408 



Total net profit per ton, $39.36 — that is 5.4 acres gives 

 $39.36 profit — i.e., $7 per acre. 



Synthetic Rubber. 



Reports of rubber substitutes and synthetic rubber 

 during' 1908, as in previous years, continued to alarm great- 

 ly and frighten many faint-hearted believers in rubber cul- 

 tivation; but the end of the year brought us no nearer the 

 production of a substance which will take the place of 

 rubber at a cost less than the present market price. Ru- 

 mours of rubber to be made from peat, resin-bearing woods, 

 wheat and other substances are current periodically, but 

 each case, causing great alarm at the time, in a few months 

 is forgotten, and the fears of the timid investor in rubber 

 planting are calmed until a new paragraph on the daily 

 paper suggests to him that at last the much-dreaded catas- 

 trophe has come. Those who can best judge of the pro- 

 babilities of rubber being manufactured synthetically at 

 such a price as to make it a commercial success — chemists 

 and physicists— still consider it most improbable. The 

 rubber planter continually finds his trees giving increased 

 yields, and with the cost of production becoming less and 

 less, the price at which it will pay to make synthetic rubber 

 gradually sets below the horizon of profit. 



Health on Estates. 



The average health of coolies on estates has during 

 1908 shown a marked improvement, and with medical aid 

 and hospitals, which have been built in all planting centres, 

 the cooly is well looked after. 



The health of the managers and assistants did not show 

 the same improvement. Malaria is in some cases constant, 

 and the fact that this is so makes the excellent condition of 

 estates and their labour forces the more creditable. 



The period of rapid opening of estates in order to get 

 a large area planted in the shortest possible time has to 

 some extent stopped, and this has lead to improvements in 

 the working of estates in many details. 



Every practical planter realises that for the future 

 prosperity of his estate, to obtain healthy conditions for 

 master and cooly is as necessary as to plant and tend care- 

 fully the rubber trees, and monies spent in such sanitary 

 measures are as profitably expended as in purely agri- 

 cultural operations. 



