and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— September, 1912. 255 



£400 to each of these, and forcing an act &n 

 them against all their wishes, and instead of 

 giving any quid pro quo, are using the money 

 to provide billets— useless ones— to those that 

 will give votes in return. My letter reminds 

 me of George McGregor, who used to say, when 

 any one wrote hiui a long letter, " Why don't 

 you boil down what you have to say." Thorn 

 will be your sentiments ; so I will finish and 

 remain, 



"COSMOPOLITE." 



THE FUTURE OF RUBBER. 



A Favourable View of the Outlook, 

 [by an expeet correspondent.] 



The recent cheerfulness in the Rubber share 

 market 4s very likely to be followed by a more 

 pronounced improvement in prices during the 

 autumn. Statistics seem to favour at least a con- 

 tinuance of good prices for raw rubber, owing 

 to the unforeseen rate of expansion in consump- 

 tion. According to Messrs Hecht's report, the 

 twelve months to 30th June showed an increase 

 of about 25,000 tons in the world's consumption, 

 while production increased to only about half 

 that extent. This goes to confirm Mr Lampard's 

 opinion that before the er:d of 1912 there will 

 be a considerable shortage in the commodity. 

 But it seems that this may be only the begin- 

 ning of a long and indefinite period of increas- 

 ing shortages. 



A year ago it was thought that a 10 per cent, 

 annual increase in consumption was a reasonable 

 allowance to make, and upon that basis it ap- 

 peared that the Mid-East would, within a very 

 few } ears, moie than make good this call upon 

 production. (The rest of the world seems unable 

 to respond appreciably, the boom prices of 1910 

 having had practically no effect in increasing the 

 supply of wild rubber.) Hence it was assumed 

 by all the experts (the present writer among 

 them), and the idea was embodied in all esti- 

 mates of future profits, that the price of rubber 

 would begiD to recede at once, and that 

 its value would decrease about Is a year until 

 it made Brazilian rubber unprofitable at 

 2s 6d to 3s per lb. After that the de- 

 cline was to be t-lower, but no one doubted 

 that there would still be a decline, and that, 

 perhaps about 1918, we should see a level 

 of price at which only moderate commercial pro- 

 fits would be the rule for plantation rubber. 

 The enormous expansion of the motor industry 

 now appears to have entirely upset these calcu- 

 lations, and if the increase of consumption 

 should be maintained at anything like the 33 per 



cent, of 1911-12, alt the plantations would be 

 hopelessly outpaced, and the shortage would in- 

 crease year by year instead of diminishing. Even 

 if the consumption should increase by 25 per 

 cent, per annum instead of the 33 per cent shown 

 for last year, and allowing for a further 100,000 

 acres to be planted every year, it would be found 

 that by 1920 the shortage would be enormous, 

 so large, in fact, that one can hardly imagine it 

 possible to overtake it at all, unless some new 

 field with practically unlimited labour can be 

 found. No one can foresee the limit of tyre con- 

 sumption, but at present the contingency just 

 suggested seems to be at least as likely as any 

 other. 



This prospect, in conjunction with the excel- 

 lent returns lately chronicled by nearly all the 

 plantations, will lead investors to look forward 

 to very encouraging divideuds, and not for this 

 year only. Many of the best estates, which were 

 planted in the three or four years preceding the 

 boom, are dot entering the dividend-paying 

 stage, and it will soon be apparent that their 

 shares, and not those of the older companies 

 which have hitherto claimed principal atten- 

 tion, will give the best return upon their present 

 market value, not only if we find the price of 

 rubber maintained or increased, but whatever 

 may be the future course of the Rubber market. 

 Indeed, if we should have ascending instead of 

 descending values for the product, the share list 

 of today will form curious reading a year or two 

 hence. 



D. A. 



—F. Times, Aug. 21. 



A TROPICAL COLLEGE OF 

 AGRICULTURE. 



The question of establishing a properly-equip- 

 ped College for Tropical Agriculture has been 

 long under discussion, and perhaps no one 

 has done more to keep it before the public 

 eye than Mr. Hamel Smith, Editor of Tro- 

 pical Life. 



The young man who comes out to the tropics 

 after a training at an Euglish Agricultural Col- 

 lege is none too well equipped for the work 

 before hira, and finds it necessary, on his arrival 

 in a colony, to serve a term of apprenticeship 

 (vulgarly called "creeping") before he can feel 

 at all qualified for estate management in the 

 tropical sense of the term. But this does not by 

 any means mean that his agricultural education 

 is complete, for he has still had no opportunity 

 of acquiring the technical (that is scientific) 

 knowledge which he can only obtain in atropi- 



