The History of Cuba Volume V Part 16

Tobacco was grown at that time in nearly all parts of the Island. Rumor soon circulated, however, that the best weed was grown only in the extreme western end of Cuba, known today as the Vuelta Abajo, or down turn, and the report proved true, since only in Pinar del Rio is grown the superior quality of leaf that has made that section famous throughout the world. Neither has careful study or a.n.a.lysis of soils betrayed the secret of this superiority over tobacco grown in other parts of the Island.

The choice tobaccos of the Vuelta Abajo are grown in a restricted section of which the City of Pinar del Rio is the approximate center.

The whole area of the Vuelta will not exceed thirty miles from east to west, nor is it more than ten miles from north to south. And even in this favored district, the really choice tobacco is grown in little "vegas," or fields, comprising usually a small oasis from three to fifteen acres in extent, in which a very high grade of tobacco may be grown, while adjoining lands, similar in appearance, but lacking in the one magic quality which produces the desired aroma and flavor, are largely wanting. The prices obtained for the tobacco grown on these favored "vegas" seem almost incredible. A bale of this tobacco, weighing between 80 and 90 pounds, will readily sell at from $100 to $500.

When one considers that with the use of cheese cloth as a protection from cut worms, from eight to twelve bales are taken from an acre, valued at $200 each, which means a return of approximately $2,000 per acre for each crop, the importance of the tobacco crop in Vuelta Abajo may be appreciated.

The value of an acre of any land that will return $2,000 annually to the grower, at 10% interest on invested capital, would be $20,000. It is needless to state that this price for tobacco lands, even in Vuelta Abajo, does not prevail. It is nevertheless true, that many first-cla.s.s vegas of tobacco are held at prices that place them practically beyond the reach of purchase.

In spite of the undoubted profits of tobacco growing in Cuba, the condition of the "veguero," as far as financial prosperity is concerned, is far from enviable. As a rule, while knowing how to grow tobacco, he does not know, nor does he care to learn, how to grow anything else. All of his energy and time are devoted to the seed bed, the transplanting, the cultivation, cutting, and curing of the leaf. He seldom owns the soil on which the crop is grown, and usually prefers to be a "Partidario" or grower of tobacco on shares with the owner.

The owner furnishes the land, the seed, the working animals and what is more important still, credit at the nearest grocery or general store, on which the family lives during the entire year, and for which the interest paid in one form or another const.i.tutes a burden from which the "veguero" seldom escapes. The latter furnishes the labor, time, care and knowledge necessary to bring the crop to a successful termination.

When the tobacco is sold, the "veguero" receives his part of the returns, pays his bills, and usually invests the remainder in lottery tickets and fighting chickens.

The life of the tobacco plant, from transplanting to the time in which it is due and removed from the fields, is only about ninety days. The selected seed is sown in land on which brush or leaves have been previously burned, destroying injurious insect life, while furnis.h.i.+ng the required potash to the soil. The seed beds are known as "semilleros"

and are carefully tended until the plants are five or six inches in height, when they are removed and carried to the "vega," previously prepared with an abundance of stable manure or other fertilizer, well rotted and plowed in. In three months' time, with care and careful cultivation, a crop will be ready for cutting and curing.

The semilleros are prepared usually during the latter part of September, or early October, when the fall showers are still plentiful. By the first of January, if the plants have had sufficient growth and the weather is cool, clear and dry, the leaves are cut in pairs, either united to the stalk or connected by needle and heavy thread, and afterwards strung over a bamboo or light pole known as a "cuje."

To each "cuje" are a.s.signed two hundred and twenty pairs of leaves.

These are carried to the tobacco barns, with sides built usually of rough board slabs, above which is a tall sharp roof, made from the leaves of the guana palm. Only one or two openings are placed in each tobacco barn to admit the required amount of air, while the tobacco, still supported on poles, goes through a process of curing, which the experienced "veguero" watches with care.

