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THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[April i, 1910. 



AMAZONIA VERSUS THE EAST. 



THE function of The India Rubber World as a rep- 

 resentative trade paper brings it in contact some- 

 times with widely conflicting interests. From the begin- 

 ning this journal has been a constant and persistent ad- 

 vocate of rubber culture, on precisely the same principle 

 which would lead one to advise planting potatoes, rather 

 than have the world depend upon the natural supply. By 

 the way, the potato, like caoutchouc, was first introduced 

 to the world at large from Quito. Similarly mention may 

 be made of the cinchona plant (the source of quinine), 

 first discovered in the forests of Peru and profitably in- 

 troduced to cultivation in the Far East by individuals who, 

 later, encouraged by their success with cinchona, trans- 

 planted the Amazon rubber tree to Ceylon. The modern 

 world cannot live without potatoes or quinine or rubber. 

 And it cannot depend upon natural sources of supply. 



But it does not follow that all the money being invested 

 to-day in the scores of companies mentioned in this pa- 

 per in each issue under the heading "The British Rubber 

 Craze" will ever yield dividends. The returns of 40 per 

 cent., 60 per cent., and even 80 per cent, in the case of 

 certain rubber plantation companies have been honestly 

 earned, and we should not be surprised to see the largest 

 figure mentioned doubled within a very few years. With- 

 out doubt, the cultivation of rubber offers the greatest 

 possibilities in the way of honestly earned dividends of 

 any business in which the public of any country has ever 

 been allowed to invest. But the biggest dividend payers so 

 far are companies in which the public has not been in- 

 vited to participate. 



Xo doubt, every day sees the birth of a rubber planta- 

 tion company which will prove astonishingly prosperous. 

 The public, however, invest in this business without dis- 

 crimination. One rubber company yields 80 per cent, 

 on its capitalization; another company may do the same 

 thing; therefore people buy shares in the first new com- 

 pany that is announced. We reported lately the issue 

 to the public of £50,000 in shares by a company formed 

 to work out a new and untried proposition in wild rub- 

 ber, and the subscriptions received in one day amounted 

 to £1,110,000 — or twenty-two times as much us was asked 

 for. And this sort of thing is repeated daily in London. 



One mistake which our transatlantic friends have made 

 in regard to rubber, as has been pointed out in The In- 

 dia Rubber World, is assuming that plantation products 

 from the Far East will drive the forest rubber areas of 

 the Amazon out of competition. It is true that the world 

 no longer derives potatoes from Quito, or quinine barks 

 from Peru, but the rubber situation on the Amazon dif- 

 fers in many ways from the other interests mentioned. 

 Rubber is in vast demand and the millions upon millions 

 of trees now yielding this material, on the ground where 

 nature planted them, are being guarded by a lately 

 awakened public intelligence as closely as any gold miner 

 ever protected his rights to a "find." One may as well 



argue that the cotton planters of the United States will 

 retire from business because a few Britishers are produc- 

 ing good cotton in Africa as that Brazil will cease to pro- 

 duce rubber on account of what many Britishers are doing 

 in Asia. 



There were no rubber trees in Ceylon, and extensive 

 rubber forests were created there. There are rubber trees 

 already in the Amazon countries which in a year yield 

 about 85,000,000 pounds of the best rubber ever known, 

 and great profits to people who manage their business 

 with intelligence. It would be a simple matter for the 

 rich owners of large seringaes to remove from the prop- 

 erties all the forest growth but rubber and to substitute 

 rubber trees. They can also introduce cattle and the cul- 

 tivation of vegetables — instead of importing food — and 

 while waiting for a few years for the growing rubber to 

 become productive, derive handsome profits from the 

 giant trees already on the ground. 



The India Rubber World believes in rubber culture 

 to-day even more than at -any time in the past, but it be- 

 lieves no less earnestly that an improved rubber regime 

 in the Amazon region is at hand. Another way in which 

 to put it is that rubber will yet be planted in South 

 America under the system the Britishers have developed 

 in the East. There will always be such a demand for rub- 

 ber as will insure a profit in this production, and how- 

 ever much Ceylon and Malaysia may produce, Brazil will 

 be called upon continually to increase its output. 



Meanwhile, it is wise to deliberate before investing in 

 any sort of rubber-producing enterprise in whatever 

 country, precisely as one should deliberate before buying 

 Sank stocks or 'Void bricks." 



LIKE INVESTMENTS IN THE MOON. 



THERE is mure than one form of rubber craze. The 

 frenzy of the British investor to put his money 

 into planting shares is more comprehensible than the fic- 

 tion which finds space in the columns of sober American 

 newspapers and later forms part of the stock of knowl- 

 edge of the reading public. Let us look into the columns 

 of the Xew York Tribune, owned by the American am- 

 bassador at the Court of St. James's, and regarded by 

 itself and by many devoted readers as one of the most 

 carefully edited newspapers existant. A leader in the 

 Tribune of March 13, 1910, begins: 



The extraordinary activity in dealings in shares in india-rubber companies 

 on the London Stnck Exchange recalls a remark which was made by the 

 late Collis P. Huntington to a representative of this paper, perhaps twenty 

 years ago. He was discussing the future industrial developments of the 

 world and the prospective opportunities for the making of fortunes, and 

 the conclusion to which he came and which he unhesitatingly expressed 

 was that no young man could do better than to invest his means in rubber 

 forests or plantations in Central Africa. A good rubber plantation, he de- 

 clared, was to be preferred to a gold mine. That estimate appears to be 

 verified at the present time [and so on]. 



The fact is that the connection of the name of Hunt- 

 ington, the greatest American railway builder of his time, 

 with rubber was due to a surplus of imagination in the 



