RUBBER 45i 



At present the cost of production of Para rubber is 72 cents, includ- 

 ing the export tax, which amounts to 24 cents. This high cost is partly 

 due to the cost of living, partly to difficult transportation, partly to 

 scarce labor and inefficient methods of gathering the rubber. Mr. Akers 

 recommends the importation of 50,000 Chinese coolies, the employment 

 of a number of Malayan planters to instruct the collectors in the best 

 methods of tapping, and the abolition or, at all events, reduction of the 

 export tax. The Brazilian government has given a large sum of money 

 to improve navigation on the Amazon and to provide premiums for the 

 construction of rubber factories and refineries, engaging to buy from 

 these refineries all the rubber required for the army and navy. They 

 doubtless feel chary about reducing the export tax, as it is a great, if 

 not even the greatest, source of revenue. 



The future of the rubber industry causes anxiety not only to the 

 Amazon district and those interested in it, but to the thousands of stock- 

 holders in eastern plantations. The great demand for rubber for auto- 

 mobile tires caused a boom and, according to The Economist, £40,000,- 

 000 was invested in boom prices "whose only justification is the few 

 years of grace before the supply surpasses the demand." On September 

 20, last, the same paper remarks : 



The collapse of the rubber boom is one cause for the lack of business in 

 the Stock Exchange. Hundreds of thousands of pounds poured into the planta- 

 tion rubber industry by the British public are represented by huge stocks of 

 certificates, the depreciation on which, reckoned from the price at which the public 

 got them, will serve as a painful lesson till the next boom, from whatever quar- 

 ter it may spring up, comes along. 



A large meeting of the leading people in the rubber world was held 

 in London on October 23, and stocks went up just before the meeting, 

 only to fall when it was learned that no solution of the difficulty could be 

 found. The cost of bringing an estate into bearing condition is between 

 twenty and thirty pounds an acre, and The Economist estimates over 

 seven hundred thousand acres in the East capitalized at from £54 to 

 £76 an acre. 



It will not pay to produce rubber to sell in the world's markets at 

 two shillings a pound, unless the cost of production can be reduced. In 

 some very favored estates, in Ceylon, the cost is only sixpence a pound 

 and, when all the trees are yielding, the average cost may be 8d, though 

 in 1911 it was Is. 4d. Mr. Akers considers that in Java the cost will not 

 go below Is. 2d. for several years. In Ceylon labor is more easily ob- 

 tainable than in the Malay States and Java. In the Malay States a good 

 deal of the labor is done by coolies from southern India along with some 

 Chinese. An economic question arising here is the relative value of 

 indentured and unindentured labor. 



The artificial production of rubber is not yet a matter of commercial 



