January i, 1910.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



107 



plus from the operation of the postal service. Again, 

 The India Rubber World has no desire to express any 

 opinion in the premises. We pay cheerfully the postage 

 rates current, and don't know whether it is too much or 

 too little. Probably no one knows,' or ever will. 



The point of the President's argument, however, lies in 

 his reference to the "proportion of advertising to reading" 

 in certain classes of printed mail matter. Well? Mr. 

 Taft does admit "the spread of intelligence which a low 

 charge for carrying newspapers and periodicals assists." 

 But is intelligence spread only by "reading matter?" 

 The "Annual Report of the Secretary of War" of the 

 United States doubtless is the most voluminous year book 

 the world has ever seen — contributed to by thousands of 

 able officers and scientists. But if a set of the volumes of 

 the war report were mailed to every household in Amer- 

 ica we do not believe the spread of intelligence thereby 

 would be comparable with that from the ordinary distri- 

 bution of the advertising pages of any leading magazine 

 — to say nothing of the reading pages. The mails, by the 

 way, are burdened every year with millions of war reports 

 and other public documents — all without advertisements — 

 on which no postage is paid, while the advertisement 

 carrying periodicals pay many millions of dollars to the 

 post-offices. 



We fear that the President has not been well advised 

 as to the educative nature of modern advertising. Be- 

 sides, readers of advertisements throughout the land are 

 moved to write tons of prepaid letters to advertisers, giv- 

 ing rise to more tons of mail matter — also well prepaid — 

 in response thereto. The postal budget this year was 

 $203,562,383. compared with only $30,041,983 thirty 

 years ago. We do not believe that the increase would 

 have been one-tenth as great but for the circulation of 

 newspapers with advertisements for a character to 

 develop trade and add to the volume of and revenue 

 from the mails. 



The city of Manaos. twenty years ago, probably never had 

 been heard of by one rubber man in a hundred. Ten years ago 

 Manaos was shipping direct more rubber than Para. It had be- 

 come a city, connected by ocean steamers with New York and 

 European ports. Its citizens had the advantages of waterworks, 

 electric lighting, street railways, and the like. And now an in- 

 ternational rubber conference is about to be held in Manaos. 

 It may not be a large affair, but th eFar Eastern rubber situation, 

 which it has been called to face, had very small beginnings. 



If the price of rubber remains stationary at the present high 

 level much longer, the manufacturers and buyers of their pro- 

 ducts may become so accustomed to the situation as not to care 

 whether a decline ever comes. By the way, the first number 

 of The India Rubber World, in its review of the crude rubber 

 market, noted the complaints of manufacturers at having to pay 

 more than 60 cents a pound. In early issues of the paper ap- 

 peared a series of interviews with manufacturers on the crisis 

 in the industry threatened by the approach of crude rubber to the 

 75 cents level. Later, when rubber actually rose to $1, it caused 

 little concern, because the advance had been discounted. The 

 salient feature of the crude rubber situation in future will be 



greater stability than in times past, due to reasons about which 

 the trade can keep better informed — and this is of more im- 

 portance to the trade than to be able to buy rubber at any 

 particular price, low or high. 



We continue to be surprised at the amount' of energy ex- 

 pended in the effort to produce synthetic rubber. Suppose it were 

 produced, it would be of importance only to the extent that it 

 could be exchanged for gold — or its equivalent. There are still 

 many people in the world who have little or no use for rubber, 

 but everybody can use gold. Then why do not the busy investi- 

 gators, instead of aiming at artificial rubber, revive the time- 

 honored game of trying to make gold from the baser metals? 



The death of the King of the Belgians recalls not alone the 

 Congo question, but to the mind of the Editor it recalls "stop- 

 ping the press" in The India Rubber World office — it was back 

 in April, 1890 — to make room for a report just received regard- 

 ing Stanley's discoveries of rubber in the Congo Free State. 

 This section of Africa, he declared, would become "the rubber 

 reservoir of the universe." From that date until this there has 

 scarcely been an issue of the paper without references to the 

 Congo region and its rubber — not discussion or criticism or senti- 

 ment, but news. And this month is to be reported the death of 

 King Leopold, whose name has been connected so much with 

 the subject of rubber. The India Rubber World has not de- 

 voted itself to any particular rubber yielding country, but has 

 attempted to keep its readers informed regarding them all. But 

 at this moment, when the files of the paper can be pointed to as 

 embracing the story of Congo rubber from the first word, 

 it seems in order to use this fact on which to base the reminder 

 that, whatever else The India Rubber \\\rld may have been, it 

 has always been a newspaper. 



VIANNA AND OTHER SPECULATORS. 



T -1 the Editor of The India Rubber World : I notice the 

 *■ publication in your issue of November 1 (page 59) refer- 

 ring to Mr. Vianna, of Hello & Co., in Para, as the person who 

 acquired such notoriety in years gone by through raising the 

 prices of rubber up to $1.20 or thereabouts. This is wrong. 

 The unfortunate gentleman connected with this attempt to raise 

 rubber prices is no longer among the living and it is not he, 

 therefore, who is now a member of the Mello firm, as your para- 

 graph leads one to believe, but is the surviving brother. The 

 former was Joaquim Candodo Vianna, Baron de Gondoriz. while 

 the survivor is Mr. Joaquim Guilherme Vianna. 



Mindful of the rule, "speak no ill of the dead," I should be 

 pleased to see the rubber press refrain from referring to this 

 former able business man as an arch speculator. The writer of 

 these lines has heard from such an authority on rubber as Mr. 

 Charles R. Flint that, had Mr. Vianna been able to "hold his 

 own against banking odds," manufacturers would have seen their 

 way to buy rubber at the price level planned by him within eight 

 days of the date of the crash. Upon the other hand, the writer 

 has heard it from other notable authorities that Mr. Vianna's 

 plans were frustrated by parties in the trade with stronger 

 financial backing, who frightened manufacturers from the market 

 with offers of rubber for future delivery at much lower figures 

 than Mr. Vianna had tried to obtain. Now the facts of the case 

 are that the one was no more an arch speculator than the other, 

 only the European firm was so much better backed financially 

 and thus had the means of "taking the ground from under 

 Vianna's feet." 



If any one merits the title of arch speculator on the Amazon, 

 the palm must be given with all honors to the head of a certain 



