December i, 1903] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



83 



CRUDE RUBBER INTERESTS. 



THE EXHAUSTION OF " CAUCHO ". 



A REPORT by United States Consul Kenneday, at Para, 

 dated September 9, refers to "the rapid destruction 

 of the rubber forests in the very region where the best 

 rubber is found," as " really worrying the rubber men," 

 and expected this year to " be beyond all precedent — enormous 

 and irreparable." He refers to advices from an exploring ex- 

 pedition headed by Captain William Gerdeau, an expert of 

 fourteen years' experience, who has spent more than the year 

 past in an investigation of the upper Amazon territory, where 

 he found " the rubber gatherers cutting down the forests with 

 amazing rapidity and improvidence, far beyond what his pre- 

 vious information had led him to expect." Another report 

 quoted by the consul is one by Mr. Robert B. Ewart, who 

 lately crossed the continent from Lima, Peru, coming down 

 the Ucayali river to Iquitos, and thence down the Amazon to 

 Para. In the great territory drained by the Ucayali he refers 

 to the Caucho hunters as "the bane of the country," who 

 " have done incalculable damage in the past few years" incut- 

 ting down the rubber trees. " Every year enormous forests of 

 rubber are destroyed, and each year the supply grows less and 

 less and the rubber gatherers themselves go back further from 

 the rivers." 



Consul Kenneday in transmitting this information evidently 

 confounds the Caucho tree with the Hevea species, which yield 

 the Para rubber of commerce. It is no news that the Caucho 

 yield is obtained wholly by the destruction of the trees, where- 

 as this practice has never extended to the extraction of rubber 

 from the Hevea. On the other hand, the tendency has been 

 to give better care to the preservation of the Para rubber trees, 

 which are visited regularly, year after year, in carefully marked 

 estradas, permanent groups of trees well cared for being regard 

 ed as the most important asset of the country. 



Thirteen years ago Major J. Orton Kerbey, then United 

 States consul at Para, reported : 



The Peruvian rubber or Caucho forests are already fast disappearing 

 and the nearest are now far away. The practice of felling the tree to 

 collect the rubber has destroyed all the trees near the rivers, except far 

 up on the Ucayali and Javary rivers. It is affirmed that extensive tracts 

 of forest have not yet been touched, but that they are difficult of access 

 on account of the distance from the rivers and the lack of roads. It is 

 perfectly safe to assert that in the near future all the available Caucho 

 forests of Peru will have disappeared unless other methods are speedily 

 adopted. 



This statement has been confirmed by every writer on the 

 conditions of the Caucho industry down to the present time. 

 In October, 1901, The India Rubber World contained an 

 extensive report on the exhaustion of the rubber resources of 

 Colombia, the grade of rubber produced there being the same 

 as the Caucho from the upper Amazon, and the same wasteful 

 practices have followed the migration of the Caucho hunters 

 to the headwaters of the Amazon. And yet such was the 

 wealth of the latter region that year after year the output of 

 gum has increased rather than fallen off. But this cannot con- 

 tinue always. In The Geographical fournal (London) for Oc- 

 tober, C. Satchell presents a map of the river Yavary (Javary)_ 

 which forms the boundary between Brazil and Peru, and in 

 writing of the adjacent country he says : " Rubber gathering is 

 practically the sole industry, and this is decaying." The same 

 story may be told of every river along which Caucho is gath- 

 ered extensively. While the sources of Para rubber proper are 



not being destroyed to the extent which might be inferred 

 from Mr. Consul Kenneday 's report, an important grade of 

 rubber is disappearing, leaving the Hevea trees to be the sole 

 natural source of rubber. 



A CONSUL TO REPORT ON RUBBER. 

 On November 14 Colonel Louis N. Ayme, the new United 

 States consul for Paid, sailed from New York, on the Cearense, 

 for his official post. It is understood that, acting under in- 

 structions from Washington, Consul Ayme will, as soon as 

 practicable after becoming established at Para, go up the Ama- 

 zon, with a view to studying and reporting upon business con- 

 ditions in general, and particularly such details as may be of 

 interest in connection with the extension of American trade. 

 As the trade of his district (which embraces Mangos) is so 

 largely based upon rubber, whatever the consul may write re- 

 garding his investigations will be practically a report on rubber. 



A RUBBER SCHOOL IN FRENCH AFRICA. 



An industrial school established in Bobo-Dioulasso, the 

 French Soudan, in 1902, with funds supplied by the colony, has 

 for its object the instruction of natives in the best methods of 

 extracting and coagulating rubber, with a view to the preserva- 

 tion of the trees. In a report of June 28, 1903, mentioned in La 

 Quinzaine, the government delegate in the colony states that 

 the school has been attended since the beginning by more than 

 1 50 pupils, who have been arranged in groups and taken into the 

 best rubber districts in various parts of the colony. The official 

 report is to the effect that good results have been obtained, and 

 that the merchantsare pleased with the effect upon the native in 

 the avoidance of the destruction of the rubber yielding plants, 

 and also in the preparation of rubber of a better quality than in 

 the past. As early as February, 1902, the lieutenant governor of 

 French Guinea issued a decree forbidding the exportation of 

 adulterated rubber, which has had such good results in improv- 

 ing the quality of rubber sent from that region that similar reg- 

 ulations are to be enforced throughout French Africa. 



THE SALE OF CONGO RUBBER. 



The lines which follow appeared in some of the American 

 newspapers early in the past month : 



Amsterdam, Nov. 5. — Among the reforms which will shortly be in- 

 troduced in regard to trading with the Congo Free State will be one in 

 regard to a change in the custom of selling ivory and rubber. Under 

 the present arrangement agents collect the stock at Boma, where it is 

 sold. Thence it is forwarded to Antwerp. In the future it will be col- 

 lected at some place on the lower Congo where it will be sold at public 

 auction. This change will be a serious blow at the commerce of Ant- 

 werp, but it is thought that it will benefit the Congo Free State. 



When this publication was brought to the attention of Mr 

 Albert T. Morse, of A. T. Morse & Co. (New York), crude rub- 

 ber merchants and important handlers of Congo rubbers, that 

 gentleman was very positive in expressing his doubts that any 

 such change was contemplated. 



" I can see no good reason," said Mr. Morse, " why any such 

 change should be made, and every reason why it should not be 

 made. At Antwerp the rubber buyers of Europe can collect, 

 and rubber merchants of other countries can receive samples 

 from there in ten days. There would be no dealers go to Boma 

 and it would take forty days to get samples delivered. lean 

 see no advantage in such a change to the Congo Free State, for 

 it would bring very few people there and I am confident the 



