As an objective example, Rizal entered into a partnership with a certain Ramon Carreon, a merchant residing in Dapitan, and invested P1000 to engage in what many foreigners were doing - purchasing abaca and copra for the purpose of resale for profit. In another letter to Manuel Hidalgo, Rizal even asked his sister Saturnina to invest some money in Dapitan in order to augment that existing Philippine capital in that little town.
Carreon wished that Rizal could continue the partnership. But there was only one Rizal and the sick, the needy, called for hiss medical skill and advice. While he did not engage in business to make money, he knew that he could helped the copra makers, the abaca strippers, the ranchers, the fishermen, he would be doing great service to the community. .
He talked to the copra makers. He told them that if they harvested well-ripened coconuts, and dried them well, the copra that they made would command better prices. In a competitive market, their copra would be preferred.
In his trip through America, he noticed that in San Francisco, there was a ropewalked owned by Tubbs Cordage. The rope makers were using abaca, Manila hemp they called it, and was known to the European ship owners as the best ropes that could withstand salt water. Tubbs Cordage were buying abaca from the Philippines.
Again, local weavers preferred white, well-cleaned abaca fiber for the manufacture of camisas and other kinds of cloth. As Rizal watched the abaca strippers, he saw that they were using wooden knives. The wooden knives did not remove all the abaca stem from the fibers. How about making steel knives?.
If the steel knives were sharp, it would cut the fiber. But if properly experimented so that the knives would be sharp enough to remove the pulp from the fiber, but not too sharp to cut and break the fiber, the strippers would profit. And Rizal was able to present the strippers steel knives that helped them produce clean, first class abaca fiber, which commended better prices.
