April i, 1906.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER V/ORLD 



225 



THE INDIA-RUBBER TRADE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



By Our Regular Correspondent. 



I WAS talking the other day to a phuiter who has had a 

 good deal of tropical experience and he was very elo- 

 quent on the potentialities of rubber culture. In his 

 opinion the state of affairs as far as Brazil is concerned 

 is analogous to what history has to tell us with regard to 

 cinchona. Time was when the wild Peruvian 

 CULTIVATED product was the main source of supply ; now 



RUBBE.R. . ,, _ , . , ■ ^, 



it all comes from cultivated sources in other 

 lands and the price has dropped very eonsiderablj'. He pre- 

 dicts that the cost of collecting Para rubber in South Ameri- 

 ca is bound to continuall}' increase, as the workable forests 

 become more remote from the trading centers, especially as 

 the available acclimatised labor show no signs of any inordi- 

 nate increase. The present high price allows of a sufficient 

 margin of profit to allow of equipping the collecting bands, 

 but should the price show any considerable fall and the cost 

 of collecting remain stationary, the necessary consequence 

 will be a cessation of the industry. Of course my informant 

 does not expect this to happen in a year or two, but he is 

 emphatic that it will come about when the various planta- 

 tion companies begin to harvest on a large scale. Analogy 

 is always a risky form of argument, but there is certainly a 

 good deal of similitude between the cases of cinchona and 

 rubber. Naturally the shareholders in the rubber companies 

 do not wish overproduction to bring down the price too 

 much, but in the majority of prospectuses it is noticeable 

 that stress is laid on the cost of production being less than 

 \s. 6i/. per pound, a figure which will allow of profitable 

 working even should the present price of fine rubber fall 50 

 percent. — that is of course presuming that nothing catas- 

 trophic happens to the plantation. 



With regard to the Liberian Rubber Corporation , which 



has attracted a good deal of attention owing to the well 



known public men on its directorate, it is notice- 



LiBERiAN ^|j|g W\^\_ the optimistic speech made by Sir 



RUBBER. 



Harry Johnston at the recent statutorj- meeting 

 of the shareholders made little impression on the market, the 

 shares being at a discount the day after the meeting. Prob- 

 ably the rubber investing public had heard so much about 

 the price of rubber being 55. 6rf. per pound in connection 

 with the various Ceylon and Straits flotations that they did 

 not grasp the fact that the l^iberian rubber fetches less than 

 half this price in the market. Questions on the point were 

 asked at the meeting and 25. >S;'w/. was given b}- Sir Harry 

 as the average price for their rubber during 1905. The im- 

 portant matter for consideration is how low can this price be 

 allowed to fall so as still to leave the company a sufficient 

 margin of profit to pay interest on its large capital. At the 

 present price or thereabouts things w'ill no doubt go on all 

 right, but it seems that the future is very uncertain. If the 

 Para rubber plantations tend to bring down the price of fine 

 rubber, native Africans will fall in sympathy. Certainlj- 

 the Liberian Corporation do not propose to depend entirelj' 

 on their rubber forests, as they have in view the planting of 

 Para trees and also the development of the latent mineral 

 wealth of the country about which hardly anything is 

 known. Still the concern does not seem one that an impe- 



RUBBER CO. 

 LIMITED. 



cunioils investor should rush into all things considered. 

 I might mention that the estimated profit on one ton of Li- 

 berian rubber was given in the prospectus by Mr. I. F. Bra 

 ham at ^126, so that a fall in price of i.f. 2d. would have to 

 be experienced before loss occurred — supposing of course 

 that the estimate is at all exact. ==To say a word about one 

 other company scheme which was offered to the public re- 

 cently, the Putupaula (Ceylon) Rubber Estates, Limited, the 

 appeal to the public did not meet with a sufficient response 

 and it is to be brought out again in an altered form. 



To one like myself, who knows of the large Ameri- 

 can rubber reclaiming works only by repute, it is a revelation 

 to see the scale on which things are con- 

 N0RTHWE8TERN ducted at the rubber reclaiming works at 

 Litherland, near Liverpool. In addition to 

 being on the bank of the Liverpool and Leeds 

 canal, there is railway communication right into the works, 

 an advantage which I think lam correct in saying is not pos- 

 sessed by any other British rubber works. Some of the ma- 

 chinery is of .\mericau and some of British make. Steam for 

 the engines and the devulcanizingpans is obtained from four 

 vStirling watertube boilers, which it is easy to understand 

 prove more economical working than the Lancashire type. 

 The reclaiming process used is what is known as the alkali 

 method as patented bj- Mr. Arthur H. IMarks. Briefly de- 

 scribed, the process consists of heating the finelj' ground 

 rubber for a certain length of time with a solution of caustic 

 soda under a high steam pressure, whereby the bulk of the 

 sulphur goes into solution. The devulcanized rubber is then 

 sheeted without the addition of oil, which is a regular con- 

 stituent of the reclaimed rubber made by the older processes. 

 No doubt the absence of oil goes a long way to explain the 

 great tensile strength of the best grades of the Northwestern 

 Co. 's goods, after making all allowance for the use of good 

 quality scrap. It will be quite superfluous to mention that 

 Mr. Ernest E. Buckleton is the general manager, as his per- 

 sonality is so well known to rubber manufacturers both in 

 Europe and America. The thing which most struck me 

 when I saw the magnitude of the works and heard that they 

 were kept going night and day, and often on seven days in 

 the week, was how can they manage to get enough raw mate- 

 rial. In answer to a query I was told that on first starting, 

 considerable difficulty had been experienced, owing to the 

 fact that the organized methods of collecting and classifying 

 scrap rubber so long established in America were practically 

 nonexistent in England. The factory soon got to work and 

 created a demand for its products, but it was often a ca.se, to 

 use a gold mining simile, of the mill getting ahead of the 

 mine. This somewhat serious difficulty has now been got 

 over, a large amount of business both in scrap and reclaimed 

 rubber being done with the Continent. In fact, though es- 

 tablished at Liverpool the works must be looked upon as a 

 European branch of American enterprise, the present site no 

 doubt having been selected for good reasons. Seeing how 

 strenuously those who are responsible for drawing up speci- 

 fications for rubber goods insist on the entire absence of re- 

 claimed rubber, the man in the street would think that such 



