226 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[May 



1901. 



abroad last year, say ;^iocio, could have discharged the 

 debt at one date with 16,696 milreis, while at another date 

 34,909 milreis would have been required, so wide was the 

 rate of exchange during the year. Consequently the risk 

 in trading is so great in certain stages of the movement of 

 rubber that only by figuring on a wide margin of profit 

 can one hope to escape disaster. There is one way in 

 which the effect of these inconvenient fluctuations can be 

 avoided. A company with ample capital, importing goods 

 direct to be exchanged for rubber, and selling the rubber 

 in foreign markets, might become in a measure independ- 

 ent of local financial conditions. 



It is true that large companies were floated in London 

 two or three years ago to work on these lines, but since 

 their primary object was not to trade in rubber, but to 

 make promoters' profits, they have not figured largely in 

 rubber production. But more success seems to have been 

 attained by a French company, capitalized at 9,000,000 

 francs, who last year exported to Europe from the Ama- 

 zon over 1.300,000 pounds of rubber. Large rubber pro- 

 ducing areas on the Amazon are coming under more direct 

 private control than formerly, and it seems reasonable to 

 expect that in the end rubber will be coming to hand from 

 points nearer the prime sources than the markets of Para 

 and Manaos. Manufacturers, or the importers or brokers 

 who supply them, will then be able to obtain rubber with- 

 out its passing through so many hands as at present. If, 

 meanwhile, Brazil should be able to reform her monetary 

 system, the effect would be to hasten such conditions of 

 direct trading in rubber. 



BEGINNING AT THE WRONG END. 



IT appears to us to be a reason for congratulation, 

 ■*• rather than otherwise, that the big so-called electric 

 vehicle companies have begun to dissolve. In common 

 with the whole rubber trade, we should welcome such an 

 increased demand for rubber tires as would follow the 

 practical introduction of automobiles on a large scale. 

 But a demand for tires is not made by the organization of 

 companies with an enormous capitalization, and specula- 

 tion in their stocks manipulated by means of all the tricks 

 of the professional " trader." What the rubber tire makers 

 want and what the public wants — if the public is at al, 

 interested — is the development of a type of horseless ve_ 

 hide that will be efficient, durable, and not too costly 

 whether for purchase or for hire. And the purpose of such 

 vehicles must be the conveyance of passengers, rather 

 than a pretext for offering to investors a volume of stocks 

 on which all the traffic now in sight could never yield ade- 

 quate dividends. It has been a case of beginning at the 

 wrong end, and it would be a good thing to have the 

 whole business wiped off the slate and a fresh start made 

 by supplying such automobiles as individuals or the pub- 

 lic could be induced to buy or use, with the idea of earning 

 dividends on the actual investment of capital. 



No matter how great the demand for automobiles may 

 become, their practical use must be of slow development. 

 Their purchase as a " fad " by people of wealth, while they 



are still a novelty, will be a poor basis for a great automo- 

 bile industry. The substantial and lasting demand must 

 be from people of average moderate means, or at least the 

 automobile must be proved to be more convenient or more 

 economical than the vehicles which it displaces. We do 

 not believe that anybody seriously believes that any auto- 

 mobile yet made will become a permanent type, and yet 

 this field of invention is far from new. The French gov- 

 ernment rewarded the designer of a steam carriage built 

 for the war office in 1769. Fifty years ago Richard Dud- 

 geon was running over the roads around New York city 

 in a steam carriage of his own invention. Yet it is only 

 within a half dozen years that the continued development 

 of automobiles in France has attracted the attention of the 

 outside world, and the French inventors have not yet pro- 

 duced a vehicle which commends itself generally. In New 

 York better horseless vehicles than Dudgeon's are to be 

 seen today, but the number per thousand of the popula- 

 tion is hardly greater than when his single machine was 

 in use. 



The advent of electricity as a motive power has added 

 new interest to the subject and determined a new class of 

 inventors to evolve a practical automobile or die in the 

 attempt. It is never wise to prophesy that a given thing 

 cannot be done, and the advance made in other applica- 

 tions of electricity lends color to the hope that we shall in 

 time see storage batteries of much greater efficiency, as 

 compared with the weight and cost of the existing types. 



But the demand for automobiles remains an uncertain 

 quantity. If city people in America habitually used horse- 

 drawn cabs they doubtless would prefer an electric vehicle 

 at the same cost. But city people, villagers, and even 

 many dwellers on farms habitually ride in electric cars, the 

 service of which is being improved and extended steadily, 

 and rarely at a greater cost than 5 cents per trip — a price 

 with which no automobile is going to compete for very 

 many years to come. A leading carriage trade journal 

 last month, commenting on the decline in the sales of fine 

 carriages in the United States and elsewhere, remarked 

 that— 



Since the rise of the trolley system, with its luxuriously equipped 

 cars and its astonishing speed, many a man, who formerly kept a car- 

 riage of his own, finds it more convenient and less expensive to travel 

 by street railways, and if he wants to enjoy a carriage ride with his fam- 

 ily, he can send to the nearest livery stable with far less trouble than he 

 could maintain a private establishment. 



Some such consideration would prevent people from 

 falling over each other to buy even automobiles in which 

 no reasonable mind could find anything to criticise. 



We do not mean to say that there is to be no demand 

 for automobiles. No doubt there will be a wide field for 

 their use in the carriage of goods in cities and their suburbs 

 — when they have been further improved and cheapened. 

 And our population is so large that even if a very small 

 percentage bought pleasure vehicles a respectable output 

 would be required. But a lot of companies with millions 

 of capital each are not needed to supply the demand. It 

 may be added that the final perfection of the automobile 

 depends somewhat on the rubber man, who is confronted 



