THE HISTORY OF RUBBER
Of course, you have already guessed that the material used by the “poor
savages” I have been talking about was rubber. But I should not be at
all surprised if you are thinking that I have made up the whole story I
have told you about the discovery of the product.
For the moment, I will neither confess nor deny that I have spun you a
fairy story. Instead, I will ask you to give your attention to a few
well-known facts about the history of rubber.
On the authority of an old and honoured historian, Herrera by name,
Columbus saw the natives of the Island of Haiti, in the West Indies,
playing with balls which were said to be made of gum from a tree.
This was during his second voyage of discovery, in 1493 to 1496. A
sixteenth-century document refers to elastic balls which the aborigines
of the New World used in their games. And early in the seventeenth
century a report was issued dealing with a tree growing in Mexico, from
which the natives extracted a milky liquid that came to be used by the
Spaniards for the purpose of making their garments water-tight.
In each case, the historical reference is generally admitted to
concern the material we now call rubber. Therefore, by the way, so far
as history enlightens us, Columbus was the first European to become
acquainted with this forest product.
According to history, then, the aborigines in different parts of
Southern America discovered rubber, and made use of it, without any
help from the civilized world. By the way, they called the material
“_cahucu_.” When an English scientist, by name Priestley, discovered
in the latter part of the eighteenth century that cahucu would rub
out pencil marks, this wonderful product was named _india-rubber_, in
plain English. In nearly every other country it is now spoken of as
_caoutchouc_.
Now, to come back to that story I told you “out of my head.” As regards
the time in which the events occurred I have already proved to you that
rubber was discovered before Columbus discovered America; and as there
is no authority which permits me to be more definite on this point, I
think you will agree with me that I was bound to give the period of
my narrative as Once Upon a Time. The scene of that story is, I now
frankly admit, laid in Brazil--to be more exact, in the Valley of the
River Amazon.
Here, you will surely ask what explanation I have to offer for
selecting Brazil as the home of the great discovery--why not Haiti,
since the first mention of rubber in history is connected with this
island? Or why not Mexico, since the natives of this country are also
credited by history with being amongst the earliest folk to make
themselves acquainted with the uses of rubber?
I am quite ready to reply to such very natural questions. Just as no
one can deny that the discovery of rubber has brought about a great
revolution in the industrial world, so no one who knows the whole
history of that revolution can dispute the fact that it was the
discovery of Brazilian rubber which has been far and away the most
powerful agent in effecting it. And although history does not give me a
cut-and-dried date to support my belief that the aborigines of Brazil
collected rubber sap, and made use thereof as early as, or even earlier
than, did the natives of Haïti and Mexico, it supplies me with facts
which uphold this theory.
The Portuguese founded the colony of Brazil early in the sixteenth
century, but naturally their first settlements were on the coast.
About a hundred years later they began to explore the Amazon. The
first European pioneer to journey along this wonderful waterway was a
Portuguese missionary, and it is said that he was the first civilized
man to see the natives of Brazil making use of rubber. Be this as it
may, it is certain that the natives had long been acquainted with the
product when the Portuguese began to colonize the Amazon Valley, for
the settlers found that the aborigines of the district were skilled
in making not only balls for playthings, but such useful articles as
water-tight shoes and bags out of the sap of a tree that flourished in
this locality.
It is not at all likely that the natives of Brazil had received any
help from the natives of Haïti or Mexico in the matter of discovering
that tree and the peculiar value of its sap. For the aborigines of
Southern America are not given to wandering off to foreign lands either
on business or pleasure, and even in these days it is only the very
enthusiastic traveller or the man whose living depends on the rubber
industry who undertakes a journey into the interior of Brazil, where,
for the most part, the means of communication are still very primitive.
So far, I have shown you there is little doubt that the aborigines
of Brazil discovered the rubber in their own country; and I think I
have given you sufficient evidence for asking you to believe that the
discovery was made off their own bat, and at quite as early a period
as the natives of Haïti and of Mexico separately and independently
discovered the rubber-trees in their own homelands.
I will now give you some further proofs that there is more truth than
fiction in the story I told you.
Come with me into the Brazilian forests this very day. The scenery, you
find, is so wildly beautiful that words cannot possibly do it justice,
much less exaggerate its delights; in spite of the coming of the
European, and the annual invasion by hundreds of rubber-gatherers, few
changes have been made in the name of Progress within these forests; so
in the days before the white man knew of their existence they must have
looked very much the same as they do now. And the pure-bred Brazilian
native has not been entirely wiped off the face of his homeland. You
may still come across some of the aborigines, and they still scorn
clothes, adorn themselves with feathers and beads, carry a blowpipe,
hunt their meat, and trap their fish.
As we start off along a track that has little or no more claim to be
called a path than had the Indian trail in my story, I point out to
you a specimen of the rubber-yielding tree that is a native of these
forests. Very soon you notice for yourselves that there are numbers
of these trees in the district. Were you a son of these wilds, wholly
dependent on your surroundings for anything and everything in the way
of supplies, would you not try to find out whether this tree cannot be
made to provide you with something to eat or drink or play with?
