HARVESTING THE RUBBER
It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed
in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters
to begin the day's work. The tapping must be done early in the
day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after
sunrise.
When the trees reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen
inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is
usually attained when the trees are about five years old.
In tapping, a narrow strip of bark is cut away with a knife, the
cut extending diagonally one-quarter of the way around the tree.
At each succeeding day's tapping the tapper widens the cut by
stripping off a sliver of bark one-twentieth of an inch in width.[2]
He must be careful not to cut into the wood of the tree, as such cuts
not only injure the tree but permit the sap to run into the latex
and spoil the rubber. When the tapper has made the proper gash in
the bark he inserts a little spout to carry the dripping latex to
a glass cup beneath.
[2] This method of tapping is shown on the front cover.
Later in the morning the workers make the rounds of the trees with
large milk cans, gathering the latex from the cups. When the cans
are full they are carried to a collecting station, called a
Coagulation Shed. It is as clean and well kept as a dairy. Here
the latex is weighed, and when each collector has been credited
with the amount he has brought, it is dumped into huge vats.
The next step is to extract the particles of rubber from the latex
and to harden them. The jungle method of hardening rubber is to
dip a wooden paddle in the latex and smoke it over a fire of wood
and palm nuts.[3] It is a back-breaking process to cover the paddle
with layer after layer, until a good-sized lump, usually called a
"biscuit," is formed. The plantation method is a quicker and cleaner
one. Into the vats is poured a small quantity of acid, which causes
the rubber "cream" to coagulate and come to the surface. The
"coagulum," as it is called, is like snow-white dough. It is removed
from the vats and run in sheets through machines which squeeze out
the moisture and imprint on them a criss-cross pattern to expose as
large a surface as possible to the air.
[3] See picture, page 12.
These sheets of rubber are then hung in smoke houses and smoked
from eight to fourteen days in much the same way that we smoke
hams and bacon. After being dried in this way they are pressed
into bales or packed in boxes ready for shipment.