292 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



The want of the Colony is population, the 

 total, exclusive of aboriginal Indiana, and 

 "Bush Negroes," was at the end of 1906, 8l;237. 

 The labour for the Plantations is almost en- 

 tirely drawn from British India, and the Dutch 

 East Indies, There are at present some 21,000 

 British Indians here. Many of these at the 

 termination of their term of indenture, commute 

 their right to a return passage, and take up 

 land, they hold at present some 30,000 acres; 

 they are doing well, and will eventually prove 

 an immense benefit to the country. Compara- 

 tively few Creoles, of African descent, are 

 employed on the plantations. 



J. R. W. PIGOTT. 



THE CAMPHOR WAR. 



As long as they endure, monopolies generally 

 prove very profitable to those who control them. 

 But they nave one inherent weakness. Though all 

 the sources of supply of the article are subject to 

 control, it is yet possible that the monopoly 

 may be completely broken down by the discovery 

 or invention of a substitute which can enter the 

 same field at a lower price and meet the same 

 wants. And this weakness is common both to 

 accidental monopolies, such as lac and jute in 

 India, and to artificial monopolies which depend 

 upon State control or the machinations of finan- 

 ciers to be effective. The modern chemist may 

 not have substantiated the claims of the philoso- 

 pher's stone, but he tends to play an increas- 

 ingly important role in commercial enterprise, 

 and fortunate and few are the industries which 

 can afford to disregard the synthetic menace. 

 India is, unhappily, familiar with synthetic 

 indigo, and German chemists are reputed to be 

 evolving a synthetic substitute for lac. But 

 threatened monopolies are safe so long as the 

 substitutes, whether natural or artificial, can 

 only be produced at a price which is higher 

 than that of the article they seek to compete 

 with. The recent history of camphor illustrates 

 this in a very remarkable way. 



The world's supply of camphor is about eleven 

 million pounds per annum, and almost the whole 

 of it is obtained from Formosa and Japan ; a 

 comparatively small quantity being supplied by 

 China and other countries. Formosa is the 

 greatest producing country. For a hundred 

 and fifty years the Chinese held a camphor 

 monopoly in that island and punished the eva- 

 sion of it with death ; and yet this monopoly 

 failed and was revoked in 1868. When, however, 

 Formosa fell to Japan as a resultof her war with 

 China, the camphor monopoly was revived 

 under what had all the appearance of being very 

 favourable circumstances. Under this arrange- 

 ment, the output is regulated by only granting 

 a certain number of licenses for the manufacture 

 of crude camphor, which is sold to the 

 Government at a fixed rate. The license holders 

 are not permitted to produce refined camphoi, 

 which is the exclusive right of the State. Ar- 

 rangements were next made with a London firm 

 to place the camphor on the market, and the 

 immediate result was that the price was forced 

 up from about 50s. to 400s. per cwt. The inev- 

 itable compet ition at once commenced and 

 amongst the 



COMPETITORS W HO Kl'ftHEI) IN TO I HARK 



in the handsome profits of camphor manufac- 

 ture was Ceylon, who took up the cultivation of 

 camphor trees on a somewhat large scale, and 

 China which began to tap sources of supply that 

 had hitherto been altogether neglected. 



The Japanese camphor monopoly came into 

 force in August, 1899 ; and in the following year 

 a process was patented by the Ampere Electro- 

 Chemical Company of New Jersey for the manu- 

 facture of camphor from oil of turpentine. 

 Three years later the Port Chester Chemical 

 Company was formed and joined in the synthetic 

 trade. Other companies quickly followed, and 

 at the present time the synthetic article is 

 manufactured in England, America, Germany, 

 France and Switzerland. In appearance synthe- 

 tic camphor is identical with natural camphor 

 and chemically they are the same. The only 

 distinguishing characteristic is that synthetic 

 camphor has no action on polarised light. 

 This, however, is only a technical difference 

 and of no practical importance. Like most 

 new ventures, the synthetic industry had a 

 struggle for existence for several years, and 

 the volume of output, which was chiefly 

 absorbed by manufacturers of celluloid, was 

 not sufficient to affect the price of natural 

 camphor, which continued to rise and fall in 

 sympathy with the demand. The crisis, however, 

 was reached last year when the demand for 

 camphor was so great that the Monopoly put 

 up their prices. Evidently the synthetic fac- 

 tories and Chinese manufacturers had been 

 lying in wait for this move; and, as soon as it was 

 made,they flooded the world's markets with their 

 respective products. When the Monopoly real- 

 ised the exact state of affairs, they brought 

 their prices down to the level of their com- 

 petitors, who again dropped theirs and once 

 more took the lead. Rate-cutting has been the 

 order of the day ever since. It is evident, how- 

 ever, that there is a limit beyond which rate- 

 cutting cannot go, if camphor is to be sold at 

 a profit, and this limit has, we believe, been 

 reached. It should be understood that the 

 prosperity of the synthetic product depends 

 absolutely on the price of turpentine ; and in 

 an article in the Indian Trade Journal of De- 

 cember 26th, 1907 (page 700), we endeavoured 

 to show how India might participate in the 

 camphor profits by supplying, as she is able to 

 do, a much larger quantity of turpentine to the 

 synthetic camphor factories. At the time the 

 present demand for turpentine by the paint, 

 varnish and other trades is so extensive that it 

 has outrun the supply, with the result that syn- 

 thetic camphor could not be sold in the London 

 market at the end of June last for less than Is. 

 9d. per lb, but this may be compared with the 

 price (5s. 2d. per lb) which refined camphor was 

 fetching in some markets last year. On the 

 same date the Formosan Monopoly were selling 

 camphor at Is. 3d. per lb. The immediate effect 

 of this large difference in price will be to run the 

 synthetic camphor out of the market tempora- 

 rily ; and, if the price can be maintained at this 

 level sufficiently long, compel the closing of the 

 factories where it is now prepared, unless some 

 cheaper base for the manufacture of synthetic 

 camphor has been discovered meanwhile. It 



