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Two questions remain. One is as to the maintenance 

 of an ample supply of cheap labour for the plantations 

 of the Eastern tropics; the other, with which we are 

 more immediately concerned, is as to the quality of the 

 rubber produced in plantations as compared with that 

 of the rubber obtained from the trees of the forests of 

 South America. The latter question is to form the 

 subject of a special discussion at one of the meetings 

 of the Congress, at which it is hoped that, as the result 

 of an interchange of views between specialists, planters 

 and manufacturers, some further light may be thrown 

 on this important question. I need not now do more\ 

 than remark that the evidence that plantation rubber 

 obtained by satisfactory methods from well-established 

 trees and properly prepared is equal in quality to that 

 of forest trees is too strong to be doubted. We have ' 

 yet to learn the precise cause of variations which it is 

 alleged are sometimes shown by plantation rubber, and 

 which are said to interfere with its uses for some 

 manufacturing purposes. 



Before leaving the subject of rubber production I 

 ought to allude to the artificial production of this 

 material by chemical means, which has now been satis- 

 factorily accomplished by laboratory methods. It has 

 still to be proved that these laboratory methods can be 

 successfully translated into operations on a large scale, so 

 as to produce commercially rubber of high quality and 

 cheaply enough to compete with natural rubber. The im- 

 provement of plantation rubber and the cheapening of its 

 cost are the main problems for the rubber grower. The 

 possible success of synthetic rubber is generally regarded 

 as the bogy of the rubber industry, and the success of 

 synthetic indigo is often quoted as an ominous precedent v 

 It is indeed an important precedent, but in a different 

 sense. The indigo planter did not realize, until it was too 

 late, the fact that improvements in methods of production 

 and cheapening of cost were the vital problems, and 

 that the best hope for the future of the industry lay in 

 the direction of systematic and continuous investigation 

 with a view to the solution of these questions. While 

 these very problems in connection with the production 

 of synthetic indigo were engaging the close attention 

 of investigators in Germany, little or nothing was being 

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