33 
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 asan ominous precedent. 
It is indeed an important precedent, but in a different 
sense. Theindigo 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 
3 