At the proper time the crop is removed from the poles and done up in "mantules" or bundles, which are afterwards delivered to the "escogidos," where tobacco experts select and grade the leaves in accordance with their size and condition. After this they are baled and incased in "yagua," a name given to the broad, tough base of the royal palm leaves, and sent to Havana or other central mart for sale. Tobacco buyers from all over the world come to Havana every fall to purchase their supplies of raw material for manufacture into cigars and cigarettes.

Excellent tobacco is grown also in the Valley of Vinales, and may be successfully cultivated in nearly all of the valleys, pockets and basins that lie in the mountains of Western and Northern Pinar del Rio. This tobacco as a rule is graded in quality and price a little below that of the choice Vuelta Abajo center.

Along the line of the Western Railroad, extending east from Consolacion del Sur to Artemisa, tobacco is also grown on the rolling lands and among the foothills that lie between the railroad and the southern edge of the Organ Mountains. This section, some fifty miles in length, with an average width of five or six miles, in which tobacco forms quite an important product, is known as the Semi-Vuelta or Partido district. Its leaf, however, brings in the open market only about half the sum received for the Vuelta Abajo. Nevertheless, at all points in this section where irrigation is possible, the culture of tobacco, especially when grown under cheese cloth, is profitable.

Again, along the banks of several rivers south and east of the City of Pinar del Rio, especially along the Rio Hondo, a very good quality of tobacco is grown in the sandy lands rendered fertile by frequent overflow of these streams in the rainy season as they pa.s.s through the level lands of the southern plains.

The chief enemies of the tobacco plant are some five or six varieties of worms that cut and eat the leaves. The larvae are hatched from the eggs of different kinds of moths that hover over the tobacco fields at night. Some are hatched from egg deposits on the plant itself, and at once begin eating the leaf, while others enter the ground during the day, coming out during the evening to feed, and no field unless protected by cheese cloth, or carefully watched by the patient veguero, can escape serious damage or complete destruction from these enemies of tobacco. It is a common thing at sundown to see the father, mother and all members of the family big enough to walk, down on hands and knees, hunting and killing tobacco worms. On bright moonlight nights, the worm hunt is carried on a.s.siduously, and in the early hours of dawn the veguero and his family, if the crop is to be a success, must be up like the early bird and after the worm, otherwise there will be nothing to sell at the end of the season.

Even with the greatest care, the worms will take a pretty heavy toll out of almost any field, and to save this loss, the system of covering tobacco fields with cheese cloth was introduced into Cuba from the State of Florida, some twenty years ago. Posts, or comparatively slender poles, are planted through the field at regular intervals, usually sixteen feet apart. From the tops of these, galvanized wire is strung from pole to pole, in squares, while over this is spread a specially manufactured cheese cloth or tobacco cloth, usually woven in strips of a width convenient to fit the distance between the poles. The seams are caught together with sail needles and cord, making a complete canopy that not only covers the field but has side walls dropping from the white roof to the ground below. Screen doors or gates are built in the side walls, so that mules with cultivators may pa.s.s through and work under these great white canopies, which protect the growing plants from the cut worm and save the poor old veguero and his family from the bane of their lives. The cost of poles, wire and covering cloth, under normal conditions, is about $300 per acre, and when to this are added several carloads of manure or other fertilizer, the expense of covering, fertilizing, cultivating and caring for an acre of tobacco will easily reach $500, whence the deduction that tobacco crops must bring a good price in Cuba is evident.

As a result of these huge tent-like canopies, that frequently cover hundreds of acres, every leaf is perfect, and if of sufficient size and fineness, may be used as a wrapper. When one takes into consideration the fact that a "cuje," or 220 pairs of leaves strung on a pole, is worth from $4 to $5, and that the same leaves when perforated by worms, can be used only as cigar fillers, worth from 75 to $1.35 per "cuje,"

the advantage of cheese cloth covering to a tobacco field becomes evident. Owing to lack of capital, however, the small native farmer usually is compelled to do without cheese cloth, and to rely upon the laborious efforts of himself and his family, to keep the worm pest from absolutely ruining his crop.

