Abacá

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Excerpt from Abacá: Manila Hemp The fiber produced by the plant Musa textilis is known throughout the civilized world as hemp, manila, or manila hemp. This name "hemp" is misleading as, properly speaking, hemp is the fiber produced by the plant Cannabis sativa. The two fibers are quite different, manila hemp being a structural fiber obtained from the leaf sheath while true hemp is a bast fiber extracted from the inner bark of the stem. The name "abaca" is used in all parts of the Philippine Archipelago to designate both the plant, Musa textilis, and the fiber, manila hemp. Abaca enjoys the unique distinction of being strictly a Philippine product. The plant has been introduced into India, Borneo, the West Indies, and other parts of the tropical world, but only in the Philippine Islands has the fiber been successfully produced as an article of commerce. This fact has undoubtedly been of great advantage to the Philippine planter. The lack of competition, however, has resulted in the continuance of obsolete methods of cultivation and fiber extraction, better suited to the eighteenth than to the twentieth century. The opportunities for increasing the production of abaca in the Philippines are almost unlimited. Enormous areas of land suitable for abacá cultivation are as yet untouched, while the greater part of the land already under cultivation might yield a greatly increased product if more careful attention were given to the various details of cultivation. The introduction of irrigation and drainage will greatly increase the output of abaca in the localities where it is under cultivation and will also make possible the planting of abaca in many districts where it is now unknown. The perfection of a machine for the extraction of the fiber will considerably increase the entire output by saving a part of the fiber that is now wasted by the hand-stripping process. In each successive step, from the first selection of the land to the final treatment of the fiber, the progressive planter should have as his ultimate object the production on a given area of a maximum quantity of superior fiber at a minimum cost. With the industry established and conducted on this basis, abaca will continue to hold its place as the most important export product of the Islands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.