Take out your penknife, and cut into the bark of one of these trees.
Out oozes a thickish white substance, some of which drops on to your
fingers. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, it comes natural
to you to rub thumb against sticky fingers, whereupon the substance
gradually solidifies, and at last breaks loose in the form of a tiny
pellet. In a similarly simple way the mere savage discovered rubber
hundreds of years ago; only he used a flint axehead, or maybe a sharp
tooth of some animal, instead of a penknife.
With regard to the method of collecting rubber by scraping a hole in
the earth, and leaving the sap which trickled down into it to be dried
by the natural heat of the earth and the air, I can only assure you
that the white man found the aborigines “making” raw rubber in this
way, so they must have invented the plan themselves.
To defend my choice of Brazil as the scene of my story, I must now
justify my statement that the discovery of rubber in this country has
been of more importance than similar discoveries in the forests of
other lands.
The native rubber-tree of Brazil, botanically known as _Hevea
brasiliensis_, yields the finest quality rubber. This specially good
material is called “Para rubber,” after the port of Para, at the mouth
of the Amazon, which was the first centre of distribution.
The whole flourishing rubber industry of to-day owes its origin to the
trade which sprang up in Para rubber, following on the colonization
of the Amazon Valley by the Portuguese. During the first half of the
eighteenth century Lisbon began to import rubber goods, such as hats,
boots, bags, and capes, from Brazil, and in 1759 the Government of Para
sent a suit of rubber clothes as a present to the King of Portugal.
In the early part of the eighteenth century, too, France began to take
an interest in rubber, and it was not long before other countries,
including England, began to experiment with the new material.
Until well on in the nineteenth century, rubber goods were made in
Brazil only. The chief market for them was North America, which
imported a varied assortment of such things as rubber shoes,
tobacco-pouches, travelling bags, powder-flasks, and water-bottles.
Amongst all these articles, the waterproof shoes did most to popularize
the new material; the first shipment was sent to Boston in 1820, and
these found such favour with the Americans that a couple of years later
the United States imported another 500 pairs. So quickly was this
second stock sold out that the States began to think an opportunity
had arisen for them to make a new outlet for their manufacturing
energy and enterprise, and very soon they decided to import raw rubber
and manufacture rubber goods. About the same time, some pioneer
rubber-goods factories were erected on the Continent.
The factory soon began to rival the forest workshop in the variety
of goods turned out, and in such details of craftsmanship as style
and finish. But the new enterprise did not prove very satisfactory,
because it was found that these goods did not wear well. Evidently
they suffered from exposure to the air, being damaged by changes of
temperature.
This great drawback to manufactured rubber goods was removed by the
discovery of a method of treating rubber with sulphur. The process,
called “vulcanization,” was discovered by an American named Charles
Goodyear, who made his first successful experiments in 1839. He himself
did much to improve his method of making rubber more durable, and he
also worked up this product into a material similar to horn; but it
was left for another inventive genius to find out how to polish that
material and give us the very useful form of rubber which we call
“vulcanite.”
The discovery of the vulcanization process acted as a very great
stimulus to the rubber industry. More and more keen and widespread
became the desire to manufacture rubber goods, and the growing demand
for the raw material led Brazil to extend her search for Hevea trees,
and to set about dealing with the export of raw rubber in a more
business-like way. Up to about 1877 the forests around the mouth of
the Amazon had been the only source of supply. Now some of the upper
tributaries of the river were exploited, and the glowing reports
as to the wealth of Hevea in the inland forests led to a rush of
rubber-gatherers into the interior. It soon became known that these
reports had not exaggerated the available supply of Para rubber, and
fresh energy and enterprise were attracted to the Valley of the Amazon
by the rosy prospects of the raw rubber trade.
“How has that trade prospered?”
The Amazon District (Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru) now has numerous
competitors who cater for the world’s annual consumption of upwards of
200,000 tons of raw rubber. But up to 1912 the Amazon Valley continued
to control the rubber industry, because it exported such a large
proportion of the world’s whole supply of the raw material, and the
quality of its output was far superior to that of the supplies from
nearly every other rubber-producing country.
[Illustration: TAPPING THE WILD RUBBER-TREES (HEVEA BRASILIENSIS) IN
THE FOREST NEAR PARA, BRAZIL. _Page 23_
_By permission of the Director of the Museum, Para_]
About 1900, however, a competitor gave signs of life in the cradle of
the Middle East. The public knew little about that competitor, and
cared less; the experts with very few exceptions derided it. But a few
years later both the experts and the public began to realize that,
for the first time in its triumphant career, wild Para had a really
fearsome rival. This adversary is commonly known as Plantation Rubber;
as a matter of fact, it is Cultivated Para, which has made such a
determined fight for supremacy in the raw rubber market. This is indeed
a case of child rising up against parent, for the Cultivated Para is
all being obtained from trees that owe their existence to seeds taken
from the Brazilian forests. The struggle has brought about a revolution
in the Rubber World; all of you must have heard of at least one of the
stirring events to which it has already given rise--the Rubber Boom in
the spring of 1910.