RUBBER OUTPUT.

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 73, 23 September 1927, Page 10

RUBBER OUTPUT.

Speaking in London at the annual dinner of the Incorporated Society of Planters of Malaya, Mr. W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, M.P., Under-Secretary of State for ( the Colonies, dealt with rubber prospects and output on interesting lines. The Colonial Office, he said, was most concerned in the degree o£ acceptance and" the degree ■of criticism in regard to the continuance and the carrying on of the Stevenson scheme, which was introduced, not from any economic theory, but because of the facts of th« case. World production had passed the rate of world consumption. The ordinary working of the laws of supply and demand would have meant the going out of cultivation of vast areas. It was not merely the losses which would have been entailed. It was the effect on the inevitably growing world consumption of the future that such a collapse . would have had. Mr. Amery, on behalf of the British Cabinet, had announced the continuance of the Stevenson scheme after Ist November. The Government did' not take that decision without closely examining all the factors. They could be assured that there were not going to be ehoppings and changes and sudden reversals of policy. Continuity was essential to the carrying on of any industry. The Government had every confidence in the Advisory Committee, now presided over by Sir Mathew Nathan. Its deliberations wer» taken, not from any narrow or any merely sectional view of what must necessarily involve world considerations, but from the widest sense of Imperial responsibility.