To understand this table, suppose an agent in Manilla purchases a quantity of hemp for a merchant in London, at 5 dollars per pecul, the cost of packing, shipping, and the 5 per cent. commission for buying, &c., will make it cost, when put on board ship in Manilla Bay, 20l. 19s. 4d. per ton, if drawn for at the exchange of 4s. 6d. to the dollar. On its arrival at London, the freight, insurance, &c., added to this, will be its actual cost laid down there.
Tobacco.—The best tobacco produced in the Philippines is grown in the Island of Luzon or Luconia, where it is monopolized by the Government, to whom it furnishes an important revenue. From the province of Cagayan, where the greater part of it is grown, the best quality comes, and that leaf, being much stronger than any grown elsewhere, is generally used as the envelope to wrap round the inferior descriptions of tobacco employed in the manufacture of cheroots. Most of the other descriptions used for them come from the district of Gapan, in Pampanga province, and the two sorts combined are said to produce pleasanter cigars than either separately could do,—the Cagayan leaf being too strong to be used alone, and the Gapan leaf too mild for the ordinary taste.
In the mountains of Ylocos and Pangasinan, some of the native Indians inhabiting them grow quantities of tobacco, which they sell to the traders of the neighbourhood. In these mountains the Indians are still free, and retain their old pagan religion, unsubdued either by the Spanish soldiery, or by the more salutary and effective warfare waged against them by the priests, who labour assiduously to convert them to Christianity. Being mountaineers, and leading the unsettled and roving life of huntsmen, subsisting by the produce of the chase and the plaintain-tree, very little is known about them at Manilla beyond the fact of their existence, although the well-directed energies of several enthusiastic missionaries, who have as yet only found an entrance among them, are likely to civilize and ameliorate their condition somewhat, and to supply this information. Notwithstanding that the mounted police force, scattered over the country, are particularly attentive to hunt out all illicit growth of tobacco, and to put a stop to it by the severest punishments when it is discovered; they have not as yet been, nor in fact are likely to be, at all successful in doing so efficiently, so long as the Government continue to make the enormous profit they at present do from its sale, after it has been made by them into cheroots, or brought to Manilla and sold in the leaf for export. In Bisayas the quality of the leaf is so inferior in strength and appearance to that produced in Luzon, that the Government have not thought it worth while to appropriate the produce of the islands to themselves by a monopoly.
There are several extensive manufactories of cigars carried on by the Government at and near Manilla, the most extensive being in the capital, although those at Malabone and Cavite also employ a great number of people in rolling them up.
In making cheroots women only are employed, the number of those so engaged in the factory at Manilla being generally about 4000. Besides these, a large body of men are employed at another place in the composition of cigarillos, or small cigars, kept together by an envelope of white paper in place of tobacco; these being the description most smoked by the Indians.
The flavour of Manilla cheroots is peculiar to themselves, being quite different from that made of any other sort of tobacco; the greatest characteristic probably being its slightly soporific tendency, which has caused many persons, in the habit of using it, to imagine that opium is employed in the preparatory treatment of the tobacco, which, however, is not the case.
The cigars are made up by the hands of women in large rooms of the factory, each of them containing from 800 to 1000 souls. These are all seated, or squatted, Indian-like, on their haunches, upon the floor, round tables, at each of which there is an old woman presiding to keep the young ones in order, about a dozen of them being the complement of a table. All of them are supplied with a certain weight of tobacco, of the first, second, or third qualities used in composing a cigar, and are obliged to account for a proportionate number of cheroots, the weight and size of which are by these means kept equal.
As they use stones for beating out the leaf on the wooden tables, before which they are seated, the noise produced by them while making them up is deafening, and generally sufficient to make no one desirous of protracting a visit to the place. The workers are well recompensed by the Government, as very many of them earn from six to ten dollars a month for their labour, and as that amount is amply sufficient to provide them with all their comforts, and to leave a large balance for their expenses in dress, &c., they are seldom very constant labourers, and never enter the factory on Sundays, or, at least, on as great an annual number of feast-days as there are Sundays in a year.
During the years of 1848 and 49, the Government were not in the habit of selling leaf-tobacco for export, but they have again resumed the practice of 1847, which, however, is likely to be stopped soon again; how soon, it is impossible to say—probably just when the caprice of the director of tobacco inclines him, as he is an influential person, generally, in his own department.