38 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



atrocities aroused the moral sense of the world and the 

 Free State was rescued from the hands of Leopold. 



In 1910 the price of Para rubber had risen to $2.00 or 

 $3.00 a pound and the forests were being depleted of the 

 trees. Then science came to the rescue and showed 

 how an unlimited supply of the precious gum could be 

 obtained without robbing the natives or ruining the trees. 

 This was by cultivating the rubber tree. The fore- 

 sighted British and Dutch set out rubber plantations 

 and produced a better product than thewild rubber for 25 

 cents a pound or less. The United States consumes 

 some 75 per cent, of the world's rubber but it is all 

 foreign grown. Akron, Ohio, alone manufactures over 

 a third of the world's rubber. We found what it meant 

 to have neglected to cultivate our own garden when the 

 war broke out and threatened to ruin the third largest 

 of our industries by taking off our tires. We had to pay 

 whatever the British and the Dutch cared to charge us, 

 and they reaped a rich harvest from their providence, 

 but in 1920, when the automobile business took a sud- 

 den slump, the price of rubber fell from 55 cents a 

 pound to 13. Three per cent, of the rubber plantations 

 of the world are now owned by American companies but 

 none of them have been placed in our own tropical 

 possessions. Dutch and British dependencies are 

 evidently considered more dependable than ours. So 

 we see that development of a new motive power affects 

 international relations everywhere. The same thing 

 may bring ruin to the Congo and prosperity to the 

 Malay Peninsula. Recently the British have put an 

 export tax on their rubber and we are beginning to 



