July, 1910.] 



11 



Saps and Exudations. 



ing public is concentrated on the ques- 

 tion of financing rubber production, it 

 may be of general interest to sketch the 

 chief commercial uses to which rubber 

 is put. Rubber has been known ever 

 since the discovery of America, when 

 Columbus found natives wearing primi- 

 tive sorts of macintoshes and goloshes 

 of sticky rubber, but it was well into 

 the third decade of the nineteenth 

 century before any real attempts were 

 made to convert rubber to commercial 

 uses. The experiment and the dis- 

 coveries of Macintosh, Goodyear, and 

 Hancock at that time laid the founda- 

 tions of the modern rubber industry, 

 though it was not until about 1880 that 

 it showed any signs of growing to its 

 present size. Before going into the 

 details of the various industries that 

 are engaged in manufacturing rubber 

 goods of some form or other, let us see 

 the amount of raw rubber (caoutchouc) 

 that is imported into the United 

 Kingdom for home consumption. The 

 following figures show the imports, re- 

 exports, and home consumption for 

 1880-1890, 1895, 1900, 1905, and for each 

 subsequent year : — 



1880 

 1890 

 1896 

 1900 

 1905 

 1906 

 1907 

 1908 

 1909 



Gross Imports. 

 Cwts. 



169,587 

 '264,008 

 341,553 

 513,286 

 593,437 

 607,007 

 667,294 

 575,066 

 700,062 



Re-exports. 



Cwt3. 



76,732 

 142,524 

 202,485 

 293,624 

 334,501 

 330,252 

 349,026 

 358,516 

 397,924 



Home con- 

 sumption, cwt. 



82,555 

 121,484 

 139,068 

 219,662 

 258,936 

 276,755 

 318,268 

 216,550 

 302,138 



The most striking feature about 

 these figures is the enormous volume of 

 the re-exports ; but the growth of the 

 home consumption of rubber is almost 

 equally remarkable, and speaks volumes 

 for the growth of our rubber manu- 

 facturing industries. If we analyse the 

 figures for 1908, which is the latest year 

 for which full details are available, we 

 find that of the 575,066 cwts. of gross 

 imports, 300,032 cwts. came from Brazil, 

 and 31,423 cwts. from the Straits Settle- 

 ments. The Brazilian rubber is chiefly 

 * wild ' rubber, while the Straits Settle- 

 ments ' rubber is, of course, the planta- 

 tion or cultivated rubber ; for rubber 

 is indigenous to America, and the 

 trees in the plantations of the Straits 

 Settlements originally came from an 

 American stock. In 1908 we re-exported 

 raw rubber to the following countries 

 and in the following quantities : — 

 United States of America, 115,667 cwts. ; 

 Germany, 88,398 cwts. ; Russia, 60,452 

 cwts., and France, 46,789 cwts. An 

 enormous entrepot trade of this sort is 



natural to Great Britain, and is no 

 doubt the outcome of her Free-trade 

 policy. Rubber is sent to England 

 and supplied to the other big manu- 

 facturing countries from England, a 

 fact which enormously adds to the 

 profits of English rubber brokers and 

 dealers. The large falling off in the 

 consumption of rubber in 1908 shows 

 that the rubber industry shared the 

 depression in trade caused by the 

 American crisis. 



Before going further it will be as well 

 to say a word of warning about the 

 difference between india-rubber and 

 gutta-percha. Stated briefly, it is as 

 follows : rubber is elastic, while gutta- 

 percha is plastic, that is to say, if rubber 

 is stretched it will return to its original 

 form when released, while gutta-percha 

 will stay in any form into which it is 

 forced. Hence their different uses for 

 telegraphy, golf, etc. Gutta-percha also 

 is obtained from an entirely different 

 tree than rubber, and is found in the 

 Malay Peninsula. 



The commercial uses of rubber are 

 very numerous, and it is difficult to 

 assign to the various branches of 

 manufacturing their order of import- 

 ance as consumers of the raw product. 

 Rubber is chiefly used for making 

 rubber boots and shoes, tyres, water- 

 proofing, hose piping, insulating covers, 

 machinery belting, elastic thread, and 

 webbing. But it is also put to a 

 host of minor uses, such as tennis and 

 golf ball making, corrugated rubber 

 matting, pipe joints, india-rubber corks, 

 india-rubber door stops, india-rubber 

 gloves and gauntlets, hot water bottles, 

 pencil erasers and so forth. Of course, 

 india-rubber is seldom used alone, being 

 combined with various substances, ac- 

 cording to the purpose to which it has 

 to be put. It is, however, almost in- 

 variably vulcanised, that is to say, 

 mixed with varying quantities of sul- 

 phur. If a large quantity of sulphur 

 is used vulcanite is the product. 



We have endeavoured to obtain 

 figures showing the amounts of raw 

 rubber consumed by the various rubber 

 industries, but, unfortunately, this has 

 been found impossible. A well-known 

 Mincing Lane rubber broker expressed 

 the opinion that until quite recently 

 the manufacture of rubber boots and 

 shoes used up the most rubber, but 

 that in the last year or two the con- 

 sumption of rubber in tyre-making has 

 taken the first place. It is this tre- 

 mendous demand for rubber on the part 

 of tyre-making firms, especially in 

 America, that is mainly responsible for 

 the present high price of raw rubber, 



