186 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[March 1, 1911. 



liogany, and when wet feet stared everybody in the face. 

 At that time the matter assumed such importance that 

 the daily press recklessly encroached on its police and 

 sporting space to talk about the rubber situation. 



The excitement has in the interim materially subsided. 

 Rubber is now selling nearer to its normal figure, with a 

 comfortable world supply of 6,000 tons, and a "famine" 

 is no longer imminent. But with the constantly widening 

 space that manufactured rubber is occupying in modern 

 life, the question of an adequate supply of crude material 

 is always interesting. Sixteen years ago the entire 

 annual rubber supply of the world amounted to 35,000 

 tons, of which about one-half, or 17.000 tons, came to this 

 country. Seventy per cent, of that was used in the man- 

 ufacture of rubber boots and shoes, the rest going into 

 a miscellaneous assortment of rubber goods. The 

 amount of rubber consumed in the manufacture of tires 

 was almost negligible, certainly not reaching 5 per cent. 

 But all that is changed, and while we received in this 

 country last year about 42,000 tons of rubber, 60 per cent. 

 of that went to the tire manufacturers, and the rubber 

 footwear men, manufacturers of mechanical goods and 

 druggists' sundries, and all the others together, only 

 got 40 per cent, of the rubber imports. 



The demand for articles of all kinds manufactured 

 from rubber has increased with every year, and the de- 

 mand for tires has grown with great rapidity, while the 

 supply of crude rubber has increased very slowly. For 

 instance, the consumption of tires in 1908 increased 150 

 per cent, over the preceding year, and in 1909 showed a 

 still further increase of 100 per cent., while during those 

 same years the crude supply increased only 5 per cent. 

 each year. While during the year just closed the de- 

 mand for tires decreased slightly from what it was in 

 the previous year, this condition is obviously only tempo- 

 rary. The automobile has now taken its place among the 

 necessaries of life — food, raiment and shelter being rele- 

 gated to the luxuries — so no permanent relief can be 

 expected from a diminished demand for tires, nor is it 

 at all likely that people are going to use fewer hot water 

 bags or wear fewer rubber boots. If there is any, relief 

 it must come from an increased crude rubber supply. 



Now the outlook is that there will be an increased 

 supply, but that it will come slowly. Of the 73,000 tons 

 of crude rubber produced last year, 38,000 tons came 

 from Brazil. That is, of course, all wild rubber, gath- 

 ered along the tributaries of the Amazon. It is estimated 

 that only one-tenth of the possible rubber supply of 

 Brazil has ever been tapped. If this is true, there are 

 400,000 tons of excellent rubber along the Amazon which 

 could be taken out each year. But the difficulties are so 

 great — the necessity of employing only native labor, the 

 great expense of equipping rubber-gathering parties and 

 the primitive methods that still obtain — that it is ex- 

 tremely questionable whether the supply from that quar- 

 ter will materially increase for some years. In the past 

 fifteen years the output from the Amazon has increased 



at the rate of about 6 per cent, a year. L'ndoubtedly 

 with the increased incentive of higher price?, the pro- 

 duction will grow more rapidly, but hardly more than 10 

 per cent, a year. 



Over a quarter of the rubber supply, or about 18,000 

 tons a year comes from Africa, but there is little likeli- 

 hood of any increase from this quarter, both because of 

 the suicidal policy of destroying the vines in order to get 

 the rubber and because the more liuinanc methods now 

 emjdoyed in the Congo are not likely to be as productive 

 a.s the exacting, not to say, barbarous practices which are 

 said formerly to have been in vogue. As a matter of 

 fact, the supply from Africa decreased during the past 

 year. 



The largest increase in rubber production will un- 

 doubtedly come from the plantations in Ceylon and the 

 Straits Settlements. This rubber has but recently become 

 a factor in the situation. Four years ago only a few 

 hundred tons had ever been exported from the Far East. 

 In 1910 the exports from this region amounted to 10,000 

 tons. It is expected that the present year will see this 

 increased to 15,000 tons, and men familiar with the situa- 

 tion in Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula jjredict that there 

 will be a further increase of 3,000 or 4.000 tons a year 

 for the next ten years. 



The product of the Guayule shrub of Mexico amounted 

 last year to 15.000 tons, but as the shrub is destroyed in 

 extracting its latex and as it has not yet been proved 

 whether it can be readily and quickl\' reproduced, this 

 ^Mexican product is an uncertain factor in estimating 

 future supplies. The immediate available increase inust 

 come, therefore, from the Amazon and the Far East, the 

 two making a combined annual increase, for the next few 

 years, of about 8,000 tons, or a trifle over 10 per cent, 

 of the world's present supply. 



With the present constantly increasing demand it is 

 fairly obvious that plentiful rubber is a condition not 

 likely to be realized in the immediate future. Five years 

 from now, when the plantations now in their infancy — or 

 perhaps more properly in their adolescence — have reached 

 a productive age, the story may be different. 



THE SERVICES OF A CHEMIST. 



THE fact that a large number of progressive rubber 

 corporations have during the past year considered 

 the engagement of a chemical engineer or even a labora- 

 tory chemist prompts us to make some observations on 

 the compensation offered to these "advisory" employees. 

 The chemical engineer may be viewed as the running 

 mate of the superintendent. If we accept this as a 

 rational possibility, we might add that the superintendent 

 must turn out a certain volume of goods per week, and 

 see that the cost of labor is kept as low as efficiency will 

 permit. The chemical engineer must give the superin- 

 tendent raw materials which measure up to a certain 

 standard, must trace defective products to sources not 



