The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1910. THE BOOM IN RUBBER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 6

The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1910. THE BOOM IN RUBBER.

Recently we have had. several cable messages from London remarking on the activity in the rubber market,, both for the raw product and in- the shares of the numerous companies owning plantations."' Furthermore, quite a crop of new companies have been floated recently, so that the rubber boom has become quite a prominent thing. At the commencement of this year the world's visible supply'of Para rubber amounted to 3278 tons, an in-, crease of '30 tons as compared with the corresponding period of- 1909, and a "reduction of 444 tons as compared with 1908. Thus the outcome of the strenuous efforts made by producers during the past three years to increase their 'output of rubber has barely sufficed to keep pace with the growth of the demand, and the prioe of the raw material has consequently advanced from 2s. 9d. to nearly 10s. per lb. For the current year the world's output of raw rubber may be expected" to total 85,000 tons, an increase of only 5400 tons, so that the position of the market may be regarded as still tending towards higher prices. It is believed ■that during the first'half of the current year the demand will continue heavy, sufficiently so to maintain prices, if not to 'force them higher, out the increase in the supply of the raw matorial is likely to make itself felt in the latter portion of the year, when prices are sure to be on a rather lower scale. The world's production of rubber in 1909 totalled about 79,600 tons, of which something approaching 5000 tons was derived from the East, or about 6 per cent, of the aggregate. For the current year it.is estimated that the output of plantation rubber from Asia may exceed 8000 tons, while reliable estimates indicate that by 1913 the ratio of plantation rubber to the world's, total production of all grades will be 30 per cent. Meanwhile,, notwithstanding the increasing use _ of rubber in the industrial world, it would not be prudent to look for a very large expansion in consumption, unless prices undergo a marked reduction.' There is thus a possibility that by 1913 Or thereabouts the world's supply of rubber may be in excess of immediate reAt all events, it is a moral-certainty that the rapid multiplication of rubber companies now going on will bring about a collapse in prices. The immediate future is, no doubt, exceedingly bright and promising, but if we look a little beyond that the conclusion- appears inevitable that eventually some of the, numerous companies that are either reaping a rich harvest from the "boom" in l rubber, or are expecting to do so shortly, will find themselves competing with one another in a falling market. A Frenchman has written a shoit history. of rubber, published last year, from which we gather that no European ban claim to have discovered the uses of rubber. When Columbus first visited America he found the Indians wearing primitive macintoshes and galosheß. Since they were made., of the raw and sticky gum, by nightfall each Indian must have collected on his person samples of all his day's occupations. During the latter half of the eighteenth century the gum was exhibited from time to time in France as a curiosity. The famous chemist, Priestley, studied its properties, and first recommended it as an e'raser. At the opening of the nineteenth century a few tentative efforts had been mado both in England and France to employ it in waterproofing . material, and for boots, tubes, and dolls. But it was not until the 'twenties that the true industrial development of the gum began, and it was . Macintosh, of Glasgow, who began it. He discovered how to make thin india-rubber sheets, and how to incorporate a textile material with it by means of a solution of rubber in naphtha. His name became a household word, now obsolescent. But a name which deserves even more to be associated with the rubber industry is that of Goodyear. His discovery in 1839 of the process of vulcanisation has been the'foundation of the modern industrial development of rubber. Before that time the stickiness of the raw gum and the way it melted in the heat were a great drawback to its use, as in the case of the Indians' galoshes. In seeking to remedy these effects, he tried mixing the gum with all sorts of substances and heating it. One day he- tried sulphur, and the thing was done. When the mixture was heated it changed. Whilst retaining elasticity and impermeability it lost its stickiness and its liability to racll.- and dissolve. Using more sulphur in the mixture.

he obtained vulcanite. This is the process of vulcanisation by sulphur, which is now universally employed to make commercial rubber out of the raw gum, just as iron is heated with carbon to make it into steel. After Goodyear's discovery, the development of the material went forward rapidly. It is curious to notice that in 1845 Thomson invented and fully described the pneumatic tyre, with inside and outside rubber tubes and a valve; but the world was not ready for the invention, and it was forgotten until its rediscovery by Dunlop in 1888 started the present enormous development of the rubber industries. The growth of the world's production shows the effect of the evolution of the technology of the material. In 1836 the total production was 120 tons. It increased slowly to 3200 tons in 1860, and then more rapidly to 10,150 tons in 1880. Thenceforward it increased by leaps and bounds.

Many hundreds of genera and many thousands of species of plants yield rubber. They vary widely in type, from the king of them all, the Hevea of Brazil, a giant forest tree, to the rope-like lianas of the Congo. Each part of the equatorial regions of the globe has its own sort. The strangest is that of Asia, the "ficus elastica," a poor yielder, which has the timid habit of dropping roots down even from its topmost branches, to_ make quite sure that the earth is still there all right. Commercially and_ physically the palm-like Hevea is king; and it is this genus which is being 1 principally cultivated by the new companies in the plantations. Wickham sent the first seedlings from Kew for artificial cultivation in Ceylon in 1896, and it is now estimated that the number of trees planted in Ceylon, , the Peninsula, and the Islands amounts to fiftyone and a half millions. Rubber is not a sap, it is a sccretion. It is not the blood of the tree, it is rather its milk; and it closely resembles milk when it trickles from transverse gashes in the bark into the little pots stuck on below to catch. it. It is then a thin liquor which has to be coagulated for transport. Several problems of great importance remain to be solved in connection with the technology of rubber. The most vital of these is how to prevent the slow oxidation which the material undergoes in the air, -which .robs it of its elasticity and impermeability, and makes it brittle and hard. Another difficulty is that rubber, which is the best of all insulators, is particularly badly affected by contact with copper, which is the best of commercial conductors.