44 
There is also in process of formation an advisory committee, 
made up of the most influential manufacturers, chemists, importers, 
and scientists in every way connected with the trade. 
There will be notable loan exhibits, European and American, 
exhibits of laboratory and factory appliances, etc., etc. 
There will be a series of conferences at which essays on various 
subjects of interest to the trade will be read. 
When one considers that the United States not only uses one half 
of the world’s crude rubber, but manufactures much more than one 
half of the world’s rubber goods ; when one further considers the very 
general interest that the press and the people of the country are to- 
day evincing in rubber, it would appear that the exhibition was 
timely. That it can be made broadly informing to every trade and 
profession, to business organizations and to schools, goes without 
saying, and Mr. Manders’ past record furnishes no reason to doubt* 
his complete grasp of the possibilities as well as his ability to carry 
his plans through to a successful finish.” 
A Rubber Exhibition in New York offers an opportunity to 
planters to emphasise the real position of the present and prospec- 
tive magnitude of plantation rubber in the East, which financial 
statements showing the area under cultivation and the output of 
rubber fail to convey, as is evidenced by the American manufacturers, 
and delegates from Brazil, who have visited Singapore and the 
Federated Malay States during the past few months. 
Hitherto manufacturers (the real masters of the rubber market) 
held large stocks of crude rubber, and this policy is slowly changing 
in favour of forward contracts with estates. It only remains to 
convince all manufacturers that the plantation industry is an estab- 
lished one, and that the output of over 10,000 tons for Malaya during 
1911 will be largely exceeded year by year. It would therefore be of 
direct advantage to estates to earn a good name on the market. 
Another advantage is offered, which should not be lost sight of, 
by displaying plantation rubber in bulk, it furnishes an opportunity 
of conveying to all concerned the improbability of synthetic rubber 
replacing raw rubber. Synthetic rubber is a scientific fact so far as 
the laboratory is concerned, and it may not be long before the 
commercial proposition is before the world. Rubber displayed in 
bulk would be more convincing than figures. It could be seen what 
the substitute would have to replace in both wild and cultivated raw 
rubber, and also, what is usually forgotten, reclaimed rubber. Both, 
governments and financiers, might pause to think that rubber trees 
■can be brought into bearing in a few years, while turpentine, the base 
of synthetic rubber and the product of fir trees, approach a century. 
Two results are apparent, the gradual destruction of forests which 
could not be replaced; the consequent increased price of turpentine, 
and the improbability of producing synthetic cheaper than raw 
rubber. * 
The converse of synthetic rubber is overproduction of plantation 
rubber— also a possibility. Outside Malaya there is more real acti- 
vity in planting rubbers at the present time than at any previous 
