36 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORI O 



[November i, 1909. 



each time a "slump" followed so quickly as to create a 

 era! opinion that attempting to "corner" rubber is 

 bad business. Mr. Vianna said in 1892: 



I have handled the rubber business in Para for years, and although it 

 is generally and absolutely known both in the United States and in 

 Europe that through my constant efforts in this market since 1879 the 

 r.ii. 1 rubbei craps have been sold to a much better advantage for the 

 receivers and producers, still this is utterly ignored by said receivers, must 

 of them believing that I have had nothing to do with the keeping and 

 advancing of prices in the long period, although I have devoted all my 

 attention and ability to such business all this time. 



This nt course was Senhor Vianna's compliment to him- 

 self, and we have no record of how his contemporaries at 

 the time regarded it. But he said further that with few 

 exceptions the ruhber producers in those days and the 

 original handlers of rubber as a rule knew nothing about 

 how the rubber business was done abroad, and implied that 

 his lack of local support prevented his doing more in the 

 way of keeping up rubber prices. As he said : 



\\ hat they know about this business is the difference, when there is one, 

 between the prices offered by two different buyers, and they arc smart 

 enough to take the higher price of the two. This embraces all their knowl- 

 edge about such an imj>ortant business. 



As has been pointed out in these pages, the business of 

 rubber production on the Amazon recently has shown a 

 tendency toward consolidation in the hands of persons 

 with capital and with a broader knowledge of rubber 

 conditions in general than in the past, so that, with the 

 assistance of the banks as referred to, it is possible that 

 concentration and cooperation may be brought about to 

 an extent which would not have been possible in the 

 days of Vianna's former activity in the trade. But the 

 rubber business, back of the primary markets, remains 

 strangely complex, and he would be a bold man who 

 would claim to comprehend all its conditions. It would 

 seem, however, that the conditions here outlined as hav- 

 ing a tendency to keep up rubber prices are worthy of 

 study. 



RUBBER AND SLAVERY. 



There is no new question of ethics involved here. The 

 world needs rubber and rubber must be forthcoming, the 

 same as ivory and innumerable other commercial com- 

 modities, the obtaining of which in the past has involved 

 human slavery. The modern cotton industry depended 

 for years upon human slavery in the southern United 

 States, but it does not to-day, and cotton is now being 

 grown in many parts of Africa — the home of the former 

 American slaves — by willing and well paid natives. Ulti- 

 mately, of course, the same will be true of rubber, though 

 the progress toward the new conditions may be slow. 



The hope of the civilization of the native rubber pro- 

 ducing regions, whether in Africa or in equally remote 

 portions of South America, is in the development of such 

 scientific treatment of rubber production as is now in 

 progress in Ceylon, for example, and which the owners 

 of capital ultimately will insist upon being carried out 

 whatever rubber trees worth taking care of may be found. 



We congratulate Mr. Labouchere, of London, upon 

 his expose of the conditions of rubber production in the 

 region beyond Iquitos. In the first place, it will open the 

 way to the correction of undoubted abuses in a specific 

 region. Secondly, it will aid in simplifying the so-called 

 Congo question, in showing that the conditions of rub- 

 ber production in Central Africa are not, necessarily, due 

 to maladministration in any quarter, but rather to the 

 conditions under which business between civilized and 

 uncivilized races must be done before a mutual under- 

 standing is arrived at as to what constitutes right or 

 wrong. Finally — and this point has been stated before 

 in this article — the disclosure of conditions in Peru will 

 help consumers of rubber as a class to understand why 

 rubber constantly becomes more costly rather than 

 cheaper, as is the case of commodities produced under 

 more desirable conditions. 



THE story on another page of this issue, relating to 

 the conditions of obtaining rubber on the upper 

 Amazon, is worthy of consideration by all users of this 

 material, in that it points to a very important reason why 

 rubber costs so much. It is improbable that any reader 

 of this page would willingly engage in any details of 

 gaining rubber from forest resources in any part of the 

 world. In short, it is a business, or occupation, in many 

 places exceptionally removed from civilized conditions 

 as ordinarily recognized. 



The regularly established importers of india-rubber 

 at Xew York or Liverpool or Hamburg have no money 

 invested in the production of Amazon rubber; they are 

 content to buy whatever is available at Manaos or Para. 

 Why"' Because the conditions of original production are 

 such as to be beyond the capacity, as yet, of other than 

 the people of the rubber producing countries to compre- 

 hend — or, at least, to control. 



FAILURE OF A "FIFTH WHEEL." 



A N editorial in the New York Journal of Commerce, headed 

 **• "Decadence of an Executive Department," relates to the 

 department of Commerce and Labor, at Washington, created 

 some five years ago, in charge of a secretary ranking as a member 

 of the President's cabinet. According to our contemporary, 

 "Ever since the advent of the Taft administration the Department 

 of Commerce and Labor lias appeared to be in a condition of 

 decadence, and in the closing days of the past session Congress 

 without thought struck a severe blow at it." 



Reference is made here to the tariff commission for which 

 provision is made in the new Payne bill, and which the Presi- 

 dent has ordered to be organized in the Treasury Department 

 instead of that of Commerce and Labnr, although the latter "for 

 a long time has been entrusted with the work of building 

 up our export trade — so far as that can be done by executive 

 or governmental activity— and of making and publishing studies 

 of the tariff question as presented by the action of foreign 

 countries." The same paper remarks that throughout the Taft 

 administration thus far "as soon as some important and signifi- 

 cant work appears in sight," which the Department of Commerce 

 and Labor, under the terms of the law creating it, might be sup- 

 posed to be intended to perform," it is handed over to others, and 

 the mechanism that had been established for these very nwrposer 



