The Romance of Rubber | Page 6

took care of the
sudden emergency.
A little more than ten years ago American business men began to take
an interest in the rubber plantations. They have shown characteristic
energy in the field, and the greatest single rubber plantation in the
world is owned by an American company, the United States Rubber
Company. This plantation is on the island of Sumatra in the Dutch East
Indies, one of the best governed colonies in the East. On this island is
an orchard of rubber trees, as beautifully laid out and as well cared for
as any orchard of fruit trees in our own country. For seventy square
miles, an area as large as the District of Columbia, the orderly ranks of
trees fill the gently rolling landscape, every inch of which is weeded as
carefully as a garden. It takes twenty thousand employees to care for
the trees, which number more than 5,000,000.

On this plantation the science of growing rubber trees has been brought
to a perfection known nowhere else in the world. Groups of botanists,
chemists and arboriculturists study constantly tree diseases, methods of
increasing the yield, and the other problems of growing fine trees that
will produce high grade rubber. Here, by experiment and inspection,
the secrets of the rubber tree are being brought to light, so much so that
growers look to this plantation for leadership in methods of rubber
culture. This great project so far from American soil and in a field so
new gives a thrill of pride to the Americans visiting Sumatra on their
way around the world.

CHAPTER 6
PLANTATION LIFE
The moist but very hot climate which rubber trees require is found only
in a zone around the world between the parallels of latitude thirty
degrees north to thirty degrees south of the equator. Within this zone
there have been found more than 350 rubber bearing trees, shrubs and
vines. For this reason this zone is called the Rubber Belt. As most of
the rubber used commercially is gathered from trees growing within a
zone extending from ten degrees north to ten degrees south of the
equator, this latter zone is sometimes called the Inner Rubber Belt.
If you will trace this belt on a map of the world you will see that it
includes the Amazon region which produces more than three- quarters
of the wild rubber used in manufacturing. Most of South America's
wild rubber is obtained from Brazil, the remainder from Bolivia, Peru
and Venezuela. Now continue the belt across the Atlantic Ocean to
Africa, where you will strike the Belgian Congo which produces a
small quantity of wild rubber. Partly owing to the careless manner of
gathering and partly to the fact that it is not originally of as good
quality as Brazilian rubber, Congo rubber is not as valuable for
manufacturing as Brazilian. Then complete the circle by following the
belt across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and the East Indies which
contain the great rubber plantations where most of the rubber used

to-day comes from.
To establish a rubber plantation requires very careful planning. The
choice of a site is of first importance, for the planter must find a
locality having a moist climate with an evenly distributed rain-fall
where the temperature throughout the year does not fall below seventy
degrees Fahrenheit, and where there is protection from the wind. There
must also be, of course, access to a steady labor supply and a
convenient shipping port. As the proper climate is a tropical one, there
is usually dense jungle to be cleared away. Immense trees and thick
bushes, rank straggling weeds and vines form an almost impenetrable
jungle. To turn such a place into a garden spot means a genuine battle
against jungle conditions. But gradually trees, shrubs and undergrowth
are torn out and burned, laying bare the rich soil ready for the plow of
the planter.
Meantime the rubber seedlings have been sprouted in nurseries. When
the ground is ready they are carefully taken up and transplanted to the
holes which have been made for them in the field where they are to be
permanently planted.
Though the growth of the trees is very rapid, sometimes as much as
twenty feet in the first year, there are five years of anxious waiting and
guarding against winds and disease before they are ready to be tapped
and so begin to reward the planters. At first the yield of a tree is only
about one-half pound of rubber a year, and this increases so slowly that
it is many years before it amounts to as much as ten pounds a year. The
highest yield ever recorded was given by one of the original trees set
out in the gardens at Heneratgoda, which gave ninety-six and one-half
pounds