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sugar, and cattle disease, but tea and cocoa yielded a profit in 
Ceylon. Alter setting out these facts, the chairman thus referred 
to the Company's ventures in Selangor: — 
With regard to Selangor, Mr. Grieve, one of your directors, 
when on a visit to the Straits Settlements took the opportunity of 
visiting your property out there, and 1 will leave it to him entirely 
to speak to you on the subject. Although I daresay J was the 
director who is personally responsible for bringing the company into 
Selangor, I am quite prepared to take the whole onus on my own 
shoulders, because, from what you will hear from Mr. Grieve, 1 
think you will agree with me that we have a first-rate investment 
in that country. With these remarks, gentlemen, I now move the 
following resolution : — “That the directors' report and statement of 
accounts to March 31st, 1903, now submitted, be, and they are hereby, 
adopted, and that, in accordance with the recommendation of the 
directors, a dividend of 4 per cent, on the consolidated stock of the 
company be paid on and after July 17th, 1903, such dividend to be 
paid to the stockholders appearing on the register at this date." 
Mr. Norman W. Grieve, upon this, said ; — I beg to second the 
resolution, and in doing so I would like to take this opportunity of 
giving you a short description of what 1 saw on my recent visit to 
Selangor. 1 may say, at the outset, that I was very much impressed 
indeed with everything that I saw there. It is about five years and 
a half since 1 was out there before, at which time the whole place 
was practically swamp and jungle. There was nothing whatever 
to see excepting a certain amount of forest, which had recently been 
felled, and a lot of water all over the estate. Going back again, a 
little over five years afterwards, I found that what had formerly 
been swamp and jungle was now a smiling country under cultiva- 
tion, with fine Government roads and drains, some of them 15 ft. 
square, cut to carry off the rainfall, which, as you are aware, is very 
excessive there at times. Now that these big works have been 
carried out you have a dry, rich, alluvial soil, sufficiently drained, 
and on which all sorts of products are growing in a way I have 
never seen equalled anywhere else. In order to bring myself up to 
date in regard to the state of the rubber industry, 1 visited a new 
country estate in Ceylon, belonging to another company with which 
I am connected, before I went to Selangor, and I was able to 
acquaint myself with the treatment and manufacture of rubber there 
carried on, and to obtain up-to-date information as to the method 
of tapping and treating the latex, in preparation of the rubber. I 
stayed there a. day, and saw everything, with the result that I was 
able to instruct our own men in Selangor as to how to proceed 
with the manufacture and treatment of rubber. I was also able by 
that visit to form a comparison in regard to the growth of the Para 
rubber in Ceylon, and in Selangor in the Straits Settlements, and 
my experience, 1 may say, leads me to endorse the opinion, which 
is general among Ceylon planters who have seen the two countries, 
that in Selangor we are very much ahead, age forage, in the matter 
of growth ; indeed, we are two years ahead. Intact, the rubber 
plant is a perfect weed in Selangor ; the thing grows with extra- 
