THE RUBBER FORESTS 33 



the net value in Europe, and a territorial tax of two soles ($1.00) 

 per hundred pounds. All supplies except the few vegetables 

 grown on the spot cost tremendously. Even dynamite, hoes, cloth- 

 ing, rice — to mention only a few necessities — must pay the heavy 

 cost of transportation after imposts, railroad and ocean freight, 

 storage and agents' percentages are added. The effect of a dis- 

 turbed market is extreme. When, in 1911, the price of rubber fell 

 to $1.50 a kilo at Hamburg the company ceased exporting. When it 

 dropped still lower in 1912 production also stopped, and it is still 

 doubtful, in view of the growing competition of the East-Indian 

 plantations with their cheap labor, whether operations will ever be 

 resumed. Within three years no less than a dozen large com- 

 panies in eastern Peru and Bolivia have ceased operations. In one 

 concession on the Madre de Dios the withdrawal of the agents and 

 laborers from the posts turned at last into flight, as the forest 

 Indians, on learning the company's policy, rapidly ascended the 

 river in force, committing numerous depredations. The great 

 war has also added to the difficulties of production. 



Facts like these are vital in the consideration of the future of 

 the Amazon basin and especially its habitability. It was the 

 dream of Humboldt that great cities should arise in the midst of 

 the tropical forests of the Amazon and that the whole lowland 

 plain of that river basin should become the home of happy mil- 

 lions. Humboldt's vision may have been correct, though a hun- 

 dred years have brought us but little nearer its realization. Now, 

 as in the past four centuries, man finds his hands too feeble to con- 

 trol the great elemental forces which have shaped history. The 

 most he can hope for in the next hundred years at least is the 

 ability to dodge Nature a little more successfully, and here and 

 there by studies in tropical hygiene and medicine, by the substi- 

 tution of water-power for human energy, to carry a few of the out- 

 posts and prepare the way for a final assault in the war against 

 the hard conditions of climate and relief. We hear of the Madeira- 

 Mamore railroad, 200 miles long, in the heart of a tropical forest 

 and of the commercial revolution it will bring. Do we realize - that 

 the forest which overhangs the rails is as big as the whole plain 



