[Different usages in Bisayas and Mindanao.] In the Bisayas and in Mindanao everybody is allowed to manufacture cigars for his own particular use, though trade therein is strictly prohibited; and advances to the tobacco growers are also made there; while in Luzon and the neighboring islands the Government provides seed and seedling plants.  Here, however, no land which is adapted to the cultivation of tobacco is allowed to be used for any other purpose of agriculture.

[Crude system of grading.] As the Financial Administration is unable to classify the tobacco at its true value, as might be done were free competition permitted, they have adopted the expedient of determining the price by the size of the leaves; the care necessary to be bestowed upon the training of the plants in order to produce leaves of the required size being at least a guarantee of a certain amount of proper attention and handling, even if it be productive of no other direct good. [241]

[Burden knowingly increased.] It is well known at Madrid how the tobacco monopoly, by oppressing the wretched population, interferes with the prosperity of the colony; yet, to the present day, the Government measures have been so arranged as to exact a still larger gain from this very impolitic source of revenue.

["Killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”] A Government Order of January, 1866, directed the tobacco cultivation in the Philippines to be extended as much as possible, in order to satisfy the requirements of the colony, the mother country, and also the export trade; and in the memorial already quoted, “reforms” are proposed by the Captain-General, in the spirit of the goose with golden eggs.  By grafting new monopolies upon those already existing, he believes that the tobacco produce can be increased from 182,102 cwt. (average of the years 1860 to 1857) to 500,000, and even 800,000 cwt.  Meantime, with a view to obtaining increased prices, the Government resolved to export the tobacco themselves to the usual markets for sale; and in the year 1868 this resolution was really carried out.  It was sent to London, where it secured so favorable a market that it was at once decreed that no tobacco in Manila should thenceforth be sold at less than $25 per cwt. [242] This decree, however, referred only to the first three qualities, the quantity of which decreased in a relative measure with the increased pressure upon the population.  Even in the table annexed to the record of La Gandara this is very clearly shown.  Whilst the total produce for 1867 stood at 176,018 cwt. (not much under the average of the years 1860 to 1857, viz., 182,102 cwt.), the tobacco of the first class had decreased in quantity since 1862 from over 13,000 to less than 5,000 cwt.