effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos--not
on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
53,000. Besides this the plantation rubber is a cleaner and more even
product, carefully coagulated by acetic acid instead of being smoked
over a forest fire. It comes in pale yellow sheets instead of big black
balls loaded with the dirt or sticks and stones that the honest Indian
sometimes adds to make a bigger lump. What's better, the man who milks
the rubber trees on a plantation may live at home where he can be
decently looked after. The agriculturist and the chemist may do what the
philanthropist and statesman could not accomplish: put an end to the
cruelties involved in the international struggle for "black gold."

The United States uses three-fourths of the world's rubber output and
grows none of it. What is the use of tropical possessions if we do not
make use of them? The Philippines could grow all our rubber and keep a
$300,000,000 business under our flag. Santo Domingo, where rubber was
first discovered, is now under our supervision and could be enriched by
the industry. The Guianas, where the rubber tree was first studied,
might be purchased. It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American