Rubber to-day—and

the Beginning of the Industry

SOMETHING like panic prevails in the rubber industry to-day where prices have fallen from last year’s high of about 6/- per pound to less than 2/6.

In Papua, the price has now fallen below the export value where the Administration gets export tax (for every 6d rubber rises above 2/6, the Administration received a tax of Id per pound).

Shortly after the war, the rubber price was between 12 and 14 pence per pound. After the Western Nations began to stock-pile for de fence, it rose to phenomenal levels.

Since January this year the price has steadily declined. The reason for the decline is due partly to the fact that the United States has completed her stock-piling and at the same time increased her production of synthetic rubber which is kept at a price below that of natural rubber.

Planters in Malaya and Papua view the falling prices with alarm.

They say that cost of production has steadily risen in the last year and that the industry cannot take lower prices.

On the other hand, the managing director of one of P-NG’s Big Firms is of the opinion that, at the present price, rubber is still quite profitable in Papua.

On July 1 the US Federal Govern ment turned the importation of natural rubber back to private com panies. For the last 18 months a Government Agency bought and therefore controlled all US imports of natural rubber.

It is too soon to say what effect, if any, this US freeing of rubber will have on the depressed market.

Last year’s 6/- a pound may have been a phenomenal price but it was by no means the record price—in one year away back in the beginning of the Malayan industry it went to 12/10 per pound. The history of Malaya’s rubber industry—and with it the rubber industry of most of the adjacent areas—is comparatively short. Its beginnings go back not much further than the life of a pretty young grandfather.

The history of the Malayan rubber industry was recently told in North Borneo News and is worth summarising here; The founder of the industry in Malaya was Henry Nicholas Ridley, who, at 97, is still living in London. He was educated

at Haileybury College and at Oxford, and as a young man joined the Botanic Department of the British Museum. In the late 80’s he spent some time in South America where he learned something about the wild rubber that grew there and when he was appointed director of the Gardens of the Straits Settlements in 1888 he immediately began researches into the cultivation of Para rubber. By 1895 he had laid the foundations of the Malayan industry as it exists to-day.

Attempts had been made as early as 1873 to introduce rubber trees to Singa pore and (Malaya but most of the plant ings had failed through neglect. Twenty two seedlings finally survived in 1877 and these and their descendents were already established when Mr. Ridley arrived to start his experiments. However, up until 1898 all the rubber in use in the world was derived from wild plants in

South America and Africa where there was danger of the trees being extermin ated because of bad tapping practices: all the bark was stripped off so that the latex could run into a gutter at the base of the tree. Stripping the bark killed the tree and the rubber was full of bark chips and dirt.

Mr. Ridley’s most notable discovery was probably the tapping of the trees. He tried various methods but found that the

herringbone method gave best results— pertical grooves in the bark with lateral grooves at right angles. He found that the tapping wounds in the bark could be opened every day and produced the same amount of latex and later, that the re newed bark covering the tapping wounds gave as much latex as the original bark.

This made it possible to continue to tap the tree daily for many years.

Mr. Ridley calculated on an increased demand for rubber aad foresaw the re quirements of bicycles but he admits that he regarded motor-cars as merely rich men’s toys and failed to take their re quirements into consideration. However, with his knowledge of the limitation of the wild rubber trees he believed that there would be a great scarcity of rubber about 1900. With this in mind he talked rubber to every planter he met and filled the pockets of Government officials and planters with seeds, urging them to plant them around their bungalows.

And yet, as late as 1894 he had not in duced one planter to take up rubber as a commercial proposition. In 1896 rubber was selling at 2/8 per pound in England and cost less than 1/- to produce. Then people began to take a mild interest. A Chinese started a. plantation in Malacca.

The brothers Kindersley started planting it in the Malaya States. In 1898, a well known coffee-planter named Jim Baity faced ruin through competition from Brazil coffee and from plant diseases at home. He had decided to go back to England but was persuaded to stay in Malaya and try rubber. In a few years he had made himself half a million pounds.

Fired by his success, everyone went mad.

Suddenly estates came up everywhere— waste ground, orchards, even gardens were planted up. No one talked or thought of anything else. Planting company shares went up to any price and people made fortunes overnight. One year in the middle of the boom, the South American rubber crop failed and two steamers carring the entire output for the year sank in the Amazon. The price of rubber went from 4/- to 12/10 per pound. Excite ment and the price of rubber shares rose sharply.

And so the Malayan rubber industry began—all from the 22 seedling plants grown in the Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1877. Unlike other tropical producers of vital materials there appears to have been no attempt to keep rubber as a close preserve of Malaya. From there, seeds and seedlings went to Ceylon, Indonesia, Indo-China, Philippines—even Fiji and Samoa. Presumably the rubber that now flourishes in Papua also came from the same source.

Following the death of her hus

band last year, Mrs. A. C. Burnett, of Apia, has disposed of her indent and commission agency to Mr. Alex Macdonald, and recently went to Auckland to live with her daughter.

Mrs. Andrews of the Methodist Church, Fiji, in an address to the

Auckland Methodist Women’s Mis

sionary Auxiliary, spoke on the

urgent need of the Fijians for good

reading matter.

Mrs. W. C. Groves of Port Moresby, wife of P-NGs Director of Education, and Miss Alice Wedega, of Kwato, Papua, attended the Country Womens Association Conference in Melbourne in June.

Mrs. Groves is president of the 12-months’-old C.W.A. Branch in Port Moresby. Mr. Groves was also in Australia in June, en route to Nauru over whose education system he also has supervision.

Mrs. Doris Booth of Wau, NG, said recently when interviewed in Brisbane that New Guinea natives were being treated extremely well but did not appreciate what was being done for them —their attitude was much the same as that of the Australian worker who expected more pay for less work. She said that the potential wealth of P-NG

was phenomenal—all that it needed was people and money to develop it.

Mr. W. G. Johnson, managing director of W. R. Carpenter (Fiji) Ltd. arrived in Australia in June for a six-weeks holiday with his wife and family in Melbourne.