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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



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 AL 



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161 





Published on tho 1st of each Month by 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING QO., 



No. 395 BROADWAY. NEW YORK. 

 a ABLE ADDBSaS: IBWORLD. NEW 70BK. 



HENRY C. PEARSON, 

 EDITOR. 



HAWTHORNE HILL, 

 ASSOCIATa 



Vol. 39. FEBRUARY I. 1909. No, 5. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE READING MATTER. 



CHEAPER RUBBER FROM THE AMAZON. 



AN unnamed writer in a London newspaper, quoted 

 on another page of this issue, asserts that in the 

 Brazilian territory of the .Acre — possibly the richest 

 forest rubber district in the world — all that the actual 

 gatherer of the rubber gets for his labor is food and 

 clothes. The standard of living in those wilds is not 

 understood to be very high (except in the matter of 

 prices), and this anonymous authority is of the opinion 

 that, under better management than now prevails, it 

 would be pos.sible to feed and clothe the scriiigiiciros 

 and lay down good rubber at the river steamer land- 

 ings at 11 cents a pound or less. 



Now the best work at rubber gathering which he 



has seen done was not above 1,500 pounds in a year 



of nine months, which, at 11 cents a pound, w-ould 



work out at $165, gold, per man. We have seen nothing 



yet to convince us that rubber can be produced so cheaply 



an\\vhere in the Amazon region, though in time without 



doubt we shall see rubber produced in Brazil much more 



g cheaply than at present, just as the production of steel 



'— in the United States has declined so enormously within 



^ a recent period. The decline in rubber costs, however, 



is not likely to occur so speedily as to cause alarm to the 



lj_: managers of well conducted plantations, such, for in- 



^ stance, as are being worked in Ceylon. 



One other point in the London newspaper article is of 

 even more interest — the assertion that natives of Barbados 

 are succeeding as rubber workers in the upper Amazon 

 district. It has become customary to assert that no for- 

 eigners could work rubber in the climate of northern 

 Brazil, hut it is not rational to assume that this condition 

 will always obtain. With rubber from the Acre selling at 

 a];out $2,7CO a metric ton — this has been the New 'N'nrk 

 price of late — it will not be difficult for intelligent man- 

 agement to bring about gradually a considerable alien 

 force of rubber gatherers. 



The fact that the small individual proprietor of cstradas 

 has not been able in the jjast to secure foreign workers 

 has nothing to do with the case. The small P.razilian 

 proprietor never had much to do with the extension of the 

 rubber trade any way. The demand for rubber existed 

 abroad, and capital was supplied from abroad — directly 

 or indirectly — to produce the rubber -and get it to market. 



To-day the spirit of the Amazonian people is antago- 

 nistic to foreigners, and they study how the latter, as 

 far as possible, can be prevented from sharing in rubber 

 profits. If the low cost of rubber production figured out 

 in our London contemporary ever comes about, it will 

 be through foreign management and the use of foreign 

 capifal. If foreign cooperation is not welcomed, the 

 Amazon states will have only themselves to blame for the 

 encouragement which this spirit will give to the com- 

 petition of plantation with forest rubber. 



EVADING BRITISH PATENT LAW, 



ONE provision of the new British Patents act is that 

 a patent granted to a foreigner may become in- 

 valid within a certain limit of time in case the in- 

 vention covered by it is not manufactured within Great 

 Britain "to an adequate extent." An American consul, 

 it seems, has reported to Washington that "it would 

 appear to be perfectly in order to manufacture the 

 parts of a machine in the LTnited States and have them 

 assembled in the United Kingdom. The ground on 

 which this view is taken is that each part of the ma- 

 chine, taken separately, is not a patented article, the 

 patent merely applying to the machine as a whole. 

 No test case has yet been taken in the British courts, 

 and I am informed that the above is the generally 

 accepted reading of the law until such a test case is 

 brought." 



The American consular report is not before us at 

 this writing, its substance having come to notice 

 through several British contemporaries, which express 

 the opinion that in case the consul's suggestion is 

 acted upon, "very little time will be lost [in Great 

 Britain] in testing ihc legality of such method of eva- 

 sion, and, if necessary, amending the Act." 



It would apjiear to an outsider that certain British 

 court decisions already on record may have a bearing 

 upon the question in point. On March 2, 1904, in the 



