The Romance of Rubber | Page 4

tree grows sixty feet tall, and when full grown is eight or ten feet around. It rises as straight as an elm, with high branching limbs and long, smooth oval leaves. Sprays of pale flowers blossom upon it in August, followed in a few months by pods containing three speckled seeds which look like smooth, slightly flattened nutmegs. When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the seeds shooting in all directions.
This is Nature's clever scheme to spread the Hevea family. The tree grows wild in the hot, damp forests of the Amazon valley and in other parts of South America that have a similar climate. The ideal climate for the rubber tree is one which is uniform all the year round, from eighty-nine to ninety-four degrees at noon, and riot lower than seventy degrees at night. The Amazon country has a rainy season which lasts half the year, though the other season is by no means a dry one, and so for half the time the jungles are flooded.
These rubber storehouses had been growing for thousands of years in the Amazon jungle with their wealth securely sealed up in their bark, the peck of a bird, the boring of a beetle, or the scratch of a climbing animal being the only draft upon their treasure. The trees around the mouth of the river supplied whatever was needed for the little manufacturing that was at first done. But the discovery that made a universal use for rubber changed all this. Brazil was surprised to find what great treasure her forests contained. Large rubber areas were found a thousand miles up the river and she began in a serious way to develop a large crude rubber business.
Less than twenty years ago Brazil produced practically all the rubber used in the world. But to-day she furnishes less than one- tenth of the world's supply. How Brazil, possessing in her vast forests millions of rubber trees of the finest quality, has been forced by unfavorable conditions to permit the Far East to sweep from her in this short time the crude rubber supremacy of the world is one of the most unusual chapters in modern industrial history.

CHAPTER 4
WICKHAM'S IDEA
The story of the success of the East Indies in wresting the crude rubber supremacy from Brazil, begins with an Englishman named Wickham, who might be called the father of plantation rubber.
Wickham, who had spent some years in South America, understood the difficulties of gathering rubber in the jungles. He believed that if rubber could be cultivated it might prove a good crop on the coffee plantations in India which a blight had recently rendered valueless for coffee. What a strange fact it is that this blight gave Brazil a chance to go into coffee growing, and that while Brazil was losing the rubber supremacy to the Far East, the Far East at about the same time was surrendering the leadership in coffee to Brazil. The latter now holds first place in coffee growing as firmly as does the Far East in rubber growing.
Wickham saw that there were difficulties that would prevent the gathering of wild rubber from keeping pace with the growing demand. Although millions of rubber trees still stood untouched in the Brazilian forests, only those trees near the river banks could be tapped because of the impossibility of getting the rubber out of the dense vegetation. Life in the jungle was dangerous and lonely, and therefore rubber gatherers were not easy to find. They were compelled to work far from their families and friends, and in constant danger from wild beasts, reptiles and death-bearing fevers. It is no wonder that rubber obtained in this way came to be known as "wild rubber." Moreover, transporting the crude product through the jungles was hard and expensive and the rubber obtained under these conditions was not always so clean or high in quality as might be wished.
"If rubber trees grow from the seeds which nature scatters in the jungle," said Wickham to himself, "why should they not grow from seeds put into the ground by hand?"
"If rubber trees could be raised from seed, they could be planted in the open in rows where they could easily be tended and tapped, and the rubber gathered quickly and safely. Instead of having to brave the dangerous jungles, men could plant and cultivate rubber in spots of their own choosing so long as they chose places where the climate was right."
For many years people only laughed at Wickham's great idea, but like Goodyear he had faith enough to persevere. While in Brazil he planted some rubber seeds to see what would happen. The seeds DID grow, and the book which Wickham wrote about his idea and his experiments