The tobacco industry at the present time commercially ranks next to sugar. The total value of the crop in 1917 approximated $50,000,000, of which $30,000,000 was exported to foreign countries. Of the exportations of that year, the largest item consisted of the leaf itself, packed in bales numbering 291,618, valued at $19,169,455; cigars, 111,909,685 valued at $9,548,933; cigarettes, 12,047,530 packages, valued at $406,208; picadura or smoking tobacco, 261,461 kilos, valued at $251,874. There were 258,994,800 cigars during the same year consumed in Cuba, with an approximate value of $12,000,000; of cigarettes, 355,942,855 packages, valued at $7,830,742; and of picadura, 393,833 pounds valued at $196,719. During the four years inclusive from 1913 to 1917 the value of exported tobacco increased a little over $6,000,000, while domestic consumption increased about one-half or $3,000,000.

In the various factories of cigars and cigarettes of Havana, some 18,000 men and 7,000 women are employed. In other sections of the Island, outside of the capital, some 16,000 men and 13,000 women are engaged in the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes, making a total of 34,000 men and 20,000 women employed in the tobacco industry, aside from those who are engaged in tobacco cultivation in the fields of the various provinces.

CHAPTER XVII

HENEQUEN

Next to the "Manila hemp" of the Philippines, which is really a variety of the banana, the henequen of Yucatan is probably the most important cordage plant in the world. The name henequen is of Aztec origin, and the plant itself, a variety of the agave or century plant family, is indigenous to Yucatan, whence it has been introduced not only into other sections of Mexico but also into Cuba, Central America and the west coast of South America. No satisfactory subst.i.tute has been found for henequen in the manufacturing of binder twine, so essential to the harvesting of the big grain crops in the Western States of America.

Revolutions in Mexico following the overthrow of Porfirio Diaz succeeded for a time at least in paralyzing if not destroying the sisal industry that had made Yucatan celebrated throughout the world and had caused Merida to be known as a city of millionaires; and shortly before the beginning of the great European War, men who had devoted their lives to henequen culture and who feared that Mexico could no longer be relied on for this product, began to look over the Cuban field for opportunity for the more extensive cultivation of the plant.

A superficial survey convinced them that large areas of soft lime rock land, covered with a thin layer of rich red soil, furnis.h.i.+ng all the elements essential to the successful growth of henequen, were to be had in Cuba. Similar soils are found in Yucatan, where the average annual rainfall and general climatic conditions are so nearly like those of Cuba that it is fairly to be a.s.sumed that a crop which will do well in the one land will also flourish in the other. In consequence, large areas, in which Cuban, Spanish and American capitalists are interested, have been planted with henequen in Cuba.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GOMEZ BUILDING

One of the finest business buildings in Havana is the great Gomez Building, which occupies an entire block fronting upon the beautiful Central Park and reached by way of the Prado. Although only five stories in height, it vies in appearance and commodiousness with the best business buildings in any American city. Its site was well chosen for the display of its handsome architecture and commanding proportions, and it stands in proximity to the National Theatre and other noteworthy structures.]

The first planting on a large scale was done by the Carranza Brothers, of Havana, just south of the city of Matanzas, about twenty years ago; Don Luis Carranza having married a daughter of Don Olegario Molino, of Yucatan, and thus having become interested in the characteristic industry of the latter country. A company of Germans afterward purchased the property and close by the railroad station erected a very complete plant for the decortication of the henequen and the manufacture of its fibre into rope and cordage of all sizes, from binder twine to twelve-inch cables. From this establishment for years the Cuban demand was chiefly supplied.

