RUSSIAN RUBBER PLAN

Taranaki Daily News, 9 July 1930, Page 5

RUSSIAN RUBBER PLAN

; • FAILURE OF EXPERIMENT. CARE OF USELESS WEEDS. The plans for the rapid creation of Soviet rubber plantations and the production i&f home-grown rubber on a large scale in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have miscarried, and the officials of the Trust” are being accused, in the Soviet press of counter-revolution, the Riga correspondent of the Times wrote recently. The Caoutchouc Trust was established by h special decree last year,, after Soviet (Scientists had experimented for three years in the laboratory with eoine wild shrubs which had been found growing in the sands of Turkestan. The scientists had reported that the shrubs were rich in caoutchouc latex of high quality, which would enable the Soviet Union to “emancipate herself” from the rubber capitalists of the West. Orders were issued that during the spring Of 1930 this new State trust should plant 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) with the newly-discovered rubber shrub; the news has now been published at Moscow that the trust has been able to lay down no more than two hectares (4.9 acres) of rubber plantation and that the planters are not quite sure whether they have collected the proper shrub or a similar one which makes good progress but yields no rubber. Professor Bosse, who is being made one inf the chief scapegoats, published his explanation of the failure of the plans for ,this year in the official organ of the Supreme Economic Council, of May 16. He Stated there was still much laboratory work to be done when the trust was ordered to begin planting; but officials in other departments were unsympathetic and work was consequently slow. The process of .analysis, for example, required that the substances delivered to the laboratory should be ground in special mills. They had no such mills, and were, therefore, obliged to canvass the State food shops for the loan of ooilee mills, as there were none for sale. They found a few mills at list, but although they were idle the officials would not Lnd them, for th- • said: “We

may have coffee again some day, who knows? And then we shall need our mills.” There v. -re further difficulties (said the professor) on the planting grounds. Not only were the planters apt to cultivate by mistake the wrong wild shrubs native to Turkestan, but they had destroyed the fruits of the professor’s expedition to Mexico in search of a rubber plant which might thrive on Soviet territory. He had brought back seeds of the Mexican shrub, which yields guayule rubber, and had started a small plantation in Turkestan. When he was absent the official left in charge “weeded” the plantation and, through deficient botanical knowledge, destroyed all the guayule plants in favour of a weed which throve well under his cultivation, but was quite useless for the rubber industry.