A native of California, USA, Edward E. Christensen arrived as a school teacher in the Philippines in 1901. His first station was in Kalibo, Aklan before joining the forestry service for a year. After this, he went home to rest and later pursued his passion for teaching.
Adjacent to the estate was his own land, the 953-hectare Christensen Plantation Compa-ny, which was exclusively cultivated by Cebuanos recruited from Cebu and paid P1.10 in the daily minimum wage. Christensen knew the obligation of treating his laborers well, fearful that unfair practices would force them to abandon their jobs and seek employment in nearby plantations.
On the other hand, Christensen Plantation Company’s shareholders, aside from the ma-jority stockholder, were Gates L. Spalding, a teacher from Kansas who taught in the islands; Federico Aznar, plantation manager of MEC under Christensen’s supervision; and Manuel Aznar, the manager of Christensen’s estate. It has an authorized capital is P100,000.
“[The farmhands] are paid by the day and found, so that the average minimum wage works out about P1.10 and the highest, for field foremen, about P2.00. Hemp is stripped with the Universal hemp machine… The husking of coconuts preparatory to drying the meat into copra is the only labor left to contract. This wage labor is found quite satisfactory; it has been the direct stimulus to very extensive homesteading by Cebuanos in the Padada district.