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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[January 1, \9U 



forward look as well as the backward look. If the 

 year 1913 as viewed by the rubber manufacturer seemed 

 to be marked by a few clouds, the year 1914 appears al- 

 together bright. 



There have been times when crude rubber sold as low 

 as at present, and even lower, but there has been no time 

 in many years when there was at once low-priced rubber 

 and every promise of the continuance of this condition. 

 The rubber manufacturer can look forward into the com- 

 ing year confident that he will secure his rubber supplies 

 at a moderate price. This means not only that he can lay 

 his plans along the regular lines of his operations with 

 assurance that these plans can be carried out, but it 

 means that he can give his attention to a great extension 

 of his business into lines that have hitherto been imprac- 

 ticable for him to follow ; for obviously with Para rubber 

 in the 70's and plantation rubber in the 50's the rubber 

 industry is susceptible of an enormous expansion that 

 would be impossible at the materially higher prices that 

 have prevailed most of the time during the last ten years. 



There is another most favorable feature for the manu- 

 facturer — and that is in the great progress made in the 

 standardizing of plantation rubbers — progress already 

 carried to such a degree that very soon it will be pos- 

 sible for the manufacturer to buy his rubber with the 

 same assurance of quality as he now feels in the purchase 

 of many of his other supplies. He will soon be free 

 from the tedious and expensive necessity of testing every 

 new purchase of rubber that comes to his mill. 



Taking it all in all, therefore, the rubber manufacturer 

 can look forward to the coming year not only with 

 courage and hope but with good cheer and optimism. 



Real distress, however — or at least a very real ap- 

 prehension of distress — has been felt in the world of 

 crude rubber. In Brazil the distress has been genuine 

 and unfeigned. An American just returned from that 

 country states — as will be noticed in his letter appearing 

 elsewhere in this issue — that the seringueiros are starv- 

 ing. Possibly they haven't quite reached that unhappy 

 stage, but certainly none of them are likely to be overfed. 

 In Manaos and Para many shippers have put up their 

 shutters. A loud complaint, too, has come from Africa, 

 for who wants cheap Africans with plantation first latex 

 selling close to 50 cents? And as to the East, our 

 Singapore correspondent writes that if there is not a 

 mend in rubber prices very soon some 400,000 acres of 

 the 1,400,000 now. planted to rubber will cease to be 

 cultivated and lapse back into jungle. The probability 

 is that this unfortunate condition will not come about 



but obviously the outlook from the planter's standpoint 

 is quite different w ith rubber at 50 tents from the cheer- 

 ful aspect when it sold at $2 a pound. 



However, the planters have no occasion lor any undue 

 worriment, for there seems nothing surer in the future 

 of human events than the fact that the rubber manu- 

 facturing world will have to look to the plantations for 

 its supplies. So that, while the planter's percentage of 

 profit may be much lower than in the past, his volume 

 of profit should increase with each succeeding year. It 

 is certainly a safe prediction that all those planting enter- 

 prises which rest on the sound foundation of carefully 

 selected location, honest capitalization and efficient man- 

 agement will prosper, while those that have been 

 promoted simply to sell stock will go their logical way 

 into unsung oblivion. 



'THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD" FOLLOWS THE UP- 

 TOWN MARCH. 



*■ ^ tinct 



E^\■ YORK has enjoyed for the past ten years the elis- 

 ion of being the most torn-up city in the world. 

 What with new subways, tubes under the East River, 

 tunnels under the North River and sundry bridges, its 

 condition has been one of perpetual upheaval. But in 

 all this change there has been one abiding principle — the 

 city's center moves steadily north. 



^^■hen, ninety years ago, old John Jacob Astor, the 

 original, built the Astor House — just torn down — his 

 contemporaries told him pleasantly that he was stark 

 crazy to put his hotel so far uptown ; but the city's center 

 soon reached the Astor House, and left it behind fifty 

 years ago. Everything is moving north, and The India 

 Rubber World moves with the rest. 



Three years ago it joined the northward trend and left 

 its quarters at Broadway below Canal street, for a new 

 home on Thirty-eighth street; but during the last three 

 years many large rubber interests have left their former 

 downtown locations and taken up their business abodes 

 in the 50's, while the shopping center and hotel district 

 have moved up to Forty-second street, if not already 

 across it ; so The India Rubber World again takes up 

 its northward march and with this issue is established in 

 its new quarters at 25 West Forty-fifth street. 



This is in the very heart of metropolitan activities. It 

 is close to the Grand Central Station, the subways and 

 "L's" ; within a few minutes' walk of all the leading 

 hotels ; a near neighbor to many famous clubs, and only 

 three blocks from the stately marble pile that houses the 

 great Public Library. It is a location for high thinking and 



