May i, 1910.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD. 



261 



Published on the 1st of each Month hy 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING GO., 



No. 395 BROADWAY. NEW YORK. 

 CABLE ADDRESS: IRWORLD. NEW YORK. 



HENRY C. PEARSON, 



EDITOR. 



HAWTHORNE HILL, 

 ASSOCIATE. 



Vol. 42. 



MAY 1, 1910. 



No. 2. 



Subscriptions : $3.00 per year, $1.75 for six months, postpaid, for the 

 United States and dependencies and Mexico. To the Dominion 

 of Canada and all other countries, $3.50 (or equivalent fundsi 

 per year, postpaid. 



Advertising : Rates will be made known on application. 



Remittances : Should always be made by bank or draft, Postoffiee or 

 Express money orders on New York, payable to The India 

 Rubber Publishing Company. Remittances for foreign sub- 

 scriptions should be sent by International Postal Order, payable 

 as above. 



Discontinuances : Yearly orders for subscriptions and advertising are 

 regarded as permanent, and after the first twelve months they 

 will be discontinued only at the request of the subscriber or ad- 

 vertiser. Bills are rendered promptly at the beginning of each 

 period, and thereby our patrons have due notice of continuance. 



COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING CO. 



Entered at New York postoffiee as mail matter of the second class. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE READING MATTER. 



IS THERE A "CORNER" IN RUBBER? 



THE conditions which fix the price of raw rubber are 

 less understood by the rubber interest as a whole, 

 perhaps, than is true of almost any other commodity in 

 the industry in which it figures. This is due largely to 

 the fact that rubber is produced in regions so remote 

 from the countries of consumption — and that these differ- 

 ent departments are necessarily in different hands, and 

 conducted under conditions which are not always mutu- 

 ally understood. This article is not designed to cover 

 the whole subject, but as an answer to some inquiries 

 which reach this journal. 



The rubber business really is carried on in three dis- 

 tinct and unrelated departments — 



The production of the raw material ; 



The supplying of rubber to consumers ; and 



The making and sale of rubber goods. 



We are writing now particularly for the interest of 

 manufacturers — the buyers of raw rubber for consump- 

 tion. The rubber manufacturer, from the beginning of 

 the industry, has been in a position of not being able to 

 control in any way the cost of the chief material required 

 s in his business ; or to contract very long in advance for 

 r supplies at a fixed price ; or even to cultivate with ac- 

 curacy the cost of material at any given time ahead. 



The uncertainty involved has been exceedingly incon- 



venient to the manufacturers, and it is not surprising that 

 at times the changing prices of raw rubber have been 

 attributed to other than the actual causes. 



For some reason or other many manufacturers seem i 

 disposed to consider every rise in the cost of rubber to BOI 

 be due to "speculation" — in other words, the idea obtains 

 that rubber is "cornered" somewhere and held for sale 

 at prices not justified by trade conditions. Of late this 

 impression apparently has been strengthened by reports 

 that rubber is being "held up" on the Amazon with the 

 aid of the government, under the new law authorizing 

 banks to advance money on rubber stocks, whereas for- 

 merly Amazon rubber had to go forward to market 

 whenever it came down the rivers, without regard to 

 prices realized. 



Whatever may be the ultimate effect of the new regu- 

 lations, it is a mistake to suppose that rubber is being 

 stored on the Amazon today, with the aid of bank ad- 

 vances or otherwise. The price of $3 a pound is so al- 

 luring that every producer in the world is hurrying his 

 rubber to market, in order to realize on it before a de- 

 cline comes. It may be that rubber will go still higher, 

 but it would be superlatively foolish to pay storage 

 charges and interest on bank advances to hold rubber 

 from the market under present conditions. 



Another point against the idea that rubber is being 

 stored in the countries of production is the fact that the 

 imports of consuming countries were never before so 

 large as at this time. On the whole, it appears safe to 

 assert that rubber prices today are as fully controlled 

 by conditions of supply and demand as at any other time 

 in the history of the trade. 



THE HASTENING OF THE CRASH. 



PROBABLY no one is qualified to speak with more 

 authority in the way of caution regarding the 

 British rubber craze than Sir Frank Athelstane Swetten- 

 ham, g. c m. c, who retired from the governorship of 

 the Straits Settlements about the time profits from rub- 

 ber culture in the Far East began to be realized and 

 returned to England, where he now sits on the boards 

 of seven or more plantation companies which have been 

 well managed, and most of them paying dividends at a 

 rate most astonishing to the old school of conservative 

 business men. At a recent meeting of one of his com- 

 panies Sir Frank was reported as saying that a great 

 many rubber planting companies had been floated lately 

 in which he thought no one outside a lunatic asylum 

 would have invested a shilling. 



This sentiment was commended heartily at the last 

 meeting of the Kuala Selangor Rubber Co., Limited, by 

 their chairman, Mr. William A. Horn. We have not 

 the pleasure of this gentleman's acquaintance, but the 

 perusal of his address to the shareholders, which would 

 fill two pages of The India Rubber World, impresses 

 us with the idea that his head is in the right place, 



