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a thousand ideas to be elaborated, proposals affecting whole coun- 

 tries and a vast and many-sided industry to be discussed and de- 

 cided upon. The correspondence and the interviews, which are 

 the essential preliminaries, in themselves call for stupendous 

 effort; the allotment of space demands mathematical precision, 

 and that in its turn must be supplemented by the spirit of the 

 artist if the result is to be anything more than a heterogeneous 

 collection of items large or small. Run one's eye over the Ad- 

 visory Committee, and when one realizes that there is not a name 

 in the list which is not there by written authority, one may well 

 understand that even this trial-canter is no mean accomplishment. 

 Beside the preparatory work the final metamorphosis of the venue 

 of the Exhibition, whether it be in the Agricultural Hall in Isling- 

 ton or the New Grand Central Palace in New York, is a detail. 

 Yet what a detail ! A week before the Rubber Exhibition was 

 opened in New York, floors were bare, spaces were unoccupied; 

 on the opening day floors and spaces had been filled with heavy 

 machinery, or tons of rubber, or stands which represented big 

 concerns ; it all seemed to spring into existence by magic, and 

 when the closing hour struck, by magic again it disappeared. The 

 magic was just that of the organizing brain, which mapped out 

 everything months in advance. 



So here we are again with another International Rubber Exhi- 

 bition in full preparation. The 1914 Exhibition bids fair to 

 eclipse its predecessors in every respect, and its interest and im- 

 portance v/ill be augmented by its joint character — the tropical 

 products other than rubber making the appeal doubly strong. The 

 day has long since gone by when there can be any question as 

 to the effect exhibitions have on business. They are an education 

 in that they bring people interested into direct touch with the latest 

 developments of the industry. They give people who would never 

 otherwise come together opportunities of exchanging ideas, and 

 for years after the exhibition its influence is felt in ways which 

 it is not always easy to trace to the proper source. In New York, 

 among the things that impressed one most was the surprise of 

 certain American firms who had not exhibited before at the 

 amount of direct business which had resulted. What the indirect 

 effects would l)e no one could predict, but they certainly would 

 1)e considerable. The 1912 Exhibition did in America what the 

 1908 Exhibition did in London; it brought i)lanter and mainifac- 

 turer and machinery maker for the first time into i)ersonal rela- 

 tionship, and that must affect the whole future of tlic industry. 

 The 1914 Exhibition should be the greatest of the scries l)ecause 

 exhibitors as well as organizers know better each time how to 

 make the most of opportunities. So far as one country at least 

 is concerned the event will be peculiarly opportune. .The Plant- 

 ers' Association of Ceylon will celebrate its Diamond Jubilee next 



