36 



THE INDIA RUBBER ^A'^ORLD 



[November i, 1901. 



RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA IN THE PHILIPPINES. 



By Frank J. DunUavy. 



TO THE Editor of The India Rubber World : There 

 is rubber of value in the Philippines, and Gutta-percha 

 also, and several varieties of the latter and many other 

 gums or gutta-like substances which are not Gutta- 

 percha, but are mixed with the latter by the Chinese and the 

 Moros. To-day one of the mountain tribemen, a Tiriria, came 

 to me with five bundles of what he called Goma (all gummy 

 substances are sold under the name of Goma here, whether it 

 be India-rubber, Gutta, Balata, or one of the other kinds). To 

 the uninitiated they might have appeared like coils of Gutta 

 wound up, rope like, around a bamboo, but when I examined 

 the material every second coil or rope was an adulteration. I 

 passed him out and he sold the whole as Gutta-percha to a 

 Chinaman. The latter will boil it all down, extract some of 

 the chopped bark and dirt, and ship it to Sandakan, in Borneo, 

 where it will be bought up and shipped to Singapore and ap- 

 pear in the market quotations as Borneo Gutta. 



This has been going on here since 1887, more or less, though 

 few outside of the Chinese and the Spaniards knew this 

 island was a Gutta producing island. I am not very familiar 

 with the Gutta trade under Spanish rule here, except that I 

 know the price used to be from $10 to $25 Mexican per picul 

 of I33!3 pounds. There was not much of it shipped because the 

 Spaniards had very hard and fast forestry laws and only allowed 

 the gathering of Gutta and Rubber under strict supervision, 

 and only by tapping the trees in a certain way and at certain 

 times of the year. 



When the Spanish garrison was withdrawn from this town, 

 after the late war, the Chinese traders took charge of matters 

 here, under the direction of a halfbreed Chinese and Moro 

 Datto. The latter made slaves of everyone who opposed his 

 will and the beautiful valley of the Rio Grande run riot till the 

 American troops could come and occupy the town, which was 

 some six months after the Spanish evacuated the place. Then, 

 for some reason no sane man could ever understand, the for- 

 estry laws as they applied to the gathering of Gutta and Gum 

 elastic were suspended and the Americans allowed the Chinese 

 to come in great numbers and start cutting down the trees 

 and thereby destroying them so that they could gather the 

 Gutta and Rubber. The same destruction of Gutta trees that 

 had been going on in the Malay peninsula further south for a 

 number of years was started and has been kept up till now. 



The trees are cut down and then chip ring circles at intervals 

 of say a meter are cut into the trees. This is continued along 

 the trunk and branches and the late.x is guided into pieces of 

 bark or leaves. They then gather the whole of the product, 

 with chips, bark, and dirt, and boil it with a little citreous bark 

 or wild lemons and coagulate it, with dirt and everything 

 mixed in to make it weigh. Another method is to chip ring 

 the tree standing and then light a fire around the tree so as to 

 hasten the flow of latex by heat. This method, while not kill- 

 ing the tree outright, serves to hinder its utility for some years 

 after. The Chinese and the Moros who do this claim they have 

 never been shown how to make incisions and tap them, but 

 this is not true. They pursued the above methods because, 

 with tapping where one will collect 5 pounds of Gutta, with 

 cutting down and collecting in the manner described one can 

 collect from 15 to 25 pounds of Gutta to the tree. 



You can realize what Uncle Sam has lost when I tell you 



that, according to figures I took from manifests at the custom 

 house at the port of Jolo, in the month of May last, no 

 less than 426,426 pounds of Gutta and Rubber was exported 

 from this island to Borneo and Singapore between the month 

 of December previous and up to that time, Put this amount 

 at the large average of 20 pounds to a tree, and it will give us 

 21,321 Gutta and Rubber trees destroyed — mostly Gutta — and, 

 all the customs collected on this large amount was $140 Mexi- 

 can, notwithstanding there was a forestry tax to pay of 10 

 per cent, on the valuation, I have known some of it to sell in 

 Sandakan for $120 Mexican per picul of 1 33 J3 pounds, though 

 the average would have been about $70 to $80 a picul. 



But last month the Forestry laws were enforced to the ex- 

 tent of collecting the 10 per cent., though no attempt is being 

 made to prevent the sale of Gutta that has been gathered by 

 the destruction of the trees. I expect, as a matter of protec- 

 tion for themselves, that the Forestry department will prohibit 

 the trading in any kind of Gutta or Rubber except what has been 

 tapped. It is late in the day for this district, as one has to go 

 ten days march up the valley now to see a Gutta tree, but there 

 are other districts equally as rich in Gutta as this was. The 

 civil government are anxious to conserve to the country this 

 valuable asset in Gutta, and with that purpose in view have dis- 

 patched a special agent to Sumatra to study the new method of 

 extracting Gutta, by which it is claimed one can extract more 

 Gutta by this method than if the tree was cut down and de- 

 stroyed, without harming the tree in the least for the following 

 season. This agent, I hear, will be sent down here on his re- 

 turn to instruct us novices that are interested in the Gutta in- 

 dustry. If such is true the position is simply this: If the 

 government had the 20,000 trees that have been cut down 

 during last year and they could extract say even 12 pounds of 

 clean Gutta to a tree, worth in New Yoik $1.75 gold a pound, 

 each tree would be worth in a year's products $42 Mexican. To 

 pay 10 per cent, to the Forestry bureau on this would mean 

 $80,000 Mexican a year revenue. But for the sake of being on 

 the safe side cut this in two, and say $40,000 a year. You can 

 calculate what wealth is in the forests of Mindanao. 



No doubt when the government get this proposition well in 

 hand the United States possessions will figure as a Gutta and 

 Rubber producer, and, with a chemist and proper equipment, 

 they will be able to classify the various other gummy substances 

 and give them their proper value in the market. No white man 

 has made a single cent out of all the destruction of these trees 

 so far as I know ; as the whole business was carried on by the 

 Chinese who have been paying $100 a day for a steamer for the 

 last six months to do nothingelse but run between here and San- 

 dakan and carry Gutta and Rubber out of the country. 



Gutta is selling to-day at from $30 to $50 Mexican per picul. 

 The quotation in the last India Rubber World to hand ranges 

 from 65 cents to $1.75 gold per pound in New York. 



The Gutta when it leaves here is rolled around the joint or 

 one length of a bamboo and the latter is filled with water. The 

 Gutta is rolled till it is about 10 to 12 inches in diameter and 

 long enough to conceal the bamboo. The idea is that in hand- 

 ling the Gutta in discharging at Sandakan the plug will 

 be knocked out ol the bamboo and the water percolate through 

 the whole package and make it weigh. If the plug happens to 

 stay in it will weigh well also. 



