93 
rubber work on every plantation is now armed with a whole 
arsenal of information. 
The yields, as I look at it, are very encouraging. We are 
dealing with young trees that are more or less lacking in uni- 
formity because they did not receive the same line of treat- 
ment. We have had different methods of tapping and while 
there may be a hesitation on the part of some as to the founda- 
tion of getting enormous profits, there must be big profit in 
the business when we can take it out at 50 cents a pound and 
sell for $1.40, with the unskilled labor here. 
One thing that appears interesting to me in the experiments 
of the Nahiku Rubber Co. under Mr. Anderson is the fact 
that boys do the work very well. It is not a heavy class of 
work ; it does not require much brute force. It merely re- 
quires a little manual skill and dexterity. They are very 
quick in collecting the rubber. It is all light work, and they 
can easily carry a bucket, perhaps faster than a grown person, 
and do the work just as well. That indicates that in that 
cheap labor we can find a solution of the problem of reducing 
the expense, provided the price of rubber should fall below 
where the rubber growers might wish it to fall. 
In the matter of diseases and the insects and pests of rub- 
ber, I do not believe they are very serious so far. It may be 
that some will develop of which we know nothing now and 
there are but few instances of trees which have been seriously 
affected by the shot-hole fungus or even with rats, as soon 
as the ground in between the trees has been cleared up. 
Another point is the matter of altitude. I don't know 
whether it would be wise, it never is commercially, to try to 
find the limit of altitude in which rubber can be grown, but in 
going over the plantations last May I was enabled to note that 
the rubber grew as well 1400 feet as it did at some lower ele- 
vations where it received the attention that it deserved. How- 
ever, an altitude ud to 1300 or 1400 feet does not seem to af- 
fect the rapidity of the growth. 
The question of the kind of rubber to be grown here is 
somewhat left open yet, but the decidedly more rapid growth 
of ceara seems to indicate that that is the one upon which we 
can depend at present. There is also the hevea and the cas- 
tilloa, which have been discussed. There have been at times 
a number who have been enthusiastic about the growth of 
hevea, but it is so slow as compared with ceara and is affect- 
ed so much more by the winds and altitude, for it seems to 
dwindle out at 1000 or 1100 feet, that it seems that the ceara 
tree is the one to grow here. And as to the rapidity of growth, 
we may say that the ceara does remarkably well here and is 
perfectly satisfactory as to the rate of growth, and in the 
most part in the shape of the trees. 
