October i, 1908.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



the same air, time and time again? If there isn't enough 

 common garden air, however, why not import it from the 

 sparsely peopled pampas of South America? Why not 

 build windmills to make wind? Why not bottle up the 

 exhaust from the countless political orators now busy in 

 the American presidential campaign, spouting what the 

 authorities in slang call "hot air"? Why not use 

 dephlogisticated air? To close this serious discussion, 

 however, we do not foresee that the effort to displace air 

 in motor tires is liable to succeed to the extent that rub- 

 ber will not still be required — and that is the main point in 

 the trade which this journal represents. 



TRAINING RUBBER ESTATE MANAGERS. 



THE rubber planting interest is still too new to have 

 developed very many experts in its various depart- 

 ments. The first essential, of course, after the trees were 

 planted, was to get out rubber. The practicability of 

 this having been established, the next question was how 

 cheaply the rubber could be produced, because upon this 

 depends the whole matter of profits. The successive 

 annual reports of some of the older rubber plantations 

 show a declining scale of costs, with indications that 

 the bottom price has not yet been reached. As a result, 

 during the lowest stage of the market last year, some plan- 

 tations were realizing almost as much net cash per pound 

 as during the preceding era of high prices. 



Not all the plantations now producing, however, have 

 been able to make an equally satisfactory showing to 

 their shareholders. One reason, suggested by an Eastern 

 rubber planter recently while visiting The India Rub- 

 ber World offices, is that the number of expert planta- 

 tion managers developed thus far is not sufficient to sup- 

 ply the demand. Many managers are yet obliged to 

 work in an experimental way. Their first problem is to 

 produce rubber, at whatever cost, after which they can 

 address themselves to lowering the cost, through im- 

 provement of their methods and the further training of 

 their employes. 



At one time it was thought that one who had qualified 

 as an expert in rubljer plantation management, through 

 his success on one estate, might be relied upon to ob- 

 tain similar results on any number of estates, by acting in 

 an advisory capacity for them all. This, however, has not 

 always proved true in practice. The trouble is that in 

 the case of one man's energies being spread out over so 

 many plantations, much has to be left to the local work- 

 ing staffs, and unless these have had some training the 

 best laid plans may fail to be carried out intelligently. 

 This is particularly apt to be true if dependence is placed 

 upon native employes. However faithful they may be, 

 and however intelligent they may seem while actually 

 working under directions, failure too often results when 

 they are left to exercise their own judgment. 



But all of this furnishes no argument against rubber 

 culture. The men who have won success in their field 



have done so merely because they happened to be on 

 the ground when rubber culture was introduced into 

 their region, and they addressed themselves successfully 

 to its problems. There must be other men equally fitted 

 by nature for such work, and the incentives to study rub- 

 ber planting questions are greater than when the pioneers 

 first took up the work. The first lesson having been 

 learned, that special training is necessary for managing a 

 rubber plantation well, as is true in every other business, 

 there need be no fear of an ultimate lack of good man- 

 agers. 



This subject was referred to at the summer meeting of 

 the Rubber Planters' Association of Mexico, by Dr. 

 Pehr Olsson-Seffer, who suggested that rubber planting 

 is not so simple a matter as some people might think, 

 and that a plantation involving an expenditure of, say, a 

 million dollars, calls for managerial ability of a high 

 order. The difficulties to be met are magnified if the 

 management of a tropical enterprise is undertaken by one 

 not before familiar with tropical conditions. In Mex- 

 ico, the speaker said, there had been a weeding out of 

 managers, and the outlook to-day is good with regard 

 to the character and capacity of the men in charge of 

 the rubber plantations there. 



A NEW REGIME IN THE CONGO. 



THE Congo Free State has become a colony of 

 Belgium, as Lagos is of England, Kamerun of 

 Germany, Algeria of France, and Angola of Portu- 

 gal. Henceforth not Leopold but the Belgian parlia- 

 ment is entitled to praise or must bear the blame 

 for whatever of good or ill develops in the administra- 

 tion and condition of the Congo. Now that the 

 status of that region is on the same plane as that of 

 other African regions under European control, the 

 Powers which have criticized the management of the 

 Free State are under challenge to show whether or 

 not they are doing better with their colonial adminis- 

 tration under like conditions. Those who have been 

 pleased to attack Leopold, the individual, as an admin- 

 istrator, no longer have an excuse to single out a 

 single African dependency for their criticism, but 

 must deal with colonial conditions in Africa as a 

 whole ; the European or American who deplores the 

 fate of the African native under white man's rule 

 must now take into account the condition of the 

 native under the rule of any and all the Powers. On 

 the whole, the new regime promises to lead to a 

 clearer understanding of African affairs in general, 

 through the removal of the condition, unusual in mod- 

 ern times, of one individual apparently with unlimited 

 power over so great a country as the Congo Free 

 State under the King of the Belgians. 



The India Rubber World is no apologist for 

 Leopold. With Congo politics, so to speak, it has 

 had no concern; as to the motives of the critics of the 



