320 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[July i, 1908. 



figured out pretty accurately in advar.ce. The one draw- 

 back, however, is that in the beginning, particularly in cities 

 where cabs have not been in general use, some time will be 

 required for people to get into the habit of using the new 

 vehicles, and during this period the company which lacks 

 a solid financial formation may come to grief. 



This thought is suggested in part by the report that 

 the General Omnibus Company, of Berlin, which car- 

 ried 133,800,000 passengers in their motor 'buses last 

 year, lost about $130,000. Now, a good many people 

 would assume that, as a matter of course, the convey- 

 ance of about 366,575 cash paying passengers per day 

 by a single corporation would result in a handsome profit. 

 Just so the people of Xew York city seem to think that 

 "subways," because crowded with passengers, must profit 

 the companies operating them, and they clamor incessantly 

 for extensions of the system. 



But the transportation problem, in whatever form, is a 

 complex one ; one trouble with it is that only practice will 

 prove if it will pay, and a heavy expenditure is necessary 

 before a new service can be put into operation. Then 

 people must get into the habit of using it, then the com- 

 pany must remedy mistakes and supply something which 

 strangely was overlooked at the beginning, and after 

 learning how to run the business economically, there may 

 be dividends for the capital employed. 



It is reasonable that a new class of vehicles run for 

 public hire should immediately yield large profits, but one 

 advantage of the motor cabs is that a new service may 

 te started in any city at a less initial cost than almost 

 any other transportation system, and we cannot avoid the 

 impression that ultimately these public vehicles will largely 

 outnumber the privately owned automobiles, the business 

 in which has within a short time become so enormous. 

 When the taxicab does come into its own the tire business 

 will expand as it never has before. Still, as we have said, 

 there may be serious risks in the paths of some of the 

 pioneers in this field. 



SOMETHING DOING IN MEXICO. 



THERE is reason to believe that Mexican exports are 

 beginning to include considerable rubber obtained 

 from i)lanted trees. It is true that these trees for 

 the most part were planted primarily for the purpose of 

 shading cacao or coffee, but the same was the case with 

 the first trees that yielded cnmmercial rubber in Ceylon. 

 They are planted trees and the rubber is a plantation 

 product just as much as if the original idea had been to 

 form plantations of rubber. .\nd if these trees yield 

 rubber, why should not those trees which were planted 

 for this purpose and no other prove equally productive 

 on attaining the proper size, as they are beginning to do 

 in Ceylon? 



The quantity of plantation rubber produced in Mexico 

 tlius far cannot be stated so accurately as in the case of 

 the Ceylon product, but some figures on this subject print- 



ed in another column appear worthy of confidence. The 

 Mexican representative of an important New York firm 

 states that their purchases of locally produced rubber for 

 export have increased from 7,000 pounds seven years ago 

 to 182,219 pounds in 1907. He is convinced that not 

 over 4,000 pounds of this was "wild" rubber. Besides, 

 he credits the other merchants in the same town with 

 buying half as much more. Supposing the situation to 

 be as stated by this merchant, the plantation rubber 

 shipped last year from one Mexican town amounted to 

 about 267,000 pounds, without reference to what may 

 have been done in other parts of the republic. 



Now, this is more rubber than was shipped from 

 Ceylon in any year prior to 1906. It is more than was 

 shipped from Malaya in any year before that date. It is 

 more than all the rubber, of whatever kind, shipped from 

 Mexico in the fiscal year 1897-98, and it has come about 

 so quietly that most persons who read these lines prob- 

 ably will be surprised. Yet these figures are larger than 

 those from the Far East which first gave a "boom" to 

 rubber planting over there and led to the formation of 

 some of the most prominent plantation companies that 

 have been capitalized in England. 



One hundred and eighty tons or so of rubber, consid- 

 ered alone, is not of much importance ; considered as the 

 product of planted Costilloa trees in Mexico, and evi- 

 dence that such trees can be cultivated profitably, it is a 

 matter of very real importance to the owners of several 

 millions of planted trees who have been waiting for assur- 

 ances that their money has not been thrown away. We 

 hope that this latest intelligence will encourage more 

 plantation managers in Mexico to get in readiness to do 

 some systematic rubber tapping on a liberal scale. 



INTERNATIONAL "TRUSTS." 



AN international steel trust is positively reported 

 to be in process of formation to combine im- 

 portant interests in Great Britain, continental 

 Europe and the United States. It may be that the re- 

 port is premature, but it reflects a definite tendency in 

 the economic world to-day. However "trusts" may be 

 criticized, in general or in particular, it must be admitted 

 that industrial combinations have become a part of 

 the established order of things, and we can see no in- 

 dication of a return to the conditions that prevailed be- 

 fore the "trusts" came. Who is not better pleased 

 with the through train service across the continent to- 

 day than with the earlier mode of travel, when one 

 had to change cars several times in crossing a single 

 State, paying fares to a different company with every 

 change? 



The proposition calls for no argument that if com- 

 binations in manufacturing bring better results, they 

 will be entered into; if not, they will be avoided. A 

 general tendency toward combinations, therefore, 

 would tend to demonstrate the soundness of the theory 



