152 



IHE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[February i, 1903 



officers are: /. O. Burrett. banker, president; /. /. Allison, 

 school superintendent, and George B. Carey, mercnant, vice- 

 p esidents ; T. A. Mason, banker, treasurer ; /. F. Skeel, clerk 

 board of education, secretary ; James C. Dennis, former street 

 superintendent of Joliet, plantation manager. To investors 

 are oflfered shares of capital stock at $10 (par), to give them 

 legal protection in the matters of ownership of the property 

 and a voice in the management, and with each share an " in- 

 come certificate," entitling the holder to his proportion in the 

 net profits — the whole being sold for S300, payable in install- 

 ments, if preferred. It was reported on January 9 that about 

 900 shares had been taken, mostly by citizens of Joliet, many 

 of whom had paid in full. One thousand acres of the com- 

 pany's lands are reported to be fine sugar lands, and most of the 

 remainder excellent for rubber. Both crops will be planted, 

 and, at the beginning, some " quick crops," besides which a 

 company store will be maintained. 



THE BACHAJON PLANTATION CO. 



[Plantalion on Ihe lio Tulija, dep:>riment of Palenque, state of Chiapas, Mexico. 

 OHice :, Witherspooii building, Pliil.idelphia.] 



Incorporated in April, 1902, under the laws of Maine; au- 

 thorized capital. S'oo.ooo. which is said to be fully paid. The 

 company own 6177 acres, in the valley of the Tulijd river, some 

 18 miles from the town of Salto de Agua, and connected by 

 water transportation with Frontera, on the Mexican gulf. Six 

 hundred acres have been surveyed for the first development 

 work, to be planted in r^Mitt [Castilha elastica),6oo'utts\.o 

 the acre, with a view to thinning out later to 200 trees. " Con- 

 tracts for deed " are oflfered for sale at $200 per acre, cash, or, 

 $264 in installments. On July i, 1910, the company propose, 

 upon the surrender of these contracts, to make a deed, convey- 

 ingto the contract holders an undivided ownership of the prop- 

 erty purchased by them. Officers : Horace Mitchell, Kittery, 

 Maine, president ; IV. T. Atkinson, Kansas City, Kansas, vice 

 president ; E. B. Fletcher. Philadelphia, secretary and treasurer 

 and general manager. The company's plantation manager was 

 due to sail from New York on January 15, to begin the work 

 of active development. 



PLANTATIONS LACOURT fCONGO FREE STATE). 



[See The India Rligbek World, November i, igor— page 45.] 



The Societe Anonyme Plantations Lacourt.a Belgian enter- 

 prise founded in 1899, with 800,000 francs capital, to exploit 

 rubber in the Congo Free State, have been able thus far to re- 

 port very favorable results. A comparison is given here of 

 their earnings for three years, " Gross " profits relating to the 

 proceeds from trading in native rubber, and " Net " profits what 

 remained after meeting the expenses of the company's planta- 

 ions : 



Gross. Net. 



Year ending March 31, igoo /;rt«cj 413,882.08 384. 732.91 



Year ending March 31, 1901 215,886,97 94 833 56 



Year ending March 31 , 1902 300,249.09 167,037.44 



The latest report of the administration devotes, as did that 

 of last year, no little space to the planting work done by the 

 company, particularly in rubber. Following is a comparison 

 of the extent of the plantations on March 31 of each year: 



1901. 1902. 



India rubber (Z,««(/t>/7>/«'a vines) acres 877 1137 



Coffee 148 153 



Cacao 7 12 



Other crops — 25 



Total acres 1032 1327 



From the former of the reports quoted it appeared that about 

 900 rubber vines were planted to the acre, with the idea of at- 

 taining a permanent growth of 800. At the same rate, the 

 planting up to March last would have amounted to 1,037,000 



vines. The practice of the company is to replant, in case of 

 failures. At the end of the business year their nurseries con- 

 tained 300,000 rubber plants, besides coflfee, cacao, and tea. 

 As the wild vines do not average more than 2 per acre, scat- 

 tered through dense forests, the company anticipate a great 

 advantage from having a growth of rubber concentrated to the 

 extent suggested above. 



During the year the discovery was made, on the Lacourt 

 concession, of trees of the Kiclixia species which yields rub- 

 ber in Lagos. While much of the concession had not been 

 explored, the hope was entertained that Kickxia trees would be 



tiund in abundance, to the great benefit of the company. 



The concession of this company lies in the basin of the river 

 Sankuru, an important tributary of the river Kassai, which in 

 turn empties into the Congo. The latitude is a'joit 4° south. 



RUBBER PLANTING IN THE CONGO FREE STATE. 



An official decree dated January 5, 1899, required that com- 

 panies collecting rubber under concessions from the state should 

 plant annually not less than 150 new rubber trees or vines, for 

 every ton of rubber collected during the year. A later decree, 

 to take effect from January i, 1903, provides that 500 such trees 

 or vines shall be planted for each ton of rubber collected. In 

 the annual review of the Antwerp rubber market for the past 

 year issued by Grisar & Co., it is stated that the operation of 

 this law had resulted in the setting out of 410,000 rubber plants 

 in 1899, of 500,000 in 1900, and 510,000 in 1901— a total of i,- 

 420,000 for the three years These decrees apply equally to the 

 collection of rubber by employes and agents of the state, be- 

 sides which there are other regulations for the planting of 

 rubber under control of the forestry department, and it is esti- 

 mated that in addition to the planting above referred to, 2.500,- 

 000 rubber plants had been set out on the public domain dur- 

 ing the three years ending with 1901. These figures, added to 

 the preceding, give a total of more than 3,900,000, to which 

 must be added any planting done du.-ing 1903. It does not ap- 

 pear that these figures include the planting done by the So- 

 ciete Anonyme Plantations Lacourt, referred to elsewhere in 

 this paper, and amounting up to March 31 last to more than 

 1,100,000, or an aggregate of planting in the Congo Free State 

 thus far of about 5,000,000 trees, in addition to the figures for 

 1902, not yet available. 



GUTTA-PERCHA AND RUBBER IN THE MALAY STATES. 



The policy, on the part of the authorities, of prohibiting the 

 collection of Guttapercha until better means have been devised 

 for preventing destruction of the trees — mentioned in The In- 

 dia Rubber World, April i, 1902 (page 21 1)— was maintained 

 during 1901, for which year the official reports of the govern- 

 ment have come to hand. The prohibition extended originally 

 to the best species of Gutta-percha trees, known locally as 

 " getah taban," but in the state of Pahang the collection of the 

 inferior sorts of Gutta-percha is now prohibited as well. The 

 result of this course is temporarily to deprive the government 

 of a source of revenue from selling Gutta-percha privileges, but 

 it is felt that, had this course not been adopted, the Gutta- 

 percha trees would soon have disappeared. 



In Negri Sembilan a Gutta percha reserve of 2000 acres has 

 been formed at Senawang, which was stated last year to contain 

 18.000 plants and live Gutta-percha stumps. The report now 

 under review says that the work of cleaning the reserve has 

 been continued during the year, and that more than 30,000 

 plants and stumps have been located and are now under protec- 

 tion. 



It is mentioned that in the state of Selangor, European plant- 

 ers, at the end of 1901, had under cultivation 14,661 acres, of 



