140 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[January i, 1903. 



THE NEW PACIFIC CABLES. 



DURING the last days of the year the laying o( the cable of 

 the Commercial Pacific Cable Co. between San Fran- 

 cisco and Honolulu was successfully completed by the Silver- 

 town, the cable laying ship of the India Rubber, Gutta Percha, 

 and Telegraphs Works Co., Limited, (London). The remain- 

 der of this cable, to reach the Philippines, is now being manu- 

 factured by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co. 

 (London), and the last section, to connect Manila with Shang- 

 hai, doubtless will be contracted for soon. 



On December 8 the Pacific cable laid by the British govern- 

 ment and its colonies across the Pacific, from Vancouver to 

 Victoria, was formally opened lor business, the laying of the 

 cable having been completed on October 31 by the closing of 

 the last link at Suva, Fiji islands. 



AN AMERICAN MADE CABLE FOR MEXICO. 

 The contract taken by The Safety Insulated Wire and Cable 

 Co. (New York) to make and lay 472 nautical miles of sub- 

 marine cable for the Mexican government telegraph depart- 



ment, to connect the ports of Vera Cruz, Fronlera, and Cam- 

 peche, in the gulf of Mexico [mentioned in The India Rijbber 

 World, January 1,1902 — page 1 16], has been successfully com- 

 pleted and the cable is now working. The cable was manu- 

 factured at the Safety company's new works at Bayonne, New 

 Jersey. It consists of a stranded conductor of nine copper 

 wires, with rubber insulation, armored with sixteen wires for 

 deep water and eighteen wires for shore ends. The deep sea 

 cable has a diameter of about \\ inches and weighs 2>^ long 

 tons per nautical mile. For a cable ship the Safety company 

 chartered the steamer Ydun, which was handed over to the 

 company at Brooklyn, New York, on August 19 last. The 

 Ydun, with the cable coiled on board, reached Vera Cruz on 

 September 13. On October 10 the laying of the cable was com- 

 pleted, including the erection of the cable houses at the three 

 ports named, and the cable has since been taken over by the 

 Mexican government and has been working successfully. The 

 engineering specifications for the manufacture of the cable 

 were drawn by Mr. Ira W. Henry, vice president of the Safety 

 company. 



REVIEW OF THE CRUDE RUBBER MARKET. 



NOT only does every grade of rubber included in our 

 quotation list show an advance to-day over one month 

 ago, but there has been an even larger advance over 

 the prices of one year ago. Islands fine new is 10 per 

 cent, higher than at the beginning of the year; Upriver fine 

 old 8 per cent, higher; Centrals average 21 percent, higher, 

 and all grades of Africans show a material increase. These ad- 

 vances are the more notable in view of the heavy decline in 

 prices which followed the throwing upon the market of $2,- 

 000,000 or $3,000,000 worth of rubber in consequence of the 

 failure of a large importing house in New York, in January last, 

 with the result of upsetting the market throughout the world. 

 This surplus stock of rubber remained a disturbing feature for 

 several months, due to the action of its holders — bankers who 

 had made advances upon it — seeking to avoid a complete sac- 

 rifice of the rubber by permitting all of it to be ofifered at once. 

 While this policy prevented a worse demoralization of the mar- 

 ket, and enabled some sort of standard of prices to be main- 

 tained, manufacturers were disinclined so long as any of this 

 surplus was known to exist to buy beyond their current actual 

 necessities. This abnormal condition permitted opportunities 

 for the manipulation of prices, which undoubtedly were availed 

 of to a certain extent, with the eflfect of still further depressing 

 the market, to a lower point than was warranted by conditions 

 of supply and demand. The result was that a hope was en- 

 gendered that an era of lower prices had been inaugurated, and 

 in consequence consumers were not prepared for the advance 

 which, beginning late in the year, has now reached a higher 

 level than existed a year ago, when at least 1500 tons of impor- 

 tations at New York had been held out of the market. 



The chief question to day relates to the probable luriher 

 course of the market. The receipts at Para thus far are about 

 1 500 tons less than at this date last season, in addition to a short- 

 age of 300 tons of caucho. The arrivals at Antwerp for the 

 first eleven months of 1902 were 1000 tons less than in the 

 same period of the preceding year. Stocks, in every market 

 show a decline, the total world's visible supply of Para sorts 

 being 900 tons less than was officially reported one year ago. 

 This shortage, of course, is offset by the subsequent coming 

 into the market of the New York stocks not then reported, 



but there has been a decline in the supplies of o'her grades 

 than Paras. For instance, there was held at Antwerp on No- 

 vember 30 only 1S6 tons of rubber, as against 843 tons one year 

 before. There is always an uncercainty at this time of the 

 year as to what supplies of rubber may be detained up the 

 Amazon valley. The India Rubber Worlds correspond- 

 ents have reported all season the sending out of fewer boats in 

 this trade, and it is reasonably certain that the troubles on the 

 Acre — a " revolution " having been inaugurated there on Aug- 

 ust 6 which has not yet been declared of? — have had the effect 

 of suspending production in a district which under normal 

 conditions should supply 2000 or 3000 tons of Para rubber. 



Rubber production, therefore, not only is not showing the 

 rate of increase maintained for several years up to 1901, but 

 this year will show a material decline. Meanwhile the rubber 

 manufacture in every country in which it has been established 

 has been active, there having been in no country such business 

 conditions as have lessened the demand for rubber goods ex- 

 cept, perhaps, in Germany, where the manufacturers have been 

 able through their growing export trade to oflfset any check in 

 the trade at home. 



There is nothing in the conditions outlined above to point 

 to the limit of rubber production having been reached. On 

 the other hand, facilities for reaching the remoter South Amer- 

 ican fields are being improved all the while, even if slowly, and 

 the tendency is toward the better conservation of native sup- 

 plies there. The decreased output from the Congo districts 

 has been due in part to a deliberate policy of the rubber trading 

 companies which, for some time, have seen their earnings suffer 

 through the careless handling of their rubber products, of de- 

 voting their energies to the better preparation and more careful 

 shipment of rubber, rather than to getting out the greatest 

 possible quantity. 



It appears now as if manufacturers would have to adapt 

 themselves to a condition of rubber practically as high priced 

 as at any time of considerable duration in the past, in connec- 

 tion with which no promise exists of an early decline in thecost 

 of the other raw materials which enter into their products. 



In regard to the financial situation, Albeit B. Beers (broker 

 in India-rubber, No. 58 William street, New York) advises us; 



