AMKKICAX l"()Ki:STKKS IN TIIK TKOIMCS 159 



tiiia for the leather company in which he is employed. Still another 

 forester is in the Malay region investigating the gutta-percha situation 

 for an electric company. A trained forester is employed by a firm 

 dealing mainly in imported tropical forest woods of various kinds. 

 This man has made a number of trips to the tropics in matters con- 

 nected with the business. 



A third outlet for American foresters in the tropics has been created 

 in the rapid advance made in recent years in rubber planting. Ten 

 years ago rubber was largely a wild forest product. Today fully 90 

 per cent of the rubber of commerce comes from planted crops. Many 

 of the problems connected with this cultural forest crop are those which 

 the trained forester is best able to handle, and the rubber companies 

 recognize this fact, for at least three American foresters are now 

 employed by Dutch-American concerns in the Island of Sumatra. As 

 other wild tropical forest products of especial kinds near the stage of 

 exhaustion capital will become interested in raising them as forest 

 crops, or will need men to discover new substitutes. The logical men 

 to handle such work are foresters. 



The fourth and la^t outlet for foresters is government employ in 

 tropical countries. From this standpoint the tropical countries can be 

 sharply divided into two classes. On the one hand there are the 

 colonial possessions of European countries and the United States and 

 on the other hand there are the independent States, some 20 Latin 

 American republics. 



Practically all countries with possessions in the tropics employ 

 trained foresters. Some of these, like England, have a school where 

 men are trained for tropical work especially for India. As a rule 

 colonial tropical countries have drawn on the home governments for 

 their foresters. There have been some notable exceptions to this. 

 For instance the British North Borneo Government has two American 

 foresters in its employ, together with a number of Filipinos trained 

 in the Forest School of the Philippine Islands. One American forester 

 is in charge of the investigative work connected with the forestry de- 

 partment of the Federated Malay States, and only recently a number of 

 Americans have accepted positions with the British Government in 

 India to carry on work connected with the exploitation and utilization 

 of forest products. So long as the governments of European colonies 

 in the tropics can find men to handle certain phases of forestry work 

 from the home country they will not employ foreigners. 



