Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1915-12-24
PROPERTIES IN PHILIPPINES,
FORMER HAWAII men OPERATING

ledu ana acIlVe manager OF "Glc0
Fairchild & Company, with headquar,
tiers in Manila His firm are agents
for San Carlos and the Mindoro Com.
pany, and he is also general manager
of the latter place. twice planned 10
go down there with him but had so
| much to do at San Carlos that | was
unable to make the trip.
II wanted to see the place in order
to draw comparisons between it and
San Carlos. and was disappointed that
| was unable to do so. -
/ Judging entirely by what I have
heard, Mindoro seems to consist of a
combination of the hardest problems
with perhaps the greatest possibilities
of any of the three large sugar COM
panies now operating in the Philip
pines They have to irrigate in the
| dry season and to- drain in the wet;
and they have no opportunity of oDer,
ating on a central basis while they
are finding out how to accomplish this
and putting their knowledge and ex-
perience into practise. ..... =.
| There are no established planta-
/ tons around there from which they
could get cane: in fact IL was wilder
ness when they commenced opera
| tons: and only those who have bad
the actual experience appreciate fully
the perils OF pioneering. The first
year had a very small crop. they dou-
| bled this the next year, and theoreti-
cally had doubled it again for the year
| Just past when swarm of locusts i'm
vaded the place and ate ND all but
enough to make about 1000 tons of
sugar. For 1916 hear that they have
good prospects for anywhere from
| 1000 to 5000 tons of sugar, and it looks
as though they are really going to get
it this time, as they are certainly en-
titled to. Y
"They have $1,000 acres in fee sim
pie, most of it good for either sugar
or rice. The rivers running through
the place have an average flow of 100,-
900, 1000 gallons daily, and the land
lies SO that gravity irrigation is eco
nomically possible. Mr.. Stodart, for
merly. of McBryde, was manager of
the plantation for year and a half
and made his mark by the construc-
ton of upwards of so miles ofsirriga-
ftion and drainage bitches and plant
ing over 100 acres of cane.
$500 Acres Next Year.
"They will harvest their 1916 crop
from $500 acres, and in addition to
this they have 1000 acres prepared and
ready for planting. Through carefully
conducted experiments and investiga-
lions they have discovered the roots
of most of their earlier troubles and
by scientific application of these re-
suits they have been able to overcome
the most serious obstacles, not the
least of which were tropical fevers
which caused very heavy losses of
life during the construction period.
"This estate is made up of some G.
the so-called friar lands that were
purchased by the government from re-
ligious orders of the Roman Catholic
church at the time of American occu-
patton; and was sold by the govern
ment to syndicate backed principally
by Messrs. WEIGH and Havemeyer of
New York. There was a great uproar
shortly afterwards followed by con-
gressional investigation about the sale
of SO large a tract of land in one
block 1t was backed entirely by rep
resentatives of one OF the beet sugar
states There seemed to be fear
that the sugar production of the Phil |
ippines would increase so rapidly as
to become a menace to the marketing
of the sugar raised in the United !
States proper. The sale was In the |
end confirmed; perhaps the owners
are now sorry that II was.
81 believe they have Invested IT. il
nearly $S,0o0,000 of cold cash, and the
largest crop they have taken off to
date is ahout 1900 tons of sugar It is |
true that they have now reached a
point where their prospects for max
ing good seem to be excellent, but il |
should be borne In mind that they |
have been at 1t for five or six years |
and when 1t is realized how fast com. |
poundinterest mounts up, 1t will be |
realized that they must henceforth do |
very we'll indeed to pay even modest |
returns on their capital invested if fig. |
ured from the beginning. .
Has Great Future. 49,.
"In the end, Mindoro will no doubt
be greater than either San Carlos or
Calamba, because its latent possibili-
ties are greater. Mr.. Fairchild's es-
pecial problems is to accomplish this
development in such way that the
pioneers will be the ones to profit by |
it, as they are entitled to, and as we
all hope that they will. 49, T.: j.:
"The plan that he was working on
when ] left Manila was to sell out
their lands suitable for cane and rice
to Filipino planters, who were then
to farm the lands, raising cane on
the areas suitable for that purpose,
and delivering it to the Mindoro mill
under milling contract, thus virtu-
ally turning it into a central mill
While / was there they
were doing "a land office business"
III every sense of the word, and by the
time left believe that they had dis
posed of all that they cared to sell
for the present. Many of the planters
making purchases were we'll known
people, some of them hav-
ing considerable means talked with
a number of them in Welch, Fairchild
& Company's office. They were en-
about the prospects at Min
doro. A few of them signed up con-
tracts for land without even making
a personal inspection of what they
were getting. Their friends and agents