16 RUBBER 



Goodyear, who made his first successful experiments in 

 1839. He himself did much to improve his method of 

 making rubber more durable, and he also worked up 

 this product into a material similar to horn ; but it 

 was left for another inventive genius to find out how 

 to polish that material and give us the very useful form 

 of rubber which we call " vulcanite." 



The discovery of the vulcanization process acted as 

 a very great stimulus to the rubber industry. More 

 and more keen and widespread became the desire to 

 manufacture rubber goods, and the growing demand for 

 the raw material led Brazil to extend her search for 

 Hevea trees, and to set about dealing with the export 

 of raw rubber in a more business-like way. Up to 

 about 1877 the forests around the mouth of the Amazon 

 had been the only source of supply. Now some of 

 the upper tributaries of the river were exploited, and 

 the glowing reports as to the wealth of Hevea in the 

 inland forests led to a rush of rubber-gatherers into 

 the interior. It soon became known that these reports 

 had not exaggerated the available supply of Para 

 rubber, and fresh energy and enterprise were attracted 

 to the Valley of the Amazon by the rosy prospects of 

 the raw rubber trade. 



" How has that trade prospered ?" 



The Amazon District (Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru) 

 now has numerous competitors who cater for the 

 world's annual consumption of upwards of 200,000 tons 

 of raw rubber. But up to 1912 the Amazon Valley 

 continued to control the rubber industry, because it 

 exported such a large proportion of the world's whole 

 supply of the raw material, and the quality of its out- 

 put was far superior to that of the supplies from nearly 

 every other rubber-producing country. 



