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