The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-10-28
|SISAL HEMP IS MAKING
MILLIONS FOR YUCAT TAN
Not an Acre of SisaI Land is for Sale in the
Whole Country---Few Planters Know How
Much Money They Have.

which henequln can be grown is under
cultivation. AS a matter of fact only
one-tenth actually is, for the reason that
there IS not labor enough to clear it and
work the plantations already established.
To keep the laborers the planters
resort to methods that would be a revel-
/ ation even in the United States, the
happiest home of the workingman. If
a planter has three hundred laborers
he will not only provide them with
homes adjacent to his hacienda but he
/ will provide doctor, priest, a church,
clothes, food, tools garden seeds, import
ed delicacies and liquors. He will give
his people holiday three day out of
the week in order to get them to work
the other four, and on one of the planta-
tions | visited, owned bv the famous
| Escalante family beautiful little stone
houses were arranged for each family
and every house had FIVE foot
square tiled bath with running water
from an artesian WE'LL The Maya and
mestiza love their daily bath and clean
clothes after work
When it is desired to plant field of
henequin a stretch of the bush grown
country is selected MAYA laborers cut
off the brush, burn it, scatter the heaps
of Nstone and then insert cuts from
henequin plants in a handful ~of soil
between two rocks. Five years later the
planter can begin cutting off big, hbrous
leaves, some of them worth Mexican
dollar each almost, and his plant pro-
duces till it IS we'll along toward thirty
years old, all the attention it has needed
in the meantime being a little hoeing
once year. Some planters do not even
do that.
PREPARING THE LEAVES.
The leaves when cut off are carried to
the ends of the rows of plants and laid
on little cars, which are pulled by mules
along miniature railway tracks to the
hacienda or plantation headquarters,
where the planters home, the cleaning
mills, the church and village for the
Iaborers are clustered Sometimes the
field is three miles from the cleaning
mill.
The leaves having been trimmed of
the thorns along the side and having
butts and tips chopped off with hooked
knife. are fed to machine which carries
them over drum with sharp knives
that strip out the soft, heshy pulp from
the fires, taking first one and then the
other, and then depositing the leaf in
the form of long hank of fibre at the
other end. A Maya takes it off and
lays it on a pole, which is carried out
into the sun to dry When it is dry
it is baled and hauled on little tra1ncars
sometimes fifteen or twenty miles, to
railroad Most plantations are able to
deliver their hemp at Progreso for two
cents a pound or less, so that when
hemp is selling at ten cents pound
they are making 400 per cent year.
OF the wealth of the country no fair
estimate can be given, for few of the
planters know how much money they
have. Not many of them are even of
any education or worldly experience and
their business methods are very funny.
| could name one of the largest houses
in Merida which has not struck a bal
ance on its books in four years. The
head of the house knew that at that time
he had 10000, 900 Mexican in his safe,
and since then he has taken out over
100000, and he told me what was
left was a bigger pile than he had taken
out, so that he knew he was alright
He does not expect to worry about such
things as balances, surplus. undivided
profits and unemployed capital SO long
as the price of fenequin keeps up-and
there is not hundred square feet of
henequin land for sale in Yucatan. The
who have tried to break il"
Another big planter sent his family,
only two members of which had ever
been out of the country before, to New
York and the Continent to have good
time Before the family left he gave
the eldest son 100000 in French
securities as expense money. The old
gentleman had not the faintest idea what
the trip would cost and did not care l
saw pair of Kentucky horses sold on
the streets of Merida for $500 in gold.
l happen to know they cost the dealer
Just $500 in Lexington.
In the houses of the wealthy in Meri
da it is amusing as we'll as pathetic to
see the old provincial Spanish system of
household affairs, in which the woman
is subservient to the last degree and the
interior of the house devoid of mobiliary
ornamentation, combating the American
modern idea, which means folding beds,
automatically played pianos, straight
front corsets, appalling wall papers, car
pets. bird's-eye maple dressing tables
set in the parlor, and SO on. Henequin
has done it ALL