PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF RUBBER. 19 



satisfactory order, though in some localities scarcity of labour 

 has caused weeding of new clearings to be both difficult and 

 expensive." In Malaya, this question is, however, more serious. 

 Enormous planting schemes have been started within the last 

 few years which are dependent to a very great extent on inden- 

 tured labour for development. The Director of Agriculture for 

 the Federated Malay States in his annual report for 1906 gave 

 the number of labourers employed on estates at nearly 40,000, of 

 whom about 30,000 were Tamils, and estimated that when the 

 thirteen million trees then planted come into bearing in five 

 years' time, 50,000 coolies will be required for tapping operations. 



Rates of wages have consequently increased, with the natural 

 result, an enhanced cost in the production of rubber. 



If labour be scarce in the planting districts now that only 

 about two million trees are in bearing, what will be the condition 

 of affairs six years hence, when it is estimated that over fifty 

 million trees will have reached the productive stage? Tamil 

 labourers engaged in South India are largely employed both 

 in Ceylon and in Malaya, and it is a significant fact that several 

 estates in South India have recently increased their rate of pay 

 for Tamil labour. 



The bulk of the cultivated rubber areas are sufficiently 

 distant from the most important centres of wild rubber produc- 

 tion for any shortage of labour, caused by the development of 

 the cultivated rubber industry, to injuriously affect the collection 

 of wild rubber. 



EPIDEMICS. 



The cultivation of large areas with a single species of plant 

 is always a dangerous policy in view of the difficulty of checking 

 the diffusion of diseases. Notwithstanding the comparative 

 immunity from diseases which cultivated Para rubber plants 

 have so far experienced, the fact must not be lost sight of that 

 the constant stripping of the bark of the trees, which modern 

 methods of tapping involve, and the constant weakening of the 

 trees renders them more susceptible to both insect and fungus 

 attacks. Where rubber plants exist in the wild state intermingled 

 with a vast variety of different orders, genera, and species of 

 plants, their isolation prevents the spread of noxious diseases to a 

 very large extent. 



