manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.

While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they
are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The
British _Tropical Life_ says of the American invasion: "As America is so
extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our
rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to
reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya
estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment
with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional
on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is
restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up
to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910
rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at
less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early
birds.

The fact that the world's rubber trade was in the control of Great
Britain caused America great anxiety and financial loss in the early