Note 8 — Suggestions on the Use of Colors in Mats.

If the industry is to be preserved intact, however, something must be done to give it vitality, for the weavers know from experience of neighboring towns that more money can be made from weaving hats than in the fabrication of mats, and they will naturally change to the more remunerative article. Unlike most other weaving industries, the craft has not as yet been organized in Tanay. The production of mats has been more or less haphazard, with but little supervision by any person resembling the broker usually connected with household industries. The weaver on completing a mat sells it in the market or to some storekeeper. Up to the present time, the chief trade in these mats has been at Antipolo in May during the “romeria” or annual pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Antipolo. Certain persons in Tanay have made it a practice to gather up a store of mats and take them to Antipolo for sale there during the fiesta. A few of them are on sale in Manila and in neighboring provinces. Of late, however, persons have appeared who are taking up the industry more thoroughly as brokers and it is to be hoped that the workers will be organized into some better system for production than now exists. There is a large opportunity not only for supervision but also for division of labor. At present the men of the house cut the leaves, and each weaver (all the weavers are women) carries out the rest of the process. There would be a considerable saving of time if certain persons devoted themselves to the preparation of the gray straw, and the dyeing were left entirely to certain other workers. In this way the weavers of the mats would be engaged only in the actual fabrication of the article and much time would be saved to them.8