Shortly after Cuba, in 1917, followed the United States in declaring war against Germany, the Spanish Bank of Havana purchased this property from the owners, and at once increased its capital stock to six millions of dollars; two and a half million preferred and three and a half million common stock. At the present time the estate consists of three plantations on which henequen is grown, located at Matanzas, Ytabo and Nuevitas, with a total area of 120 caballerias or 4,000 acres of land.

It is said that owing to the demands of the European War, and the rise of the price from 7 to 19-1/2 per pound, the net returns of the Matanzas Cordage Company the first year after purchasing the estate amounted to $800,000.

The International Harvester Company of the United States has purchased a tract of 3,300 acres of excellent henequen land near the city of Cardenas, on the north coast of the province of Matanzas, for experiment and demonstration, and under the direction of Yucatecos familiar with the industry has planted it in henequen. This action was taken by this company largely because of the uncertain and unsatisfactory conditions of the henequen industry in Yucatan, caused by Mexican revolutions and the arbitrary conduct of Mexican officials. In the year 1916, 444,400,000 pounds of henequen were exported from the Gulf ports of Mexico and sold almost entirely in the United States, at 15 per pound, since which time the price has risen to 19-1/2 per pound. This unprecedented figure was brought about by the practical seizure of the Yucatan crop by ex-Governor Alvarado, who allowed the actual growers only 7 per pound for the sisal, he appropriating the difference between that and the market price in New York.

Twenty more caballerias or 666 acres of henequen are owned by independent parties in the neighborhood of Nuevitas, on the north coast of the Province of Camaguey. The Director-General of Posts and Telegraph, Colonel Charles Hernandez, with a few a.s.sociates, has purchased 175,000 acres along the southern sh.o.r.e of the Little Zapata, that forms the extreme western end of Pinar del Rio. It is proposed to establish here large plantations of henequen, that will give employment to many natives of the tobacco district who are now out of work during some seasons of the year.

The City of Cardenas, on the north coast, promises soon to become another great henequen center, and the traveler riding west over the main automobile drive leading out of Cardenas may view a panorama of growing henequen spread out on both sides of the road as far as the eye can reach. The peculiar bluish green of this plant growth, dotted with royal palms, adds an odd color effect to the landscape, not easily forgotten.

Putting the maximum annual production of henequen or sisal hemp in Yucatan at 1,200,000 bales, of 400 pounds to the bale, and a.s.suming an average yield of three bales per acre, indicates that about 400,000 acres of land are actually producing hemp in that country; and allowing for a margin of twenty five per cent of such area, to cover and provide for depletion and propagation, it would seem that about 500,000 acres of land is the approximate area now actually planted with and growing henequen on that peninsula. These statements are made to justify the calling of attention to the fact that large areas of more or less flat, rocky lands exist in various localities throughout the island of Cuba, notably in the western extremity of the Province of Pinar del Rio, along the north coast from the city of Matanzas to the Bahia de Cardenas, on the Cayos and, at intervals, along the north coast from Caibarien to the Bay of Nipe, and especially along the Caribbean Coast, in the vicinity of the Cienaga de Zapata; all of which lands are possessed of the same physical characteristics, and are subject to the same climatic conditions that apply to the lands in Yucatan now planted with henequen and at the present time successfully producing sisal hemp. The aggregate of these several areas of henequen lands is conservatively estimated at not less than 1,000,000 acres: or double the area now planted with henequen in Yucatan.

About 9,000 acres of these Cuban lands are now actually planted with and successfully growing henequen; and about 5,000 acres are now producing sisal hemp which in quant.i.ty and quality compares favorably with the product of the best henequen lands in Yucatan. The results obtained from these lands now actually planted and producing are conclusive as to the results that could be obtained if other and larger areas of such lands should be planted with henequen.

