The Romance of Rubber | Page 4

the prize milker of the tropics and gave the largest amount of pure
rubber. Finally, the Hevea, the very tree the Frenchman wrote about,
proved to be the best, and, although by no means the only rubber tree of
commercial value, it is acknowledged the greatest of rubber trees.
The Hevea 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