December, 1909,1 



487 



Saps and Exudations, 



must be taken into account in planning 

 every detail for the future. This is a 

 fact which makes the whole rubber 

 industry akin, for the price of rubber 

 everywhere at any moment practically 

 is the same, while the same uncertainty 

 exists as to what the price may be to- 

 morrow. The producers of rubber and 

 the traders in rubber have troubles of 

 their own in relation to the same 

 subject, but here we shall treat more 

 particularly of the manufacturers. 

 Where rubber prices are made, or how 

 they are made, are questions not now 

 pertinent to our purpose- The un- 

 certainty of prices is the thing, and what 

 the consumer of rubber can do about it. 



Low priced rubber is not so essential. 

 When every consumer of a given grade 

 of rubber must buy it practically from 

 the same source, and it costs them all 

 precisely the same figure, they are all 

 on the same footing. Whether the cost 

 is 50 cents or $1 a pound, or more, would 

 be immaterial — if permanent prices could 

 be counted upon. But they cannot. 

 The average price at New York of fine 

 upriver Para rubber during the year 

 1902 was 76 cents ; during 1905 it was 

 $r28j, since then it has been less, the 

 figure for 1908 declining to 93f cents. 

 This year, so far, the price for this 

 grade has kept in the neighbourhood of 

 fl'20. When it is considered that the 

 difference between the highest and 

 lowest year prices here quoted amounts 

 to no less than 11,157 '42 cents per me- 

 trical ton, and that these fluctuations 

 usually occur without warning, the buy- 

 ing of raw rubber by consumers ap- 

 proaches almost a speculative basis. 



The producers of rubber in the Amazon 

 region, far from satisfied with a condi- 

 tion under which they have no say in 

 fixing the market price of their produce, 

 have determined upon a course of action, 

 in which, with the help of the Govern- 

 ment and of a great bank, they mean to 

 hold their rubber whenever prices are 

 not high enough to be attractive. Now 

 the holding of rubber anywhere is an 

 expensive practice, when storage costs 

 are considered, insurance, interest on 

 advances — and the inevitable shrinkage 

 in weight. It is well enough to speak of 

 rubber as being a modern necessity, but 

 there are limits to what people will pay 

 even for necessities, and manufacturers 

 would have to halt somewhere in the 

 matter of paying advancing rates on 

 rubber, even were the Amazon region 

 the world's only source. There would 

 be an inevitable check to rising prices, 

 due to increased production and the 

 hesitation of consumers to buy, after 

 which the banks would have to unload, 

 with such results as followed Vianna's 



state-aided rubber "corner"— a fall to 

 half the former prices and loss to every- 

 body concerned. 



The India Rubber World, a dozen 

 years ago, printed an article on " What 

 Vianna did for African Rubbers," show- 

 ing that his speculative "bearing" of 

 the market for Para rubber opened the 

 way largely for the increased use of 

 African grades. Nowadays, African 

 rubbers having won an established 

 position in the industry, though now 

 apparently falling off in the rate of 

 production, an important new source of 

 supplies has been developed— the Eastern 

 plantations, the product of which 

 (Hevea) is better calculated than even 

 the best Africans for supplanting the 

 Amazon rubber in the industry. 



Without meaning to advice our friends 

 on the Amazon, it would seem that their 

 best interest lies, not in forcing up 

 prices to an artificial level, but to so 

 improving their business methods as to 

 enable them to sell at a profit at even 

 lower prices than at present. Their 

 devotion to any policy gives the planters 

 of Ceylon and Malaya, backed by un- 

 limited European capital, the very 

 encouragement which they want and 

 most need. The Eastern planters have 

 it in their power to appeal strongly to 

 the consuming markets in the matter of 

 guaranteeing prices for longer periods 

 than have ever been known in the trade 

 before, and we shall be surprised if this 

 does not strengthen the demand for 

 their product. 



YIELDS OP DRY RUBBER 

 PER TREE. 



(From the India Rubber Journal, Vol. 



XXXVIII., No. 5, September, 1909.) 



It is difficult to decide whether it is 

 better to record yields per acre or per 

 tree ; both methods are in seme ways 

 misleading. The yields having been 

 given in my last report per tree, this 

 seems to me to be the better way to 

 continue. The average yield per tapped 

 tree all over the Peninsular has risen 

 fi •om 1 lb. 12 oz. to 1 lb., 15f oz., an in- 

 crease of 11 per cent. Considering that 

 the majority of the trees tapped are in 

 their first year of bearing, this is a most 

 encouraging figure and shows that the 

 yields estimated in looking forward to 

 the future production of rubber trees 

 have, as a rule, been extremely moderate 

 if not unnecessarily small. The aver- 

 age yield of tapped trees, in Negri 

 Sembilan, amounted to 3 lb. 2^-oz., which, 

 being the average of nearly one million 

 trees, is an extraordinarily high figure. 

 This State has much higher yields per 

 tree because the proportion of trees in 



