THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October i, 1909. 



taken for granted that they will be less confident in future 

 that '"when rubber goes up, it must come down again" — 

 at least the next day. As for such speculators as may be 

 kft, 'I'm. India Rubber World has never sought to be 

 their representative. 



TWENTY-FIVE CENTS TO TWO DOLLARS. 



Till, story of "The Winning of the West," which won 

 fame for Mr. Roosevelt as an author before he be- 

 came President, must be taken into account by whoever 

 would understand the advance to $2 or more for rubber. 

 Mr. Roosevelt, whose personal knowledge of America 

 had been confined to the Atlantic coast, when he became 

 a resident of the Rocky Mountain region, was inspired 

 by the growth of a new Western empire under his eyes 

 t. ■ write a book which has helped the nation to feel a 

 sympathy with the spirit which underlies the greatest of 

 successes in colonization. 



For nothing that other great powers have done in the 

 name of colonization in modern history has been compar- 

 able with the planting of great and populous states in 

 that vast "desert" which such men as Frederick M. 

 Shepard and "Dick" Pease, still active in the rubber 

 trade, used to traverse in stage coaches beyond the 

 Mississippi when going to San Francisco to expand their 

 trade. Mr. Shepard. by the way. can remember when 

 his company bought Para rubber for 25 cents a pound. 

 and so they might be doing to-day but for "the winning 

 of the west." 



Edward H. Harriman, the famous railway manager 

 -who died within a month, was only a broker's clerk when 

 the rubbermen named here were discounting the growth 

 of the \vi si li) becoming established "ii the Pacific. Mr. 

 Harriman. impelled by the same spirit, later sacrificed 

 his life in organizing a transcontinental line along the 

 path traveled by the old coaches which had Mr. Shepard 

 fur a passenger. James J. Hill, the greatest surviving 

 American railway "king," pin- hi- faith to the growth of 

 the west, and J. Pierpont Morgan, international banker 

 though 'ne be, and trained in a school which scarcely 

 knew an America westward of the JJnd-. >n river, has 

 become a great factor in railway developmenl beyond 

 the Mississippi. 



1'h- basis of all this i- tl perity of the trans- 



Mississippi fanner, no less than of the farmer this side 

 of the great river — a class who. within a generation, were 

 appealed to by political dei a mortgagi idden 



clas-. Toda) the\ hav< become lord- of the -oil. heavy 

 depositor-, in hank-, and the dominant factor in life in 

 many states. These farmers, and the city populations 

 supported by their industry — in spite of the growth of the 

 east— -are doubling the purchasing power of the country, 

 for rubber goods a- well a- other commodities. Where 

 stage coaches of the "Wild West" type ran through un- 

 inhabited wastes not so lo . . railways now connect 

 prosperous villages and populous cities, all surrounded 



by farm-, every one of which calls for some rubber goods 

 year, even if every farmer does not yet own an 

 automobile. 



The rubber goods manufacture still abides in the- east 

 — for even Akron is very far east to the Pacific coasters 

 — and this condition may long continue, but the product 

 of tin- industry yearly becomes more widespread, and it 

 is not too much to claim that the first indications of im- 

 provement in the rubber trade after the depression of two 

 years ago were revealed in the revival of a demand for 

 goods from what was so recently described in the maps 

 as the Great American Desert. 



It is only natural, in view of these conditions, and of 

 the unexampled crops now being gathered, that rubber 

 should go up to $2. This is an abnormal price, of course, 

 and not to be regarded as permanent, but a tremendous 

 acreage of rubber must be planted yet, and become pro- 

 ductive, before the price of 25 cents, which Mr. Shepard 

 remembers, can be seen again. The American farm de- 

 mand for automobiles alone is enough to prevent an early 

 return to low prices for rubber, for while the new demand 

 for tires is developing makers of them feel obliged to 

 keep supplied with rubber, without regard to prices. 



THREE HUNDRED TONS A MONTH NOW. 



Cultivated rubber as yet plays no real part in the world's markets, not 

 more than 100 tons having yet come into consumption in any one year. — 

 The Hon. WILLIAM M. IVINS, in The American Monthly Review of 

 Reviews, July. 1907. 



IN dealing with plantation rubber on any broad scale, 

 the question is not so much what has been, but what 

 i- now, and what is reasonably in prospect. Ten years 

 ago Mr. Ivins, for a long time widely informed in re- 

 lation to crude rubber, could have pointed out that no 

 "cultivated rubber" — not even one ton — figured in the 

 world's markets. But would Mr. Ivins's legally trained 

 mind have argued from this fact that the planting of rub- 

 ber was impracticable? Yet his widely circulated maga- 

 zine article of only two years ago, from which a quota- 

 tion i- given above, did much lo support the doubters, 

 then still numerous, whether rubber could be produced 

 -ii a practical basis otherwise than from forest sources. 

 The presenl article is not argumentative, but a brief 

 summary of present-day facts. As indicated in the news 

 department of this issue, the offerings from Straits and 

 Ceylon plantations alone, at the London rubber auctions 

 alone, within a single month, aggregated no less than 

 262 ton-. Nor was this the result of an unusual aggre- 

 gation of plantation rubber. It represented the current 

 receipts from a considerable number of plantations, all 

 making shipments frequently, if not regularly, and all 

 shipping at a steadily increasing rate. For the corre- 

 sponding period in 1908 the offerings at the London auc- 

 tions were only 69 tons. A year hence it is not un- 

 reasonable to expect that the same plantations — and 

 others nearing the productive period — will be repre- 

 sented bv double the amount of rubber now credited 



