66 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[November i, 1903. 



THE LAW ON RESTRAINT OF TRADE. 



A DECISION dealing with combinations in restraint of 

 trade, rendered lately by the appellate division of the 

 New York supreme court, while it related to the sale of books, 

 would be equally applicable to such sales contracts as were in 

 force a few years ago in the rubber shoe trade. R. H. Macy & 

 Co., of New York, brought suit to restrain the American Pub- 

 lishers' Association from carrying out an agreement among its 

 members not to sell their publications to any dealer who did 

 not bind himself to retail the books at a fixed net price. The 

 action was brought under the statute (Laws of New York, 1899, 

 chapter 690) declaring to be illegal any contract, agreement, 

 arrangement, or combination, whereby competition in the sup- 

 ply or price of any commodity of common use may be restrained 

 or prevented. On trial the case was won by the defendants, 

 followed by an appeal and a reversal by the higher court. 



Justice Ingraham, in the prevailing decision, says that the 

 statute does not attempt to prevent a manufacturer from fixing 

 the price at which he will sell his product. But when the arti- 

 cle has passed out of his hands, into the ownership of dealers 

 engaged in general business, its free sale would be restrained, 

 and competition in price would be prevented, by any combina- 

 tion of manufacturers of similar articles to refuse to sell to a 

 dealer who presumed to offer such article at less than the retail 

 price fixed by the manufacturers. The object of the Publishers' 

 Association clearly was to compel every dealer in their books 

 to fix the selling price of each book owned by him at the price 

 designated by the publishers. Hence competition in the price 

 of the books would be restrained or prevented, within the 

 meaning of the statute. It was claimed, for the publishers, that 



their agreement related only to copyrighted books, which each 

 publisher has a sole right to publish and sell, and that the 

 agreement was merely carrying out their monopoly under the 

 copyright law. But the court held that when the publisher of 

 a copyrighted book once sells the book, the copyright law gives 

 him no power to interfere with the property right of the pur- 

 chaser in the book, by regulating the price or otherwise. 



Justice McLaughlin, in a dissenting opinion, cited the case 

 of Park v. National Druggists' Association, in which the court 

 refused an injunction to restrain the defendant association 

 from granting a rebate only when the jobbers agreed to main- 

 tain a fixed rate of prices. He thought that that decision gov- 

 erned the present case. Justice Van Brunt was of the same 

 mind, and said : " I do not see why a seller of property in re- 

 spect to which he has a monopoly cannot impose any condi- 

 tions as to its resale that he sees fit." 



AFRICAN RUBBER IN TRINIDAD. 



IN regard to the rubber species Fumtumia elastica, formerly 

 known as the Kickxia Africana,a.n& producingthe so-called 

 " silk rubber " of Lagos, No. 33 of the Bulletin of the Trinidad 

 botanic garden says : 



" Our trees of this plant have made excellent progress during 

 the past season, and some of them are now 18 feet in height. 

 Several of them have produced seeds and large numbers of 

 seedlings have been raised. Among the trees it is noted (as is 

 general with seedlings), a large amount of variation appears 

 especially in the form and size of the seed pods or follicles. 

 Seed will be ripe about June, 1902." 



The Fumtumia is an important rubber tree. 



REVIEW OF THE CRUDE RUBBER MARKET. 



AS was to be expected, the sudden and very considerable 

 rise in Para grades, which reached its limit as the last 

 issue of this Journal was being printed, was followed by 

 an early reaction, but prices are still far above any re- 

 cent former level. A downward tendency was checked by the 

 results of the Antwerp sale of Congo sorts on October 23, when 

 higher prices were obtained than even at the September sale. 

 Besides, the movement of rubber down the Amazon has been 

 slower than was anticipated at the beginning of the season. In 

 spite of prices being higher than for three years past, and 

 the reported activity of traders in preparing for a large crop, 

 the total receipts at Para so far have been only slightly larger 

 than at the same period of last season, and decidedly less than 

 in 1901, as these figures show : 



1900. 1901. 1902. I9°3- 



July tons. Sbo 1260 1290 1280 



August 1290 I2QO 1370 12 3° 



September 1280 1940 1670 2010 



October 2350 2640 2280 a 2280 



Total, Four months 5780 7'3° 66l ° 6 78o 



[a To October 28, 1903.] 

 At the same time, consumption has been on a large scale. 

 The official returns of imports of crude India-rubber of all sorts 

 into the United States during the first nine months of 1903 

 show an increase of 5.287,729 pounds over the same period of 

 1902, or a gain of 14 per cent. The official statement of import 

 values of rubber for the same nine months of 1903 shows an in- 

 crease of $8,270,940 over the first three quarters of 1902, or in 

 other words, 45^ per cent. As the amount exported was 

 almost precisely the same in both periods, it is evident that the 

 consumption this year has been decidedly larger than last year, 



in spite of the fact that the average import value of all kinds of 

 rubber this year was 61}^ cents per pound, against only 48.2 

 cents during January to September in 1902. 



Current prices for Pari sorts are 30 per cent, higher on an 

 average than one year ago. 



Prices of Africans and Centrals have declined during the 

 month only about 2 cents a pound on an average. Supplies of 

 many grades of these classes are either very low or exhausted. 



Following is a statement of prices of Para grades, one year 

 ago, one month ago, and on October 30— the current date: 



PARA. Nov. 1, '02. Oct 1. '03. Oct. 30. 



Islands, tine, new 72@73 107(8108 97® 98 



Islands, fine, old @ U2@ii3 @ 



Upriver, fine, new 78@79 iio(8iii I02@I03 



Upriver, fine, old 8i@82 It2(aii3 104(8105 



Islands, coarse, new 47@48 68@ 6g 57® 58 



Islands, coarse, old @ l<* @ 



Upriver, coarse, new 62(863 88@ 89 82(883 



Upriver, coarse, old @ @ @ 



Caucho (Peruvian) sheet 52(853 60(870 63® 64 



Caucho (Peruvian) ball 56©57 7S@ 79 7 2 @ 73 



Tne market for other sorts in New York on which prices 

 have been better maintained, as a rule is as follows : 



AFRICAN. Ikelemba 92 <?°3 



Sierra Leone, istquality89 (890 Madagascar, pinky 81 (882 



Massai. red 89 (890 CENTRALS. 



Benguella 72 (873 Esmeralda, sausage. . .72 (873 



Cameroon ball 64 ©65 Guayaquil, strip 60 @6i 



Gaboon flake @ Nicaragua, scrap .. . .71 (872 



Gaboon lump 48 (849 Panama, slab 54 @55 



Niger paste @ Mexican, scrap 71 @7 2 



Accra flake 20 ©30 Mexican, slab 53 @54 



Accra buttons None here Mangabeira. sheets . .55 (856 



Accra s>rips None here 



Lopori ball, prime 91 ©92 



Lopori strip, do 84 (885 



EAST INDIAN. 



Assam 80 <88i 



Borneo @ 



