LAXDOLPHIA RLBHER FORESTS 95 



to the best system to adopt in working stem 

 rubber, there can be none about working root 

 rubber. Hoots being underground cannot be 

 tapped, and even if tapping them were a practi- 

 cal proposition, the rubber being soHd would not 

 tlow. The roots must, therefore, be dug up or 

 the rubber left alone. 



This clears the ground and leaves us free to 

 consider how best to obtain the rubber from the 

 roots after they have been dug up. I have 

 described the native process ; it is long and 

 laborious, and judging from what I saw two men 

 could not obtain in one day more than about half 

 a pound of rubber valued at 50 or GO per cent, of 

 clean stem rubber. This offers little inducement 

 to the native, so a concessioner would seriously 

 be faced with that most troublesome of African 

 problems — the labour question. His object being 

 to get rubber he would have difficulty, owing to 

 the small remuneration he could offer, in 

 inducing a sufficient number of natives to 

 devote themselves constantly to getting it for 

 him. Employing a considerable amount of 

 capital, he must not only get rubber but get 

 it in quantity. 



The only solution of the difficulty is to extract 

 the rubber by means of machinery, and I am 

 convinced that without machinery root rubber 



