Young Man's Foresight

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 27, 16 February 1937, Page 15

Young Man's Foresight

How the Empire Obtained Rubber

CIXTY years ago a 31-year-old Brltlsh ° naturallst anfi explorer set out on what has proved to be one .of the inost momentous inisslpriis in the history of Empire eriterprlse (writes John Hocken, a tetlred rubber. planter and recognised authority oh the lndustry, in the Johan-: nesburg Sunday Tlmes). . • . Few ln thoae days had ever heard the name of R. A. Wlckhamj those who had only laughed at the wild, schemes of this youqg man from Brazil.1 But there was one exception, Sir Joseph Hooker, Dlrector oi the Royal Ho.tanical Gardens at Kew, reaiised at oiice the golden opportUnities presented by Wickham's scheme to exporfc- rubber 'seeds from the Amazon' Vall^y toi India ahd ea give" the Empire a chance to grow What was then almost ahunknown plantation product. ' » ■ ■> • "VTO ohe, not even Hooker or Wlckham, ^ reaiised at that tlme that rubber. would ever become the essentlal com- . modlty that lt ls to-day. Not even in their wildest dreams can they have looked forward to the t4me when rubber would be consuhied at the rate of nearly a mlllion tons a year. That dream was. to come later With the boota of l910 and the birth of the motor car. But eyen ih the sevehtles rubber was being ihcreaslngly Used. Said, to have beeh dlscovered by Columbus on his sfecohd voyage 'to South Amerlca, when he' hotlced some of the inhabitants playing with a heavy, bliick" ball that bounced, rubber had also "attracted the attention of later travellets ln Brazll, who recogised the 8Ubstance as a vegetable gum and had succeeded ln traclng lt to a certain genus of trees, with long, oval Ifeaves, growlng wlld ln the jungles of the Amazon Valley. Fosslbilities. TT was not, however, untll early ln the A nlneteenth century that the commerciai posslbilittes of the gum first began to be explored. For many years rubber was used solely to erase lead pencll lines, from whlch its naine ls derived, and its elastlc propertles were almost entlrely ignored. By the seventles, however, an lncreasing demand had sprung up. Forty years before, the probess of vulcanlsation, by Which rubber ls transformed by the ad ditton pf sulphur at a high temperature into a stironger and better wefjring form, iiad beeh dlscovered by an English manufacturer. Mbreovfer, solld tyres for the bicycies then coming into fashion were also lncreasing the demand for a product it that tlmq almost exclusiVely supplied ^y Hrazil by tapplhg the wlld trees more br less lndiscrlmlnately. 'VrOW, , Wlckham, besides being aware pf the lncrease in demand for rubber 'likely to develop, had also experlmented With the seeds ln Brazll and had found that they germlnated easily. He saw no reason why, if sultably packed and rushed to England with the least delay, they should not germlhate equally easily ln hot-houses of the right temperature and the degree of hutnldity to whlch rubber ls acpustomed ln lts native habitat. Sir Joseph Hooker, we are justlfled. ln assuming, was not quite so optlmlstlc. A small packet of rubber seeds had been brought to hl|n by a Mr. Ferrls ih 1873.

The germination had been less than 1 per pent., and even the dozen plants that that been raised successfully dld not thrive. However, in 1875, he got Wlckham commissloned by the Government of India to go out to Brazil to see what he could do. . - , On June 14, 1876, Wlckham landed at Llverpool. Hung up on the shlp speclally chartered to brlng him from 400 miles up the Amazon were a number of spllt-cane baskets containing a number of rubber seeds packed between wlld banana leaves. They had been collected for Wickham . by. Tapuyo Indians and rushed by canoe down to the shlp. In the disguise of "delicate specimens for Queen Vjctotla's garden at Kew," Wickham's description. of hls.oargo to thp Brazllian authoritle?, who were probably suspicious of his secret inission and would certainly have " hipped it ln the bud lf they had kno'wn what he wes after," they had been successfully amuggled out of Bouth Amerlca, and npw were to be handed over to' Hooker. From Brazil 'to KeW. " ^ rpHE success of- the venture now deppnded on two. things, Had . the seeds retained. their ,fe^tfiity during 'the 4500-mile journey? Would Hooker.be able to' seciire the conditloris' required for their germination?..".'., .. . . . At Kew everythlng possible had been done to recelve the- seeds.- -Hot-houses of a cafefully calcplated temperature were ready, and ln these the seeds were planted. The feelings of Hooker and Wickham when' they ;saw the flrst few ' long ptalks " that rubber seeds push up through the. soil -when they gerinlnate are not related, hut they must certainly have been tehse.' Within a fortnight many thousand seedlings had appeared and the experiment had been crowned with complete success. Within a few weeks several thousand plants had been packed in Wardian cases, the special type of nearly air-tight, glasssided cases used slnce Ns B. Ward invented them a century r.go for the transportatlpn of growlng plants over long dlstances on sea or land, and sent to Ceylon and the,F.M.S. Ceylon Success. rFHE Ceylon plants were lald a » special garden opened by the Government 17 miles from Colombo, where the steamy climate was considered to be almost identical with that of the Amazon tablelands. They thrlved there from the start, and the same applled to the other plants at Perak, ln Malaya. By 18$0 cuttings and seeds from these trees were being sent all over the two territorles. Curiously enough, though lt was at the expense of the Government of India that the seeds had been procured, there appears to be. no record of any of th'e seedlings being sent to India. There ls one other aspect of the rubber plantation lndustry that ls often overlooked. Rubber ls an essentlal material ln tlme of war. A shortage of rubber was one of Germany's most serlous dlfflculties ln 1918. The Brltlsh Empire ls fortunate to haye almost unlimited sources of supply at lts command. That ls part of the debt of gratitude we owe to Wickham, Hooker, and the thousands of unknown ploneers of the rubber plantation lndustry ln the Empire.