The Reason Why. 



With regard to the cause of the rise in raw rubber, there is no 

 good reason to suppose that it is assignable to anything but the 

 ordinary law of demand and supply. It has certainly been broadly 

 hinted that rubber brokers, and one large h)use in particular, have 

 manipulated the market for their personal advantage; but really 

 statements to this effect do not show any substantial foundation. 

 Of course, the brokers are alive to the situation, and have not gone 

 out of their way to make crooked paths straight for the manufacturer. 

 This, however, is not the same thing as saying that rubber has 

 practically been cornered. We prefer to believe that the increased 

 demand for motor tyres, heel pads, and other uses which come pro- 

 minently before the eye, as also the demand for rubber in modern 

 shipbuilding which is little known to the public, arc jointly the rea- 

 son for the advance. Unfortunately, although there is no scarcity 

 of rubber in South America, its production, though on an increasing 

 scale, has not kept pace with the growing demand from Great Bri- 

 tain, America, Germany, France, Russia and Italy, to say nothing 

 of other countries, such as Norway and Sweden, which have of late 

 years become manufacturers. The difficulty with regard to increas- 

 ing the output from the Amazon basin is the comparative scarcity of 

 acclimatised labour, and that the regular rubber gatherers are often 

 seduced from their occupation by the offer of better terms on the 

 coffee plantations. There are probably few vocations of a more 

 deadly nature than that of rubber gathering in the Brazilian swamps, 

 and even in the case of the acclimatised, sertngueroSy the merchants 

 who provide the outfit and expenses of the bands of gatherers have 

 to count on a high death-rate, and consequent loss of capital. So far 

 no attempt to copy the slave-driving methods followed by the Congo 

 State authorities has been made, greatly to the credit of all con- 

 cerned. Rubber may have become a necessity, but is not so indis- 

 pensable that the civilised nations who use it can regard with uncon- 

 cern the employment of methods of barbarism in its collection. 

 More than one effort has been made in the past by Europeans to 

 control the working of Amazonian forests, but the failures which 

 have resulted, from causes which we cannot stop to specify, has led 

 to a general recognition of the fact that the resources of Brazil are 

 best left in the hands of Brazilians. With regard to other countries 

 in South America there is no doubt that Peru will contribute more 

 largely than is at present the case if certain developments necessita- 

 ting capital come to fruition. From Africa the supply has fluctuated 

 a good deal, the phenomenal rise in the exports from the Belgian 

 trading companies being to some extent counterbalanced by the 

 decreased amounts yielded by some of the West Coast districts, 

 owing to the destructive methods of collection formerly practised by 

 the natives. With respect to the supply of rubber from plantations, 

 although the amount has thus far not had any appreciable effect on 

 the market, great progress in what is anew and important branch of 

 economic botany has to be recorded. Especially is this the case 

 with the Para rubber tree, which has been successfully acclimatised 



