The Inhabitants of the PhilippinesSawyer, Frederic H.
History
The Inhabitants of the Philippines
Sawyer, Frederic H.
Ethnology -- Philippines; Philippines -- Social life and customs
2 Labourers to cut cane at 25 cents and food .50 cents.
1 Carter at 25 cents and food .25
2 Mill attendants at 25 cents and food .50
Sugar boiler and fireman at 25 cents and food .75
1 Megass carrier at 25 cents and food .25
------
Mexican dollars 2.25
Or 25 cents per pilon.
Sugar Crop.
The land-owner pays the men's wages, and the cultivator gives them
three meals a day and cigars.
The sugar-moulds (pilones) cost about 12½ cents each, and the cost
is divided between the parties.
In making up the account, 6½ per cent. per annum is charged on the
value of the land, machinery and building.
The molasses which drains from the sugar belongs to the land-owner.
These pilones are supposed to contain 140 lbs. of sugar when
filled. They are placed upon a small pot to allow the molasses to drain
off. When delivered their weight may be from 112 to 120 lbs. according
to the time they have been draining. This sugar polarises about 80
per cent. according to circumstances and requires to be treated at
the farderias in Manila to bring it up to an even sample before it
is exported. The sugar loaves are cut up, sorted, crushed, mixed
with other sugars, sun-dried, and a certain quantity of sand added
before being put into bags for export as Manila Sugar, usually No. 7
or No. 9 Dutch standard. It will be seen from the above figures how
moderate the expenses are. Of course each land-owner has a number of
cultivators, and often a number of mills.
Notwithstanding the low price of sugar which has prevailed for many
years, the provinces of Pampanga has made money out of it as the
handsome houses of the land-owners in all their towns testify.
The sugar crop in Pampanga has never quite reached a million pilones,
but has exceeded nine hundred thousand, say from fifty to sixty
thousand English tons. The cane is crushed in small steam or cattle
mills having three horizontal rollers.
These mills are mostly made in Glasgow and have now in Pampanga
entirely superseded the Chinese mills with vertical rollers of granite
or the native mills with vertical rollers of hard wood. [26]
In former years I pointed out, in a report written for General
Jovellar, what a great advantage it would be to Pampanga if the
planters would abandon the use of pilones and make sugar suitable
for direct export and so obviate the manipulation in the farderias
at Manila.
They could make a sugar similar to that produced in Negros and known
as Ilo-ilo.
Now that the Philippines have passed into the hands of the United
States, I do not doubt that central sugar factories will be established
and will turn out centrifugal sugars polarizing 96 per cent. similar
to the Cuban sugar.
Pampangos as Fishermen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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