ROMANCE OF RUBBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1939, Page 3

ROMANCE OF RUBBER

PRODUCTS FROAI TROPICAL FOREST TWO HUNDRED KINDS OF TREES TAPPED. GREAT WORLD-WIDE DEMAND: Along the steamy banks of the Amazon lie some of the most impenetrable and dangerous jungles in the world. Dripping trees, mosquito-ridden malarial swamps, a climate heavy with heat . . . these things hide a land potent with wealth, the hub of an enormous industry which, excluding steel, carries more workers and more millions of invested money than any other industrial power in the world. Rubber! From that mushroom city, Para, where ramshackle huts and modern buildings stand side by side, and speculators and adventurers of every sort meet, to the swampy river backwaters. thousands of men talk of nothing else. At first all that Brazil yielded was nuts and timber, but with the rise of the rubber trade enslaved labour flowed like a tide up the Amazon. Ignorant, bewildered, diseased from the poisonous fumes of the curing camps, red men died or ran away into the pitiless jungle. Some of the worst slavery stories known come from the Brazilian plantations, though this was, of course, long before the organised system now in force. Now the seringuero or rubber worker, is a paid employee. Each workman is assigned to a tract of land containing from 150 to 250 trees. . His only tool is a short, blunt axe. In each tree base he makes a shallow upward cut which smashes the tissues so That the wound will not heal readily. Beneath the incision he places the latex cup and moves on to the next tree. It may be a considerable time before he returns to collect the raw latex dripping sluggishly into the cup. The fire over which he cures the collected rubber is made of palm nuts, the creosote-laden smoke of which enters the rubber. He dips a broad paddle into the latex, holds it over the fire, and turns it slowly over and over until the rubber coagulates. He dips again and again, hour after hour, till he has accumulated sizable balls of rubber. All over the Amazonian region thousands of seringueros are crouched over creosoty fires doing this laborious job. The squatting position, theunheaithy wet country, the malaria and long hours contribute to almost universal ill-health among them. Discontent and smuggling are rife, but nothing seems to help the position. In Para, the frontier city, which can be compared only to Kimberley in the first days of the diamond rushes, they talk of bringing in Oriental labour, but so far this, too, has been unsuccessful. • In Asia the methods used are quite different. When in 1875 the coffee industrv collapsed, rubber was tried, and failed. Later, however, the idea was revived, and the few seeds obtainable were auctioned at immense prices. This was the beginning of the Asian trade. Vast areas are under cultivation, and the East Indian tappers are an intelligent and well-paid organisation. They work with a small, very sharp steel knife that makes a clean slice. The trees are tapped regularly and left Untouched two years out of three. In these model plantations the rubber is coagulated by acetic acid in huge tanks. Nevertheless, it is inferior to Brazilian rubber. Natural soil, moist Climate, hand curing—all contribute tc the resiliency and strength which make Para rubber demanded for surgical supplies, inner tubes, etc. Contrary to usual belief, rubber is not obtained from’one tree alone. Two hundred species of trees, vines and plants are tapped. All milky-juiced plants contain more or less latex. Rubber’s uses have long been known.. Columbus actually found children at Haiti playing with rubber balls, and the Conquistadores learnt from the Indians how to waterproof their garments. Such primitive rubber easily deteriorated. It was brittle in cold, and melted in heat. In 1823 Mackintosh managed to manufacture waterproofs, and the monuments of his name seen on rainy days speak louder than any statue. Exactly 16 years later, Goodyear invented vulcanisation by combining rubber with sulphur, and immediately rubber sprang into the market as a new power. The corners of this earth were ransacked for rubberproducing plants, and Indians and negroes were shaken out of their un- I disturbed lives by bands of explorers ' looking for both rubber and cheap labour. Africa was the first country to yield the precious fluid, but owing to rhe reckless methods used by the original seekers the history of rubber in Africa is fast drawing to a close. Desperate attempts to supply a soaring market made workers cut the trees at both top and bottom and entirely destroy latex-bearing vines. Slavery in the Congo area was a notorious scandal of the time. Possibly African rubber might have rivalled that of Para had not this reckless way of obtaining it been allowed, although the Amazonian rain forest is an area even vaster than that of equatorial Africa.

During the war, the' demand for rubber reached its zenith. Aeroplanes, automobiles, submarines, etc., consumed over and above the available supply. The Allies possessed ample concessions, but Germany had to face the grave fact that she had but one year's supply in hand. Her chemists, at that time the best in the world, set to work to invent synthetic rubber. They did so. but the result was so vastly inferior to the real thing that manufacture was abandoned. Nevertheless( for four years Germany managed to do without imported rubber. The amazing feat of her chemists was not known till after hostilities ceased, but in spite of innumerable difficulties they succeeded in giving the inferior synthetic product enough durability to enable it to stand the strenuous test of war.

All chemical rubber is as yet inferior to the actual substance, but experiment may prove otherwise. A small plant which conveniently grows in the Mexican and Texan deserts is now under test. It is called Guayle. In olden times the natives used to chew the sap and coagulate it into rubber. Nowadays the process is done by enormous mixing machines. The rubber is soft, but American considers when the rain forests of Brazil yield their last latex she may be able to supply the world from her desert plantations of this small bush, which is a cousin of the milkweed.