HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS 59 



cultivation — larger areas were put under Hevea in 

 Malaya, and rubber planting was begun in Ceylon, 

 even though tea-growing was paying so well. By 

 1899 it had been proved that Hevea trees would yield 

 marketable rubber ; in this year the first cultivated 

 Para rubber, prepared from the trees planted in Perak, 

 was sold in the London market at 3s. lOd. per pound. 



But it was not until about 1905 that money was at 

 all freely forthcoming for rubber cultivation. Hitherto 

 the planter who had wanted to turn his estate into a 

 company, because he lacked means for its upkeep and 

 development, could only hope for support from private 

 friends. Now that there was an actual output of 

 plantation rubber from the East, the great financiers 

 who had looked upon any prophecy of such a supply 

 as a fairy tale began to think that it was worth while 

 to risk money in an enterprise which gave such sound 

 promise of yielding extraordinarily large profits. The 

 amount of money that was now available for rubber- 

 growing gave scope for a considerable development 

 of the industry. The acreage under Hevea was in- 

 creased on the existing estates in Malaya, and jungle 

 was cleared for the opening up of new estates ; in Ceylon, 

 Hevea was planted on a large scale among the flourish- 

 ing tea - bushes, and rubber-planting was seriously 

 undertaken in the commercial spirit in other parts of 

 the Eastern Tropics, also in tropical lands of the West. 



As yet, however, the public had not awakened to 

 the money-making possibilities of rubber cultivation. 

 At last, in the spring of 1910, they suddenly "dis- 

 covered " plantation rubber. Some of the companies 

 owning Eastern estates which had been planted up 

 with Hevea in 1905, or earlier, had paid to their share- ^ 



