May i, 1903.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



267 



HOW RUBBER COMES FROM THE CONGO. 



WHY does so much India-rubber come out of the Congo 

 Free State? In 1891, after the trade had been in ex- 

 istence for several years, the output was only 179,696 pounds. 

 In 1901, there arrived at Antwerp alone 11,918,303 pounds of 

 Congo rubber— a sixty six-fold increase in ten years. The Con- 

 go state has a large native population, but not of a character 

 suited to the development of a great trade. The typical Con- 

 golese are small sized, not especially strong or enduring, lacking 

 vigor, and wearing out prematurely under their natural priva- 

 tions and hardships ; in many respects mentally like white 

 children eight or ten years old, and with no inclination and lit- 

 tle capacity to learn anything new ; living in grass huts with- 

 out furniture, going bareheaded and wearing only loin cloths, 

 and with no thought of providing for to-morrow ; the men in- 

 terested chiefly in warlike pursuits, leaving to their plural 

 wives — obtained by barter — the greater part of any work to be 

 done in providing habitations or food. 



Yet such as these — men, women, and children — ransack 

 the dense forests of the Kasai and other 

 great affluents of the Congo, to find here 

 and there a Landolfthia vine, which they 

 destroy to obtain rubber, without any 

 knowledge of what it is for or of its real 

 value to the foreigner. Certainly no small 

 inducement would lead hundreds of thou- 

 sands of these simple forest folk to neglect 

 their fighting and fishing and overcome 

 their natural apathy to toil, to take up the 

 strange business of gathering rubber and 

 carrying it to market. Furniture and 

 clothes and the like, such as are made 

 for civilized people, would hardly appeal 

 to them, money of any kind they could 

 not use, and there is no evidence that 

 these things are given to the natives in 

 exchange for their rubber. 



The Congo Free State in 1901 exported 

 products (mostly rubber) valued at $10,- 

 097,680, and imported merchandise of the 

 value of $4,620,410, the excess of exports 

 being $5,477,270. That is, the exported 

 commodities were worth more than twice 

 as much as the goods sent up river to pay 



THE SUPPRESSED CONGO BOOK. 



reward of the rubber collectors must be very meager. Then 

 why do the natives gather so much of the stud? 



The above considerations are not derived from a certain book 

 now attracting attention in Europe,* but the book is noticed 

 here because its authors assert so strongly and so circumstan- 

 tially the truth of the rumors frequently heard in the past of 

 atrocious cruelties practiced upon the natives by agents of the 

 state and of the monopolistic concessionary companies. By 

 way of introduction, the joint authors of this book. Captain 

 Burrows and ex Lieutenant Canisius, point to their long service 

 of the Congo state, and that of the latter subsequently with a 

 trading company, both as a certificate of character and as proof 

 of their opportunity for witnessing what they here describe. 

 To sum up their testimony, the Congo natives do not " tumble 

 over each other in their eagerness to bring in rubber," but it is 

 "a question between death by slaughter or starvation." 



Canisius, who spent several years in the service of a Belgian 

 trading company, gives a detailed account of the collection of 

 rubber at one trading post, under a system which he asserts pre- 

 vails throughout the slate, and from which the next paragraph 

 is condensed : 



There were in the vicinity of the post of 

 N'Dobo a dozen villages, the people of 

 which were obliged to bring in rubber 

 every fifteen days. On these occasions 

 the natives crowded into the post, each 

 village in charge of an armed headman— 

 from some other tribe — whose duty it was 

 to insure the collection of the amount of 

 rubber demanded. The natives carried 

 small baskets, supplied by the post, and 

 supposed to be full of rubber. They were 

 grouped according to their villages, when 

 the trading company's agent, who had 

 their names in a book, called the natives 

 forward, first by villages, then individually. 

 Each man had attached to his neck by a 

 cord a zinc tag bearing a number corre- 

 sponding with one in the agent's book. 

 As each basket was presented, the agent 

 inspected the quantity of rubber it con- 

 tained and paid the bearer, in pieces of 

 brass wire about six inches long. The 

 writer estimated that the rubber was paid 

 for at the rate of less than a penny a 



Those 



for them. But the imports included railway and telegraph ma- pound, though its value in Europe was 2 or 3 shillings 

 terials, steamers and other boats, iron buildings for military natives who had brought in quantities which the agent deemed 

 and trading stations, army and official supplies, and a lot of insufficient were ordered to one side, seized by native " soldiers" 

 other things of no concern to the natives. For the latter there attached to the post, thrown to the ground, and soundly flogged 

 were cheap cloths, beads, trinkets, and the like— of trifling 

 commercial value, compared with the millions of dollars worth 

 of rubber gathered. If evidence is wanted of the low price of 

 Congo rubber" in first hands." it is suggested in the gossip of 

 the Brussels bourse, where the shares of the Belgian companies 

 operating on the Congo are tiaded in. In July, 1900, a finan- 

 cial paper there estimated that one of the companies had mar- 

 keted, during the preceding six months, about 800 tons of rub- 

 ber, at an average profit of 4 francs per kilogram [ = 35 cents 

 per pound]. At any rate, the company referred to made a 

 profit that year (mostly on rubber) of 487 per cent, and its 

 shares were quoted on the bourse at sixty times their par value. 

 There have been operations planned on the Congo with the 

 idea of realizing a profit on rubber of 6 francs per kilogram 



[ = 52^ cents per pound]. Considering the high rate of trans- 

 portation, it is clear that, with such profits for the traders, the 



—25 or 50 or 100 lashes— with a heavy whip of hippopotamus 

 hide. This proceeding was repeated until all the villages had 

 been dealt with, when the natives started off for home, usually 

 at a brisk trot, as if glad to escape with their lives. They, of 

 course, carried with them their baskets and their brass wire, 

 which they did not want but were forced to accept. The post 

 manager had accumulated perhaps 1000 pounds of rubber, at a 

 cost of about £4 [ = $20], including presents to the chiefs and 

 headmen. 



Thus was rubber "gathered " twice each month at N'Dobo. 

 So many brass wires for so much rubber; so many lashes for 

 what might be lacking— and all governed by the agent's judg- 



*The Curse of Central Afri.a. By Captain Guy Burrows With Which is 

 Incorporated A Campaign Amongst Cannibals, By Edgar Canisius, London: 

 R. A. Everett & Co . Limited. 1903. [Cloth. 8vo. Pp. mm i~(, | w hi. Price 



