The Romance of Rubber | Page 7

in healthy surroundings and are supplied with plenty of good food. In fact the conditions are so much better than generally prevail among natives in the Orient that work on a plantation is considered more desirable than most other forms of labor. The unmarried men live in barracks, but the men with families have individual houses with garden plots adjoining. Big kitchens prepare and cook the food in the best native style. Schools for the children, recreation centers for old and young, and hospitals to care for the sick, are all parts of the plantation organization.
In erecting hospitals and caring for the health of its plantation workers, as in other branches of the rubber industry, America has taken the lead. So well is this recognized, that the Dutch Government has awarded a medal to the United States Rubber Company for the efficiency and completeness of its plantation hospital, which happens to be the largest private hospital in the East Indies, having accommodations for nearly a thousand patients.

CHAPTER 7
HARVESTING THE RUBBER
It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters to begin the day's work. The tapping must be done early in the day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after sunrise.
When the trees reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is usually attained when the trees are about five years old.
In tapping, a narrow strip of bark is cut away with a knife, the cut extending diagonally one-quarter of the way around the tree. At each succeeding day's tapping the tapper widens the cut by stripping off a sliver of bark one-twentieth of an inch in width. [Footnote: This method of tapping is shown on the front cover] He must be careful not to cut into the wood of the tree, as such cuts not only injure the tree but permit the sap to run into the latex and spoil the rubber. When the tapper has made the proper gash in the bark he inserts a little spout to carry the dripping latex to a glass cup beneath.
Later in the morning the workers make the rounds of the trees with large milk cans, gathering the latex from the cups. When the cans are full they are carried to a collecting station, called a Coagulation Shed. It is as clean and well kept as a dairy. Here the latex is weighed, and when each collector has been credited with the amount he has brought, it is dumped into huge vats.
The next step is to extract the particles of rubber from the latex and to harden them. The jungle method of hardening rubber is to dip a wooden paddle in the latex and smoke it over a fire of wood and palm nuts.[Footnote: See picture, page 12.] It is a back- breaking process to cover the paddle with layer after layer, until a good-sized lump, usually called a "biscuit," is formed. The plantation method is a quicker and cleaner one. Into the vats is poured a small quantity of acid, which causes the rubber "cream" to coagulate and come to the surface. The "coagulum," as it is called, is like snow-white dough. It is removed from the vats and run in sheets through machines which squeeze out the moisture and imprint on them a criss-cross pattern to expose as large a surface as possible to the air.
These sheets of rubber are then hung in smoke houses and smoked from eight to fourteen days in much the same way that we smoke hams and bacon. After being dried in this way they are pressed into bales or packed in boxes ready for shipment.

CHAPTER 8
A LAST WORD
It would be an adventure to follow a bale of plantation rubber as, carefully boxed or wrapped in burlap, it starts on its long and picturesque journey. Bullock carts, railroads, boats and steamers bring it at last to one of the world markets, Singapore, Colombo, London, Amsterdam or New York, where it is bought by dealers, and then sold to factories which make rubber goods.
An equally fascinating story might be told of its progress through the factory, how it is kneaded and rolled, mixed with chemicals, rubbed into fabrics, baked in ovens, and finally emerges as any one of the tens of thousands of articles that are made wholly or partly from rubber.
Rubber manufacturing is peculiarly an American industry. South America gave us the original rubber trees, and the one man who, more than any other, was responsible for making rubber useful was the American, Charles Goodyear. To-day, two-thirds of the entire output of rubber is sold to the United States, whose manufactured rubber goods