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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[July i, 1907. 



Dunlop join iiaiul? with the automobile societies and even 

 strive to take the lead in seeking to develop tires which 

 shall embody all the virtues which the patent offices of 

 the world now show inventors to bo attempting to bring 

 into being. 



MEXICO AND CEYLON. 



THOSE of our friends who of late have been insti- 

 tuting comparisons between rubber planting con- 

 ditions in Mexico and Ceylon may form mistaken con- 

 clusions if they fail to consider certain facts involved. 

 We do not refer here so much to the difYerent species 

 under cultivation on the two sides of the globe, or to 

 the different products to be derived, as to certain other 

 general conditions, which are much more clearly under- 

 stood now than at an earlier date. 



The first rubber plantations in Ceylon were developed 

 as a side issue on tea or cacao estates, each on a small 

 scale, in connection with firmly established profit paying 

 businesses; If the rubber should fail no great loss was 

 incurred ; the tea profits would continue. When the 

 initial rubber propositions did prove successful, and prac- 

 tically all the tea planters concluded to go in for the 

 new crop, the same policy was pursued ; the tea or other 

 crops are being relied upon to pay dividends until the 

 rubber becomes productive. In many cases the rubber is 

 expected to prove only an additional dividend paying 

 crop, and the planting has been done, on many estates, 

 practically without cost, from the reserve funds of well- 

 established companies. 



\\"hat has been the case in ]\Ie.\ico? American in- 

 vestors, far removed from the sphere of action, unac- 

 quainted with the tropics in any respect, have purchased 

 government forest lands in advance of the opening of 

 railways ; their managers, who have required time to 

 become acclimated, to learn the laws and customs and 

 language of a foreign country, and to realize that plant- 

 ing there is different from what they have been accus- 

 tomed to many hundreds of miles to the north — these 

 men have undertaken to fell thousands of acres of primi- 

 tive forests, to create new centers of population, to 

 teach systematic industry to peons constitutionally ignor- 

 ant of it, and to create plantations without hope of re- 

 turn until the rubber shall come into bearing. Could 

 there be a wider difference than from the conditions 

 under which rubber planting was introduced in Ceylon? 



\\'e do not refer to the matter now by way of dis- 

 couragement. But the difference should be kept in mind 

 when results are compared. The shareholders in a Ceylon 

 tea companv whose rubber may have cost them nothing 

 to date are elated at the sale of their first 1,000 pounds 

 of rubber, as the earnest of 1.000,000 pounds per year at 

 some time in the future — all "velvet." The Alexican 

 company whose first 1,000 pounds of experimental rubber 

 comes out have only that to show after the expenditure 

 of $1,000,000, let us say, and years of waiting, without 



dividends from any source meanwhile. Is it any wonder 

 that the IMexican growers should feel less enthusiastic ? 



But, after all, the main difference is that the Ceylon 

 planters, as a rule, have had dividends all the while, and 

 those in Mexico have not. So far as enterprise, the dis- 

 position to take risks, is concerned, the comparison favors 

 the planters on this side of the ocean every time. And 

 the fact that the original investors still hold their prop- 

 erties, whereas most of those in the Far East have sold 

 out, is still in favor of the Americans. 



We have only a word to add — that the rubber planters 

 in Mexico cannot too soon take a lesson from the planters 

 in Ceylon and the Malay States and form an association 

 for their mutual advantage in further systematizing the 

 management of their estates, particularly now that the 

 period of harvesting is approaching and is likely to find 

 some of them unprepared. 



RUBBER FACTORY AND RUBBER FARM. 



THE establishment of a rubber tire factory at Singa- 

 pore means a great deal more than some people 

 mav think. When Charles Macintosh and Charles Good- 

 year and Thomas Hancock were born there was no Sing- 

 apore — at least not to the knowledge of English speaking 

 people. To-day it ranks among the great shipping ports 

 of the world and all owing to English influences. All of 

 which had nothing to do with rubber until there suddenly 

 grew up within quick touch of that port the systematic 

 culture of rubber — of Para rubber, be it noted — on a 

 scale which already affects the markets of New York 

 and London. 



The first rubber factory at Singapore is not on a 

 large scale : one thing that counts is that it is promoted by 

 a Dutch concern long interested in investments in the 

 Far East, and it is no secret that the Dutch as a class 

 have proved safe and sane investors. At the present rate 

 of development Singapore will ere long be second as a 

 rubber exporting port only to Para, and all due to the 

 growth of rubber on plantations under English and 

 Dutch enterprise. 



What has prompted these remarks is the assertion of 

 the leading financial paper of London that the Singapore 

 manufacturing enterprise will not amount to much until 

 it owns a rubber plantation which will enable it to pro- 

 cure its raw material at an advantage as compared with 

 the general market. This is precisely what we expect to 

 see ; if not the initial Singapore shop, at least other fac- 

 tories in the same part of the world that w^ill grow their 

 own rubber, just as a lead pencil factory company near 

 the offices of The Ixdi.\ Rubber World mine their own 

 graphite and cut their own cedar. 



The progress of countless industries in .America has 

 followed the inclusion in the program of great compa- 

 nies of the control of the raw materials used. We should 

 not care to invest in the shares of a Singapore rubber 



