HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS
When the Para seedlings were ready to be transplanted into the open,
India could not afford to adopt them. So the majority of them were
sent to Ceylon, and small batches to Burma, Java, and Singapore. The
West Indies, too, were given a few to experiment with, but the seeds
had been obtained specially for the purpose of introducing Para rubber
into the East, so naturally the seedlings were nearly all distributed
throughout the Eastern Tropics.
Most of the seedlings that went to Ceylon were planted in the Botanic
Gardens at Heneratgoda, near Colombo, which were specially opened in
the low-country region as an experimental centre of rubber cultivation.
A few of them, however, were given a home in the island’s world-famous
Gardens at Peradeniya, in the up-country neighbourhood of Kandy. The
plants at Heneratgoda flowered for the first time in 1881, at the
age of five; those at Peradeniya did not flower until 1884.
[Illustration: (1) CEARA RUBBER TREE IN CEYLON. _Page 64_
(2) PARA RUBBER TREES, 27 MONTHS OLD, CEYLON. _Page 65_
_From photographs in the Ceylon Section of the Imperial Institute, by
permission_]
There are differences of opinion as to the career of the seedlings
which went to Singapore. It is known that as early as 1880, some Hevea
trees were in flower at Perak, a mid-region of the Malay Peninsula,
and that in 1881 some of those in the Botanic Gardens at Singapore,
in the south of the Peninsula, bore fruit. These trees may have been
reared from Kew seedlings; or they may have been grown from cuttings
of the young trees at Peradeniya, sent over to Singapore in 1877; or,
again, they may have been transplanted one-year-olds from Ceylon. In
any case, Heveas in the Malay Peninsula were yielding seed as early as
their near relatives in Ceylon. And it is the seed supply of these two
countries that has brought into existence the numerous and vast rubber
plantations that now occupy a very large area of the Eastern Tropics.
For quite a long time rubber-growing was generally looked upon as a
new hobby for botanists, and anyone who prophesied a commercial future
for plantation rubber was dubbed a crank. Meanwhile, enthusiasts on
the staff of the Botanic Gardens in Ceylon and Malaya continued to
ride their hobby-horse, in that they devoted earnest attention to
the new specimens that had been placed under their care. As soon as
possible they began to take cuttings from the Hevea trees, and in
1878 no less than five hundred rooted plants were sent from Ceylon to
British Burma and Madras. Then came the time when the trees began to
furnish a good supply of seeds. By 1886, both Ceylon and Malaya were
in a position to begin distributing seeds among other countries that
wanted to experiment in rubber cultivation, and in the course of the
next few years supplies were sent to Queensland, Java, Fiji, Borneo,
East Africa, and Jamaica. But in most cases the packages went to
botanists--with an odd exception or two, planters and business men in
general would have nothing to do with rubber cultivation.
Presently, the planters in the Malay Peninsula found themselves
in a very desperate position. They had been growing coffee, and
doing splendidly with the crop, but conditions now conspired to
cut down their profits to such an extent that their only chance of
not being utterly ruined was to give up competing in the coffee
market. In despair they began to plant Hevea. This change only took
place as recently as 1895. And still the planters of Ceylon could
afford to laugh at the idea of anyone trying to make money out of
rubber-growing--they were doing well with their tea.
The pioneers in Malaya had a very hard struggle to keep their heads
above water whilst their rubber-trees were growing. They had to wait
five years before they could begin tapping, and few indeed were the
people with sufficient faith in what the harvest would be to advance
them any money for working expenses.
Came the day when motor-cars got so far beyond being a fashionable
craze that people began to realize they would soon be a necessary means
of locomotion in this age when everyone is in such a hurry. Rubber
tyres were going to be so much used in the near future, said someone
to somebody else, that it looked as if we should want more rubber than
was being supplied from the forests. The idea spread, and by 1898 a few
more people had become enthusiastic about rubber cultivation--larger
areas were put under Hevea in Malaya, and rubber planting was begun in
Ceylon, even though tea-growing was paying so well. By 1899 it had been
proved that Hevea trees would yield marketable rubber; in this year the
first cultivated Para rubber, prepared from the trees planted in Perak,
was sold in the London market at 3s. 10d. per pound.
But it was not until about 1905 that money was at all freely
forthcoming for rubber cultivation. Hitherto the planter who had
wanted to turn his estate into a company, because he lacked means for
its upkeep and development, could only hope for support from private
friends. Now that there was an actual output of plantation rubber from
the East, the great financiers who had looked upon any prophecy of such
a supply as a fairy tale began to think that it was worth while to
risk money in an enterprise which gave such sound promise of yielding
extraordinarily large profits. The amount of money that was now
available for rubber-growing gave scope for a considerable development
of the industry. The acreage under Hevea was increased on the existing
estates in Malaya, and jungle was cleared for the opening up of new
estates; in Ceylon, Hevea was planted on a large scale among the
flourishing tea-bushes, and rubber-planting was seriously undertaken in
the commercial spirit in other parts of the Eastern Tropics, also in
tropical lands of the West.
As yet, however, the public had not awakened to the money-making
possibilities of rubber cultivation. At last, in the spring of 1910,
they suddenly “discovered” plantation rubber. Some of the companies
owning Eastern estates which had been planted up with Hevea in 1905,
or earlier, had paid to their shareholders in 1909 interest amounting
to 80, 165, even 300 per cent., and tongues will very quickly wag into
fame an industry that yields such enormous profits. Also, the price of
rubber was going up, and people began to talk about the large number
of new uses to which the material was being put. It was now widely
believed that there would be such a shortage of rubber in the near
future that the supply would fetch famine prices, and consequently the
value of rubber shares would rise by leaps and bounds. The fact that
some people thought they stood to make money by a judicious purchase
of shares in certain estates, about the working of which they had some
knowledge, was now quite sufficient to persuade people who had never
given a moment’s serious attention either to the industry in particular
or to speculation in general that they could quickly make a fortune
by investing in any so-called Rubber Company. Whilst these ideas were
spreading like wildfire, the price of rubber was going up and up, until
at last, in the spring of 1910, the moment came when a feverishly
excited public made that historic run on rubber shares which is known
as the “Rubber Boom.”