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At the afternoon session of the convention the following- 
officers were elected to serve for the ensuing year: 
C. D. Lufkin, President. 
William Williamson, Vice-President. 
D. C. Lindsay, Secretary and Treasurer. 
Bertram von Damm, Director. 
Wade Warren Thayer, Dij-ector. 
PAPER BY MR. WILLIAMSON. 
"The Present Status of Rubber Growing in Hawaii'' was 
then discussed by Mr. William A\'illiamson as follows : 
''Gentlemen of the Convention: — A couple of weeks ago 
Mr. Waldron came to me and asked me if I would talk, and 
I told him that I would be very glad to. He wanted me to 
talk about marketing, or something else. I told him I would 
talk about marketing, but mostly about something else. All 
I can say about marketing is that we accumulated about 40 
pounds of rubber, of which 18 pounds was scrap. We did 
not feel like giving this away, so we sent it on through Alex- 
ander & Baldwin, through their New York agents, as it was 
sufficient to make up what the companies back there seemed 
to want — that is, a good working sample. We expect within 
a week or two to get a report from that rubber. In order to 
get something to talk about, and as I had not been in Xahiku 
for two years, but previous to that had been over there three 
or four times each year, and had seen the various companies 
plant their lands, I thought it would be a good idea to go to 
Nahiku and try to give you here a general idea of the condi- 
tion of things over there on Maui. 
''When the first rubber companies were organized to plant 
rubber trees at Nahiku, some six years ago, it was thought 
that all that would be necessary would be to cut down the 
virgin forest, dig holes 3 or 4 feet in diameter, and plant the 
seedlings there. During the first year the trees grcAv remark- 
ably well, but as the roots struck the edge of the hole, instead 
of striking through into the virgin sod, in many cases they 
turned back and formed a tangle within the original hole. 
The natural result was that during the second and third years 
they failed to respond to hoeing and became backward in 
their growth. 
"During 1908 a few acres to be planted to Hevea from 
choice seeds were plowed in preparation and the trees planted 
in this area showed such thriftiness that at the beginning of 
the next year three of the comoanies operating in the district 
decided to clear the Ceara fields of all stumps and grass and 
stir the soil of all the space between the trees. Of the 800 
acres planted by these three companies, 550 are now clean 
cultivated, and the balance will be within a few months. The 
