8 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October i, 1902. 



kets in a better state of preservation. Most of the localities of 

 western Africa which furnish rubber from trees lie upon the 

 coast and are therefore most conveniently situated ; the gum is 

 not allowed to remain long upon the ground but is promptly 

 hurried to the seaports and shipped to Europe with the utmost 

 despatch. Shipments from Lagos, Gold Coast, Senegambia, 

 and Sierra Leone frequently reach Liverpool within 50 or 60 

 days after the sap from the trees has been dried. 



Such favorable conditions are manifestly impossible with the 

 products from the Congo basin, and chiefly for the reason that 

 the perfect construction of the African repositories plays such 

 an important part in the healthful preservation of our products. 

 That rubber should be more or less inclined to become viscous 

 depends much upon the method pursued in its coagulation. 

 Thus the method employed by the Bokako (Bossanga) fur- 

 nishes a gum of greater resistance, though the process which 

 gives an extra dry rubber, exposes the product to a more pro- 

 nounced as well as rapid contamination. For example, let us 

 take a ball from Lopori ; although it is less desiccated, it re- 

 sists the contaminating influences to a greater degree than the 

 well dried sheets from Kassai. If the drying has been imper- 

 fectly accomplished and the gum is placed in storage in such a 

 manner as to be deprived of the necessary circulation of air, a 

 condition which ensues when the balls are packed too closely 

 together, a sort ol fermentation is set up in the interior of the 

 balls which m the long run attacks the elastic fiber, and the 

 gum dies, and this is what the English technically describe as 

 dead, perished, ox flaky rubber; it is not viscous but pasty. If, 

 however, reasonable care be taken in the storing of the gum, 

 even watery or moist rubber will not suffer oxidation. At this 

 point it may be well to add that the mixing of several varieties 

 o\ later before coagulation is extremely likely to induce organic 

 decomposition ; in such cases the viscous character is internal 

 or, so to say, inherent. Happily such cases are of rare occur- 

 rence with our rubber from the Congo. 



The best known preventive of oxidation consists in the dry- 

 ing of the latex by a low heat, in contact with the smoke. Rub- 

 ber from Para, Colombia, and Bolivia is dried in this way. It 

 is greatly to be regretted that the milk of the African rubber 

 vines {Landolphia) does not lend itself kindly to the smoke 

 treatment, and, strange as it may appear, even the milk from 

 the African rubber trees is equally rebellious under this form of 

 treatment. Some samples of Kick.xia rubber, from the Gold 

 Coast, which had been dried in smoke, were critically exam- 

 ined by me, and I found that though the pum was pure and of 

 handsome appearance, yet it had lost its elasticity. This pecul- 



iarity is generally attributed to the exceeding thinness or fluid- 

 ity both of the Asiatic and African rubber latices. Great care 

 should also be taken in the packing, and for all varieties of gum 

 which are destined to lie for any length of time near the points 

 of production I recommend that they be put up in ordinary 

 sacking, and this applies especially to those sorts which have 

 been dried with extra care. 



Returning to the subject of the effect of the sun upon the 

 outer surfaces of the balls, I desire to state that 1 experimented 

 upon some of the balls thus affected, in search of some sort of 

 an antiseptic, and am pleased to say that my endeavors have 

 produced satisfactory results. At this stage I should acknowl- 

 edge that my experiments have not been exhaustive, since I 

 only applied my tests to small quantities. It remains, there- 

 fore, to be seen whether or not the application of the same anti- 

 septics will be equally efficacious when applied to large masses 

 of the affected gum. I am afraid not, and in all that concerns 

 the healthful preservation of the gum I incline to the maxim 

 that it is better to prevent an evil than to provide a cure for it. 

 Unfortunately the greatest enemy to our Congo rubber trade 

 is the reputation, fostered by others, that there is not a pound 

 of absolutely healthy Congo rubber to be found in Antwerp. 

 Equally unfortunate is the fact that there is no fixed rule 

 whereby the degeneration or depreciation in the value of rub- 

 ber from oxidation may be satisfactorily computed. I will give 

 here an example ol the difference in price obtained for two lots 

 of the same consignment of rubber of which one lot was per- 

 fectly healthy and the other in poor condition. The lots were 

 of about five tons each. The first, which we shall call Lot A, 

 was sold for 5.50 francs per kilo. Of the second lot, which we 

 shall call Lot B, two tons were wholly sound, and three tons 

 more or less sticky (about the normal proportion). Lot B sold 

 for only 4.90 francs. Compared then with the price obtained 

 for Lot A, Lot B suffered a discount of 60 centimes per kilo, or 

 about 3000 francs [=$600] for the 5 tons. 



From this case, however, we must not augur that all the lots 

 containing portions more or less viscous suffered a deprecia- 

 tion of 60 centimes per kilo, upon the prices paid for healthy 

 rubber. On the contrary, the discount is sometimes more 

 and sometimes even less ; this figure is by no means fixed and 

 the loss depends upon the quantity of the affected gum and 

 the degree of the oxidation. However, when we consider that 

 the greater part of the lots emanating from the Congo region 

 are more or less tainted, we may easily calculate the impor- 

 tance of the loss on the total caoutchouc production of the 

 Congo. 



UNPROFITABLE RUBBER TRADING ON THE CONGO. 



IN connection with the condition of the rubber trade in the 

 Congo region, it may be of interest to some of our read- 

 ers to have before them a copy of the annual report of 

 the directors of one of the Belgian companies trading in 

 that field. The company referred to is the Cie. Anversoise des 

 Plantations du Lubefu, constituted at Brussels, December i, 

 1897, with a capital of 600,000 francs to exploit a concession in 

 the basin of the Lubefu, an affluent of the Kassai — a district 

 rich in rubber, in the Congo Free State. The profits of this 

 company for the year 1899 amounted to 170,002.84 francs, and 

 in 1900 to 225,497.89 francs. In the official report which fol- 

 lows, however, it will be seen that the company's business was 

 transacted during 1901 at a loss, though the adiiu'ntstrateurs 

 were hopeful of better results for the future. 



The report herewith relates to plantations of rubber now 

 being made by the company, which are of two classes: (1) for 

 the company's regular planting account, and (2) to meet the 

 requirement of the Congo Free State that all persons extract- 

 ing rubber must do a certain amount of planting. The decree 

 of January 5, 1899, requiring that for every ton of rubber 

 yielded annually, there shall be planted not less than 150 rub- 

 ber vines or trees, is amended by a new decree, dated June 7, 

 1902, requiring that joo vines or trees shall be planted for each 

 ton of rubber removed. Such planting is to be done under 

 the supervision ol a bureau of control of rubber forests, which 

 is empowered to fix the number of trees to be planted annually 

 by each company or its agents, and also to point out suitable 

 locations for such purposes. Any neglect of this decree is 



