©doWNloaD. America and the Philippines PDF by Carl Crow

America and the Philippines

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter viii developing philippine industries Present conditions must change considerably before it will be necessary to revise the statement that the chief industry of the Philippines is agriculture. Inasmuch as the Philippines lie wholly in the tropics, with vast expanses of rich land to be developed, with hundreds of square miles of valuable forests untouched, it will be many years before any other industry can offer the money-making opportunities offered by field and forest. How small a part any industry other than agriculture plays in the commerce of the country may be judged by the fact that 95 per cent. of the total exports are made up of the four principal crops: copra, sugar, hemp, and tobacco. Of these the least important is tobacco, and it is the only one which is exported chiefly in a manufactured condition. Of the 78,000,000 acres of land in the Philippines, 26,000,000 acres, according to the most authoritative estimate, are covered by commercial forests and less than 4,000,000 acres are under cultivation. This leaves a total of nearly 50,000,000 acres, or about two thirds of the total area, as unoccupied and unproductive land. According to Dr. George E. Nesom, formerly Director of the Bureau of Agriculture: "This is, for the most part, covered with a growth of the perennial grass known as cogon, which reaches a height of about three feet in the rainy season and dies down and burns off in the dry season, thereby prohibiting the reforestation of the land by annually furnishing fuel for the destruction of any seedling trees which may have germinated on the land; a much smaller part of this area is covered with scrub brush, mangrove, and nipa swamps, barren rocky hills, and canons. Practically all of this land is public domain...