390 



i Hh. IMDIA HUBBEH WOKi^L) 



[September i, 1906. 



A RUBBbK SWINDLE IN WASHINGTON. 



IT is said thai the national capital affords an excclknt 

 field for the operation of a certain class of swindlers 

 who, with no other resource than their "nerve," live by 

 tcniptinjj people to invest in "concessions" and the like 

 wliich promise fabulous jirofits, but which really exist oidy 

 on paper. Washington is full of stories of the success of 

 such • ' promoters. ' ' 



A typical case, says the New York S/t//, was that of 

 a chap who did a hv^ Ihinj;^ of it on the strength of a mag- 

 nificent rubber plantation in Chiapas, Mexico, that he didn't 

 own. He came to Washington about a year ago. He in- 

 stalled himself in a high grade boarding house and proceeded 

 to get acquainted with the folks in the neighborhood. This 

 cheerful worker knew everybody for blocks around the 

 bjarding house within two months after he hit the town. 

 He didn't say a word about rubber to any of them for a long 

 time. 



Then he took two or three of the men folk into his confi- 

 dence as to that proposition. He didn't ask them to buy 

 anything. He simply told them v.-hat a fine thing he had 

 himself, and he always had an ample bundle of yellow 

 money somewhere in his clothes, and a trick of Hashing 

 it in a wholly unostentatious way. 



He rigged matters so that they had to ask him the nature 

 of his fine snap, and then he told them. Rubber plantation in 

 Chiapas, ever so many tens of thousands of acres, all trees 

 in bearing. He was acquiring some more tens of thousands 

 of acres, however, right alongside of those already in bear- 

 ing, and had organized a comJ)any to take over those new 

 acres and finance the working of the new section. He dis- 

 coursed expansively on how much money per acre rubber 

 trees produce. 



He showed the first two or three a book of photograjdis of 

 the Chiapas plantation, showing his own splendid hacienda 

 riglit in the middle of it. surrounded by palms and pictures 

 of natives tapping the trees and collecting the rubber, and 

 so on. He got them rubber mad. Thej' pleaded to be al- 

 lowed to get into the new company with a little savings they 

 had put away. He didn't seem to be eager to let tlu-m in. 

 and so they wound up by demanding that he let them in. 

 At length he let the.se early ones have a few thousand shares 

 in the new plantation at $1 a share. 



They passed the word around among their friends and 

 neighbors, and these, too, got interested in rubber. They 

 hunted up the ingratiating rubber man, and he permitted 

 them to accrue some of the stock at $1.50 a share. He con- 

 fined his operations exclusively to the neighborhood of his 

 boarding house — a region embracing a radius of about five 

 squares in the different directions. 



Then somebody came out with a word of doubt as to 

 whether that Chiapas rubber plantation was entirely on the 

 level. The doubtful word reached the ears of the rubber 

 man. He flared up instantly, and then he did an audacious 

 thing. He told the people who had purcha.sed stock of him 

 that he wanted them to select the most reliable man in the 

 neighbohrood to accompany him to Mexico to have a look at 

 that Chiapas plantation. They picked out a dentist of the 

 best repute, and together the rubber man and the dentist 

 hied down to Chiapas, Me.xico. 



The rubber man showed him a sure-enough rubber planta- 



tion in Chiapas, and even took him to the hacienda on the 

 plantation that he pretended was his own and showed him 

 the furniture. He happened to know that only the manager 

 of the plantation was living in the hacienda at the time, and 

 as the manager didn't know the game of the lUbber man 

 from Washington he didn't let any word fall to give the 

 snap away or indicate that the cheerful worker from Wash- 

 ington didn't own the whole business. 



It was a bold move, but it went through on greased skids. 

 The rubber man and the dentist returned to Washington, 

 and the denti.st went through the neighborhood telling 

 everybody what he had seen, what a superb thing the 

 Chiapas plantation was, what a fine time he'd bad at the 

 hacie/ida, and so on. 



Which made it mighty fine for the rubber man. They 

 stormed his doors to buy stock at $3 a share on the dentist 

 man's report, and he swam on the top crest of a veritable 

 tide of gold for four months. Then he just went away, and 

 nobody has seen or heard of him since. The bubble didn't 

 burst till after he left. The folks who bought his prett3', 

 gilt embellished stock certificates know now that the planta- 

 tion the dentist man was shown around in Chiapas be 

 longs to a man who has never been in the United States. 

 The beauty of this grafter's dodge was that everything he 

 took in was pure velvet, except for the cost of having the 

 pretty stock certificates printed, lie didn't spend a nickel 

 for advertising. 



A NEW RUBBER IN VENEZUELA. 



A CCORDING to a report of the British Consul at Ciudad, 

 -^~*- Bolivar, a new and previously unknown kind of rubber 

 tree has been discovered in the extensive forests of the Caura 

 district, in Venezuela, situated from 150 to 200 miles to the 

 west and southwest of that port. Sample lots of the rubber 

 produced from this tree have been sent to London, New 

 York and Hamburg, and have realized from 2,s. to 35. 6d. per 

 pound. This price is remunerative, as good facilities for 

 transport by water exist. Unfortunately as yet no efficient 

 system of tapping the trees has been discovered, as by the 

 method of tapping applied to the India-rubber trees on the 

 Kio Negro district the milk does not exude freely. The con- 

 sequence is that the collectors fell the trees to be able to tap 

 them all along the trunk, following in this respect the sys- 

 tem they employ for collecting Balata. This of course will 

 bring about the eventual e.xhaustion of the forests, which in 

 the case of the Balata tree is alreadv beginning to be felt. 



RUBBER RATS IN CEYLUN. 



T^ ATS are now numbered among enemies of the rubber 

 -*-^ tree. Complaintsare made in Ceylon of the dciiredations 

 by rats on young rubber trees, the attacks being made appar- 

 ently on the roots of the tree. It has long been known there" 

 that porcupines are also serious depredators in the low coun- 

 try, and damage has been done by monkeys on some low coun- 

 try estates. This is rather a formidable array of enemits for 

 the young rubber tree to face, but the Ceylon Tea Plantations 

 Co. are adopting a cheap and efficacious method of meeting 

 such attacks by the use of coarse wire netting round the stems 

 of the young trees, which not only saves them from the living 

 pests above referred to, but keeps the trees, when planted 

 among tea, from being damaged by weeders and pluckers. 



