501 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



come into this port go promptly into the hands 

 of home manufacturers. The recent decline in 

 prices does not, therefore, depend alone upon con- 

 ditions on this side the Atlantic any more than 

 upon conditions on the other side, or in regions 

 less discussed in this connection. It will be seen 

 from the same table that prices have fluctuated, 

 w ithout regard to the volume of rubber imports 

 (practically the volume of rubber consumption) 

 into the United States. 



But this article is not intended as an apology 

 for, or a defence of, New York, and still less as 

 an explanation of the influences which cause 

 rubber to sell now higher and now lower. The 

 immediate pressing question in Ceylon and 

 other planting regions is : At what point of de- 

 cline will the Amazon regions cease to export 

 rubber, and thereby leave the prospective plant- 

 ing interest in command of the field ? 



Our opinion is that the Amazon river will 

 carry rubber to market for very many years after 

 evei-y rubber planter now alive has been ga- 

 thered to his fathers. Nobody knows what it 

 ojsts to produce Hevea rubber in South America 

 unless it be an exceptional owner of a seringal 

 here and there who troubles himself to keep 

 books. And the Brazilian who admits to him- 

 self that the sun rises or sets outside his country 

 or that good rubber can be produced elsewhere, 

 is no patriot ! Do not the cotton planters of the 

 United States rest under the same delusion 

 regarding their own special product? What is 

 the use, they would say, of considering the 

 possibility of competition, and planning how to 

 meet it? 



There are rubber manufacturers in the United 

 States today who remember when fine "Para'' 

 cost them only 25 cents [a shilling] a pound, 

 and there never was any scarcity of raw material. 

 Of course, with the growth of demand prices 

 went up, which was natural, and the consumer 

 did not complain. But it is impossible to fix a 

 limit of price below which the Brazilians and 

 their neighbours will not produce rubber. What- 

 ever was true a.t an earlier date, most of the 

 seringueiros of today have got to produce rubber, 

 or starve. Their country as yet affords no other 

 export staple — no other means of subsistence. 

 The Ceylon planters whose enterprise fails can 

 go "home," cr somewhere else. But the Ama- 

 zon rubber gatherer must gather rubber or 

 die, and if the high prices of recent years 

 which have amazed him and led him inlo extra- 

 vagances and to feel that Amazonia had "the 

 world in a sling " should disappear permanently, 

 he would still gather rubber and manage to sus- 

 tain life on the proceeds. 



This is not written to discourage the rubber 

 planter. The world will continue to use rubber 

 more and more. The world as a whole is only 

 on the threshold of using rubber as a general 

 proposition. But it is idle as yet for a few book- 

 keepers to try to figure out what forest rubber 

 "costs" — whether on the Amazon or on the 

 Congo — and at what minimum of cost it will 

 cease to be marketed. There are as shrewd busi- 

 ness men on the Amazon as elsewhere, only they 

 have not yet been forced to apply system to their 

 accounting. When they are, the European 



shareholders in companies in the Far East must 

 see to it that their directors are not worsted in 

 the competition. Have we not seen millions of 

 European capital invested in exploiting forest 

 rubber in South America, and almost invariably 

 at a loss ? B ut the rubber output of the Amazon 

 has gone on increasing year after year, and it is 

 incredible that the people who have produced 

 this great volume of exports have done so at a 

 stoacfy loss. So far the Brazilians as business 

 men have not suffered by comparison with any 

 competitors. 



The real question is not, "At what low figures 

 will Brazil stop producing rubber ?" but " How 

 cheaply can anybody else supply equally good 

 rubber?" — India Rubber World, April 1. 



MACHINERY IN AGRICULTURE. 



The story of the development of the manu- 

 facture of agricultural machinery and imple- 

 ments during the last fifty years, and its effect 

 upon agricultural conditions is one which might 

 properly require volumes for its telling, in a 

 brief but interesting article in the Pacific Fruit 

 World the Assistant Professor of Farm Mechan- 

 ics at the Colorado Agricultural College (W J 

 Hummel) outlir es what has been effected by the 

 inventor to the advantage of the agriculturist. 

 He shows how the occupation of agriculture has 

 been lifted from a round of drudgery to one full 

 of rich possibilities that call into constant re- 

 quisition both intelligence and reason, pointing 

 out that, whilst a century ago agricultural 

 machinery was almost as primitive as it was a 

 thousand years ago, now we have steam ploughs, 

 combined harvesters and thrashers, auto- 

 mowers, etc., and adding that, although they 

 have only comparatively recently come into use, 

 " they are changing all our national life, com- 

 mercial and industrial, in addition to their 

 direct effect upon the farmer." All the great 

 crops aro now planted, and all except cotton are 

 gathered, by machinery; ploughing is elone by 

 steam or motor; fertilisers may be spread, and 

 seeds planted, from grain and grass to mealies 

 and beans, by machinery ; the potato planter 

 picks up potatoes, cut them into the desired 

 number of parts, separates the eyes, and plants 

 the pctatoes at desired distances apart, then 

 covering and fertilising them and marking off 

 the next row ; there are many kinds of machines 

 for harvesting crops, and mealies may even be 

 shocked, husked and thrashed by machinery 

 and the stalks made available for fodder, whilst 

 a steam sheller will shell at the rate of one 

 bushel per minute, taking only a hundredth 

 part of the time needed for the work by hand. 

 Then there are machines for doing the lesser 

 work of the farm, such as cream separators, in- 

 cubators, spraying machines, shearing machines, 

 anel even milking machines ; and by means of 

 water power many farmers now generate electri- 

 city for their own use, using the current not 

 only for lighting but also for motive purposes. 

 For practically every agricultural purpose there 

 is a labour-saving machine. "Farming of the 

 future is destined to be a very different thing 

 from that of the past." — Nqtal Agricultural 

 Journal, for Feb. 



