6 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[Octoi:p;r I, 1902. 



tates situated on the river Teffd, a tributary of the Amazon 

 above the river Puri'is. This company has lost the whole of 

 its working capital ; it has never succeeded in getting a ton of 

 rubber from its estates. Rubber cutters were taken there and 

 buildings and stores erected, a steamboat purchased and ship- 

 ped out, etc., but the actual collecting was never commenced. 

 The company is still in existence, and, I believe, all hope is not 

 yet abandoned. 



Very soon after the formation of the Amazonas Rubber Es- 

 tates, Limited— that is, early in 1898— the Rubber Estates of 

 Para, Limited, was formed with a capital of _£'!5o,ooo to work 

 estates with an area of over 284 square miles, situated in the 

 "Islands," district of Anajas, state of Para. These estates 

 were acquired from the Visconde de Sfio Domingos, who had 

 been working them for many years. The number of full grown 

 trees was estimated at 1,300,000, which number has scarcely 

 been questioned. In the three years before they were taken 

 over by the English company, the estates were declared to 

 have produced 751 tons, an average of 250 tons per annum, of 

 the annual gross value in Europe or the United States of over 

 ;^90,oio. I have no reason to doubt that these estates actually 

 did produce the quantity of rubber given above, but the largest 

 quantity which the English company ever succeeded in obtain- 

 ing was 60 tons, during last season. After about £35,000 of 

 the working capital had been lost during the two years follow- 

 ing the formation of the company, the writer was asked to be- 

 come a director and accepted. The working capital being lost, 

 it was necessary to reconstruct the company, which was done 

 on the basis of a capital of £37,500, the new company (The 

 Brazilian Rubber Trust, Limited) taking over the properties 

 and paying all liabilities of the old company. Since then, 

 nothing that experience, heavily paid for in the past, could sug- 

 gest, has been left undone. Every possible economy that 

 could be thought of was urged upon the company's employes 

 in Brazil, but the Brazilian Rubber Trust found itself unable 

 to work the estates profitably ; money still continued to be 

 lost, though on a much smaller scale than in the past, and a 

 few months ago the company decided not to remit any more 

 money to Brazil, but to lease the estates to a Brazilian firm. 

 This has been done, to the relief of every director of the com- 

 pany. 



The history of the Belgian company. La Bresilienne, which 

 purchased estates very near those belonging to the Rubber Es- 

 tates of Para, is similar to that of the other companies. It has 

 come to grief more or less complete. I believe that all the be- 

 fore mentioned companies (and, I may add, all the companies 

 that have been formed in Europe to work rubber estates in 

 Brazil) have lost their working capital, and have either ceased 

 to exist, or are in considerable difficulty. The company that 

 really showed the best results was the Rubber Estates of Para, 

 which, as 1 have said, lost about £35,000 in the first two years 

 of its existence, and even when reconstructed, never succeeded 

 in making a profit. 



Mr. Witt has set out the reasons pretty clearly. The direct- 

 ors and managers have very little knowledge of the conditions 

 surrounding the trade, but in one case, had the company— The 

 Rubber Estates of Para, Limited — followed the advice of its 

 first estates manager, it might have been successful, or at least, 

 it would not have lost so heavily. This gentleman, however, 

 had had eight years' experience of Brazil. 



Most of the men who go out know nothing about the busi- 

 ness. They do not know the language well, and have few 

 facilities for learning anything of value. Indeed, it is not in 

 the interest of the Brazilians to teach them anything, but, on 

 the contrary, to pluck them and the companies they represent 



of every feather. As Mr. Witt has pointed out, the collectors 

 have to be imported. They mostly come from the state of 

 Ceara, and the importation expenses are very heavy. Pro- 

 visions have also to be imported, and instances have come be- 

 fore me of perishable foodstuffs consigned to an English com- 

 pany, being detained three months in the custom house at 

 Para. When cleared the goods were useless. This was of 

 common occurrence some two years ago, but the customs' 

 service has been improved since. The taxation is tremen- 

 dously heavy ; whether a profit is made or not, a company will 

 be taxed anything from £600 upwards a year, that is, if its 

 office is in a foreign country. If a company tries to grow its 

 own foodstuffs, it will find it impossible to get labor. The 

 natives will not work at agriculture of any kind. 1 am not 

 aware that there is a farm, or anything approaching one, within 

 a thousand miles of Pard. The men will only collect rubber, 

 and unless the planter could pay them as much for agricultural 

 labor as they can earn in rubber cutting, there is no possibility 

 of getting them to work at the former. Mr. Witt has very 

 ably pointed this out. He suggests the importation of coolies 

 from India, but the British government would never permit it. 

 He also refers to Chinese, a question which I have studied, as 

 my company commissioned an agent at Singapore to make 

 enquiries with regard to obtaining Chinese laborers from the 

 Straits Settlements. They cannot be got from China, as was 

 pointed out by Sir Halliday Macartney, of the Chinese embassy 

 in London, to the writer, for the reason that China has no dip- 

 lomatic or consular representatives in Brazil, and no Chinese 

 subjects would be allowed to go. The Chinese in the Straits 

 Settlements are mostly British subjects. They also would not 

 be allowed to leave if the British government knew where 

 they were going, and the only way to get them is to ship them 

 unknown to the British government, and run the risk of being 

 found out and losing the men. The importation of Chinese 

 laborers also would have to be renewed again and again, for 

 they would be certain, as Mr. Witt says, to turn traders, or 

 start collecting rubber on their own account. Yet I believe 

 it is absolutely necessary, if a foreign company is to be suc- 

 cessful, that it should import labor from outside, for, in my 

 opinion, it is impossible for such a company to succeed with 

 Brazilian labor only. 



The reason is really a very simple one. When a man or a 

 company buys an agricultural estate or other landed property 

 in a foreign country, such as Spain or France, or even Mexico, 

 the produce of that estate belongs to, and is the property of 

 the owner, be he a private person or a company. In the rub- 

 ber regions of Brazil the produce does not belong to the owner 

 of the estate. It belongs to the collector— the rubber cutter — 

 who sells it to the owner for cash or goods at a price a little 

 below the market price at the nearest center, whether Pard or 

 Mandos. If a rubber cutter goes to a store on the estate and 

 does not find in that store what goods he requires, he is pretty 

 sure to sell his rubber to outsiders, and he cannot easily be pre- 

 vented from doing so. If he owes money to the company, and 

 the company tries to wipe off the debt by reducing the cash or 

 quantity of goods given in exchange for the rubber delivered, 

 the collector, if he can, will certainly sell his rubber elsewhere, 

 where he will get the full "river" value for it without deduc- 

 tions. In the writer's experience, goods advanced on credit to 

 the collectors beyond a certain small amount by a foreign com- 

 pany are never or very rarely paid for ; the advances might al- 

 most as well be written ofl as soon as made. The Brazilian 

 Rubber Trust, which took over the properties of the Rubber 

 Estates of Paid, inaugurated a "no credit" system which was 

 fairly successful, the liabilities of the cutters and tenants when 



