SCARCITY OF RUBBER 



villages, who were brought to the Chef de Poste and imprisoned 

 by him as hostages for the industry of their husbands. Or 

 else the sentries shot some of the defaulters as examples to 

 the rest. Frequently there were armed expeditions into 

 refractory districts and widespread promiscuous slaughter. 

 The cannibal soldiers of the State or of the Company some- 

 times feasting on the bodies of the slain." ^ 



The supply of rubber has of recent years shown signs of 

 becoming exhausted. As time goes on the Indians of the 

 Amazon and Orinoco must every year travel deeper into the 

 inaccessible forests of the Amazon, Orinoco, or in Nicaragua. 

 Every year also makes it more difficult for the Malagasy in 

 Madagascar, or the Negroes in West Africa and the Congo, 

 to gather sufficient rubber for the world's ever-growing 

 needs. Liberia, the Negro Republic, is said still to possess 

 plenty of rubber; but it is probable that the true solution of 

 the difficulty will be found in the plantation of rubber trees. 

 The exports from Madagascar in 1903 were valued at 

 2,585,000 francs ; from Brazil, £9,700,000 ; from Nicaragua, 

 400,000 gold pesos (twelve pesos to the £) ; from the 

 Congo, 47,000,000 francs; but even then about 85,000 

 rupees worth of rubber was exported from plantations in 

 Ceylon. Unfortunately the trees do not begin to yield until 

 they are eight years old, but the estimated profit per acre 

 is very high, at least according to some authorities, who 

 give a yield of £88 per acre (in Nicaragua). 



One cannot help hoping that this will be the case. 

 When one thinks, e.g., of the Uachins in the forests at the 

 head of Namkong, who spend forty days in carrying their 

 rubber on men's shoulders across the mountains to Assam, or 

 of the horrible stories of the Congo Free State, plantation 



^ Contemporary/ Revimv, Dec., 1905. Mr. Herbert Samuel, m.p. 



310 