Furthermore a large part of these Cuban henequen lands are so level and have such uniform, unbroken surfaces that, at an expense less than that involved in preparing the henequen lands of Yucatan, they could be put in condition to be kept clean mainly by motor-driven mowing machinery, instead of the enormously expensive man-power machete system employed upon the rougher lands of Yucatan. In addition to such advantages these rocky areas either comprise, or are margined by, large areas of rich land capable of producing many important items required for human sustenance; while in Yucatan everything needed to sustain human life has to be imported.

Finally, when consideration is given to the fact that sugar cane must be cut during the dry season, while henequen can be cut and defibered more advantageously during the wet season, it will readily be seen that the co-ordination of these two operations, whenever possible, will tend to solve and favorably determine the problem and cost of labor involved in the production of both sugar and hemp. Administration expenses would also be reduced by such co-ordination. These several advantages should, therefore, contribute to make Cuba an active compet.i.tor with Yucatan for the sisal hemp business, within the near future. The plan projected by R. G. Ward for the drainage and development of the lands contained in the Cienaga de Zapata, already mentioned in a preceding chapter of this volume, contemplates the co-ordination of the sugar and hemp industries upon a scale so large and comprehensive as to merit great success. The consummation of such an enterprise should make a definitely favorable and permanent impression upon the future of the two industries involved.

With a proper combination of capital and enterprise, the henequen-hemp business in Cuba could readily be developed to a point where it would rank second only to sugar in importance and profit yielding possibilities; and such development should have a direct bearing upon the certainty of supply and cost of the daily bread of the people of the whole earth. It is, therefore, worthy of the most serious consideration.

Henequen offers many advantages to capital, especially to those investors who dislike to take chances on returns. First of all, the crop is absolutely sure, if planted on the right soil. Lack of rains or long droughts are matters of no importance, and the plant will continue to thrive and grow without deterioration in the quality of fiber. In Cuba this growth is said to average one inch on each leaf per month, and since it grows, as an old expert expressed it, "both day and night, rain or s.h.i.+ne, even on Sundays and feast days, there is nothing to worry about." Also it has practically no enemies. Cattle will not eat it unless driven by starvation, which could not occur in Cuba. The crop is never stolen, as the product could not be sold in small quant.i.ties.

Since the plant is grown on rocky lands, the leaves may be cut and conveyed to the decortication plant at any season of the year.

The life of the henequen plant is fifteen to twenty years, and the average yield in Cuba is said to be about 70 pounds of fiber to every 1,000 leaves, and over 100 pounds are said to have been secured in favorable localities. This compares well with the average yield in Yucatan. In this connection it may be noted that at the World's Exhibition in Buffalo, sisal hemp made from henequen in Cuba won the world medal in compet.i.tion with Yucatan and other countries.

The following is an authentic estimate of the cost of growing henequen and producing sisal or fibre from the same in Cuba. One hundred acres are used as the unit of measure:

Cost of 100,000 plants @ $40 per M $ 4,000 Cost of preparing land 1,000 Cost of planting @ $5 per M 500 Cost of caring for and cultivation during four years 2,500 ------ $8,000 Cost of cutting, conveying, decortication and baling 4,000 ------- $12,000

The returns from the first cutting four years after planting should be: 100,000 plants with 30 leaves to the plant yield, 3,000,000 leaves 3,000,000 leaves (60 lbs. fiber each 1000 leaves) 210,000 lbs. @ 10 per lb $21,000

Cost of production 12,000 ------- Net profit per 100 acres $9,000 ------- Net profit per acre $90

Practical work in the field has demonstrated the fact that the cost of producing henequen fibre or sisal, if carried on during a period of ten years with the present price of labor, will amount to three cents per pound, or $6,300 for the production of 210,000 pounds of fibre coming from 100 acres of land. To this may be added for interest on capital invested and possible depreciation of plant or property, $1,700, making a total of $8,000.

This sum, representing the average annual cost of producing, subtracted from $21,000, the normal value of the crop at 10 per pound, will leave a net return of $13,000 for the 100 acres, or $130 net profit per acre.

CHAPTER XVIII