The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-10-28
The New York Herald says :;

The ancient Mayas of the Yucatan
peninsula revered and, worshipped the
henequin plant as miracle because It
was able to take root, maintain itself
and flourish on a pile of stones; the
modern Yucateco, whether Maya, mes
tia or creole, bows down to the ugly
growth with equal regard, for it has
! made Yucatan land of millionaires,
the richest State, per capita, in the
world. Even the plantation laborers
have made so much money that 1t IS
necessary to import labor constantly
from other States in order to fill the
places of those retiring upon conpeten-
cies. The trade with foreign countries,
in which Yucatan exchanges the gold
it gets for the henequin or sisal hemp
for some of the luxuries of life, has in
few years built up the tiny town of
Progreso from port of fortnightly call
by one steamer to busy place where
thirty steamers frequently lie in the off
ing unable to get to the docks.
n SllCdlll Vi SlSdi 1IOiAP PObAo ONtN ~
Yucatan, and torrent of pianos, cam
ned foods, automobiles, baby carriages,
books, pictures, carpets, statues, gaso-
lene stoves, street cars, monographs,
electric light plants, coal and a few of
the other conveniences of life rushes in
Henequin has done It all, has given
immense wealth to men not even able
to count it, has made a country in
brooks, rivers and lakes than there is
in the pipes in New York city the most
profitable agricultural site in the world.
The plant is first cousin of the aloe
or century plant and its popularity is
that its long, thick, feshy leaves are a
mass of hbres laid parallel like the
strings in celery, only much closer, and
these 6bres when extracted and dried
had and in many other ways supplant
Manila hemp.
The industry is not new one-in
fact the Custom House records show
that in 1860 the United States bought
1893 bales and in the year preceding
October I, 1903, 56o,2I2 bales of a value
of nearly eight cents pound. Baling
at an average of $50 pounds; that means
about $4,000, boo in gold, was paid to
the people of the barren peninsular
Mexican State.
Yucatan is practically cut off from
Mexico proper by mountains and wilder
ness around by the Isthmus of Tehuan-
tepec, and the people of Yucatan are
loath to consider themselves Mexicans
and are proud Of being Yucatecos, all
OF which causes trade conditions in
Yucatan to be very little affected by the
Mexican financial difficulties. In Yucca
tan nearly all business is on a gold basis.
1t was in 1881 that, the demands for
binder Irvine becoming larger through
the spread of the binding machine the
price of sisal shot up and the extension
of production followed as rapidly as
possible. In 1893 the upsetting of the
Manila hemp industries caused sisa1 to
be used for so many other purposes
that the price scared from three cents
W lSA, dlu SltidH Planters III uCdtdn
became millionaires in few months.
Since that time sisal hemp has held
its own in the market and a wonderful
transformation has been wrought where
it IS grown.
ONLY SUCCESSFUL CROP.
Though thousands of experirne1, ) have
been made in other sub-tropicaI soils
and with other fbrous plants, there has
been nothing found that will supplant
henequin and there is no place outside
of the peninsula where it will grow
satisfactorily.
When the great boom came American
capitalists. fastened to Yucatan to take
up big planting schemes, but were met
and bafled by logged determination
on the part of all landholders there not
to sell a foot of ground to outsiders.
Since all were prosperous there was no
way of forcing conclusions. and one
after the other large companies have
given up hopes of getting a chance to
grow the plant that makes millionaires.
Not that all the land in Yucatan on