The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1903-02-05
NEEDS OF THE FILlPIN0S
Some Peculiar Ones Described
by an American Official.
GREAT VALUE OF TIE OARABA0s

Brewster Cameron Says They Take
the Place of Horses, Cows, Oxen
and BEules-B1essing of the Discov-
cry Of Serum to Fight the Kinder
pest-The Locust ScOurge.
"There are some conditions which
are so widely different in the United
States and the Philippines that it is
hard for Americans to understand what
the Filipinos need and why they dc
one thing and fail to do another" said
Brewster Cameron to recent visitor,
speaking Of his mission from the united
chambers of commerce in the Philip
pines, writes the Washington CORE
spondent of the New York Evening
Post. eff an American in Washington
did not seem to be any way Of his re-
trieving it here, he would probably go
to Baltimore or Philadelphia or New
York and see what employment he
could get in one Of those cities. The
Filipino has no such resource. He is
son of the soil in country whose
sole interest is agricultural When ill
luck overtakes him on his plantation,
there he stays and plods away, making
the best Of a bad matter in the hope Of
retrieving himself. 1t would not enter
his mind to move away and try his
chances somewhere else.
''Then, too, our people have very lit
tie conception Of what the carabao is
to the Filipino. Here we use horse for
one purpose, a cow for another, an OK
for third and a mule for a fourth
perhaps. But the poor Filipino uses
his carabao for all these purposes COM
bined. He cannot pillow or harvest, he
cannot take his family on a journey.
he cannot carry his products to market,
he cannot have fresh milk for food,
when he loses his carabao. That is
what makes the rinderpest so dreadful
curse.
Il knew one company who owned
10000 acres of land and $4,000 head Of
carabao, and one visitation of the pest
swept the cattle all away, leaving the
land useless. The worst of neglected
piece of land in the Philippines is that,
with the rank growth of vegetation
there, it quickly grows up to jungle
and becomes uncultivatable and must
be cleared anew, at an expense perhaps
of $50 an acre, whenever it is to be
turned to agricultural uses once more.
This is one reason why there is so little
cause to fear that, if the limit of acre
age in a single holding be increased by
law, any one who acquires more land
viii let it lapse into jungle again-it
will be kept up as u mere matter Of
self protection, if nothing else, for it
will cost more to clear it than to keep
it clear.
THE rinderpest not only has been
terrible scourge in its first manifesto
lions, but is SO persistent that when
it has once smitten a herd Of carabao
it is impossible to put others upon the
same land for five years thereafter
without their falling victims too. That
is what made so striking the success
Of the experiments with the serum pre-
pared by the board of agriculture 4
herd of carabao inoculated with it and
ordered so be put into a certain virgin
pasture were turned loose by mistake
on land which had been thoroughly in
fected with the rinderpest by a herd
that had recently died there When
the error was discovered there was
great alarm. But to everybody's as
constituent and delight the newcomers
went through the ordeal unframed,
proving the effectiveness of the treat
ment they had received.
THAT twin plague, the locust, is some
thing of which the American who has
not seen it with his own eyes can have
no conception. One day | was writing
at desk with my back to the window,
when suddenly the apartment became
dark, as if it had been artifcially light
ed and some one had put the lamp out.
/ glanced around to discover what the
matter was, and found the sky and all
the landscape blotted out of view. !
looked, in fact, into solid cloudbank
of locusts. They formed a dense wall
between the house and the objects on
the other side of them. In place
where 1 saw them descend upon tree
they covered it SO that there was not
silver of the wood or foliage visible.
The next day every shred of LEAKAGE
was gone. The tree had been stripped
as clean as if scraped with a sharp
blade. That is the way they ruin the
products of the earth, and the discov-
cry of a fungus which, spread over the
ground where they have swarmed
heaps it with their dead bodies, is con-
sidered one of the greatest of boons
That and the rinderpest serum are
alone enough to justify all that the Taft
commission has done in organizing and
maintaining the bureau of animal in
dustry''