daily. Government buys up each year from the planters the entire crop of tobacco at a fixed price, and exports it partly in leaf, but for the most part in cigars, the right to manufacture which no one possesses but the Government. The monopoly of tobacco was, after great difficulties had been encountered, first introduced into the Philippines in 1787 by Don José Basco, the then Governor-general.
The greater part of the cigars are shipped to the East Indies, the islands of the Malay Archipelago, and North America, only a small quantity in proportion coming to Europe for sale.
The principal tobacco-growing districts of the island of Luzon are Cagayan and Bisayx, in which on an average 180,000 cwt. of tobacco are grown annually; of these about 80,000 cwt. are sent annually in the leaf to Spain, while the surplus are worked up into cigars in Luzon itself, sold at auction (al martillo) every month, and knocked down to the highest bidder. The average price is 8 to 10 dollars per 1000 Costados. There is but one species of tobacco grown in Manila, and the size of the leaf is the sole element that regulates the value. The Manila tobacco is a very strong narcotic; there is, notwithstanding the prevailing opinion in Europe, no opium mingled with it; one end being simply dipped in rice juice to glue it together. Indeed, the enormous cost of that liquid drug, which plays so important a part in the history of the Chinese empire, would alone prevent its being used. As cigars are greatly in request by both sexes in Manila, and it is necessary first to provide for the supply of the country itself, it occasionally happens that the stocks are not sufficiently large at once to supply all demands for exportation. Except during the public sales by auction, no one is permitted to buy of Government more than 1000 cigars at once, a regulation most vicious in principle and useless in practice, as persons who wish to possess larger quantities of cigars have simply to send round to any number of persons in the tobacco trade, in order to provide themselves with what they require. We ourselves experienced how any one, who was desirous of buying 45,000 cigars, sent 45 different
individuals to the bonded magazine, from which each brought 1000 cigars without any further interference.
Although altogether more tobacco is raised on the island of Luzon than in Cuba, yet the exportation from the former is far less in quantity, for the reason already commented upon, that a large portion of the tobacco so grown is consumed in the country itself. Luzon provides 1⁄10th, and Cuba 1⁄12th of the entire production of tobacco on the earth, which amounts to 4,000,000 cwt.[96] There are indeed two countries which produce a far
larger quantity of tobacco than either Luzon or Cuba,[97] but in no other country does the tobacco leaf attain such superior quality, owing to favourable climate and congenial soil, as in the Spanish possessions already named.
Another chief product of the Philippines, which first found its way into the markets of the world from these islands, is what is called Manila hemp. This, however, is not the common hemp plant (Cannabis sativa), but is procured from the fibres of