THE RUBBER BOOM 63 



so rapidly went down with a slump even more rapidly. 

 More fortunes were lost in that Slump than were made 

 during the Boom, and some of the folk who were most 

 badly hit in the end were people who had won large 

 sums at the beginning of the game, and had thus been 

 tempted to go on playing more and more recklessly. 



Among the few who profited in the long-run were 

 men who had pinned their faith to plantation rubber 

 long before the Boom. Some of them had brought 

 the rubber plantations into existence, had worked hard 

 at clearing jungle and planting rubber-trees, had 

 struggled to pay their way whilst they brought up 

 those trees to producing stage, in the days when the 

 public would not have risked a penny on any such 

 hazardous venture as rubber-growing, even if they had 

 been wide awake enough to know that a few enthusiasts 

 and a few hard-up planters were trying to establish 

 this new branch of agriculture. When these men had 

 been obliged to get a few friends to help them turn 

 their property into a partnership concern, because they 

 wanted ready money to go on with, they had taken 

 some of the purchase price of their property in the 

 form of shares, so that they themselves could be 

 partners. Fortunes were also cleared by outsiders 

 who had had enough faith in plantation rubber to buj^ 

 shares when the earliest planted estates were turned 

 into companies, for all the people who had taken over 

 or bought shares for a small sum were able to sell their 

 partnership rights at a big profit in the early days of 

 Boom. Many of them bought back shares when prices 

 fell, and bargain after bargain was picked up during 

 the Slump by people who knew which companies 

 possessed the best plantations. 



