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A day's work for the tapping coolie was to tap 40 trees on both 
sides, thus setting out 80 cups to catch the latex. 
Day's Work. The coolie's work was not completed until he had 
picked up the thin strips of bark which were cut 
in tapping bringing them, together with 80 cups of latex, to the 
drying room. He then, after pouring the latex into a large con- 
tainer, must rinse the cups with water, saving the diluted latex 
thus obtained so that it would not be lost. He then washes the 
cups which completes his day's work. Women and children tap 
as well as men. The aluminum cups each hold about a half pint. 
A little water is put in each cup when it is set out so as to dilute 
the latex and prevent it from coagulating before it can be brought 
to the drying room. The amount of latex in each cup of course 
varies with the yield of the tree. Some trees filling the cups full. 
The bark shavings that are brought in are put 
Scrap Rubber, through the scrap machine which consists of 
rollers which grind the bark into a fine powder. 
The larger portion of the bark is separated from the scrap rubber 
after it comes out of the rollers, and then the rubber, and whatever 
bark that has not been separated, is put through a second set of 
rollers on which streams of water are playing. This washes the 
remaining bark from the scrap and the rubber is turned back into 
the rollers over and over again until it is in the form of crepe 
rubber. It is then hung up to dry with the other rubber. The 
latex when it is brought in is strained and set out in pans as 
milk is set to cream and in three or four days the rubber coagu- 
lates in blocks about the size of half of a kerosene oil tin. 
On several plantations they were using kerosene oil tins cut in 
half so that the two opposite sides of the tin would be the bot- 
toms of the coagulating pans. Most plantations mix a little acid 
with the latex before it is set out in the coagulating pans to aid 
coagulation. The block of coagulated rubber is sometimes rolled 
into sheets and sold as sheet rubber, but oftener it is put through 
rollers under pressure on which streams of water are playing until 
it is ground into the form of crepe rubber. On one or two planta- 
tions the crepe or sheet rubber is compressed into blocks. The 
drving room or house is very often made of corrugated iron, or 
at least the roof is corrugated iron, and the rubber is hung up 
to dry as shown in Photo No. 17. 
Some plantations use a vacuum dryer for drying the rubber. 
As there are so many methods of tapping employed on the dif- 
ferent plantations, it is hard to say which system will eventually 
be perfected. I found, however, that where the single "V" sys- 
tem was used the amount of rubber collected per day for each 
coolie tapping and collecting was almost double that of planta- 
tions where they were using other systems in which five times as 
much bark was cut per tree. 
