way, the property embraces one million acres, the number of rubber trees averaging six to an acre, making at least six million wild rubber trees now matured and ready to yield their valuable sap.

Let us journey into this region and see what the greatest of rubber countries looks like. Tracing the location first of all on the map, we come to Para and later to Manaos, the two rubber shipping centers of the world. In these towns live the proprietors of many of the rubber forests in the Amazon region and officials representing companies who have capital of millions, and who manage their rubber properties after modern business methods. In these cities also live many other individuals interested in the gathering and selling of rubber. It is said, indeed, that the whole of the great South American rubber region is owned by the companies represented by the

chief citizens of these cities. Para itself is a city of one hundred thousand people, many of the inhabitants having grown rich either by actually dealing in rubber or in supplying necessaries to the camps.

In both Para and Manaos the most prominent feature of industrial life is the shipment of rubber, just as the shipment of tobacco is most prominent in Havana. All the exporting sections of the cities are occupied by packing-houses where the rubber is packed for export. To these packing-houses the crude brought in lumps that very much resemble hams, though if you happen to drop one of these lumps of rubber you will realize that it is not the ham it seems to be, but a very elastic substance, since as soon as it touches the ground it bounces up and down after the manner of a heavy rubber ball. In the warehouses each lump of

rubber is carefully weighed, and is then packed in boxes, three hundred pounds in each box, ready for shipment.

The traveler will be welcomed as a passenger on one of the boats that bring the crude rubber to the warehouses of the Para Rubber Plantation Co. at Manaos, and after a short sail the boat will land the passenger in the heart of the rubber country. The territory was purchased in fee simple by the Company from the Venezuelan Government. This is the region that is destined to supply not only the best but the bulk of the rubber used throughout the world for many years to

come.

Scientific men explain that rubber is a product obtained by proper treatment of the milky sap or "latex" of such tropical trees as siphonia elastica and siphonia braziliensis, belonging to the genus distributed throughout the section of South America now under discussion. The last United States Census report says that although rubber may be produced from any plant, such as common milkweed, having a milky sap, still it can be obtained in commercial quantities only from tropical countries and from rubber trees. The census expert adds that, like other vegetable products, rubber differs in quality according to the place of derivation; and that the best rubber is shipped from Para and Manaos in South America. We have, then, the fact of Government recognition of the superiority of rubber coming from the territory here brought to the attention of the reader.

Let us see how operations in this rubber country are conducted; let us see how the Indians, native to the region, gather the rubber. In the first place, the rubber tree resembles ordinary forest trees, such as the English ash. The reader probably supposes that rubber comes from the rubber plant which ornaments his home, or which he has seen in conservatories; but that plant produces gutta-percha, and not rubber.

In the rubber forest the rubber hunter does most of his work in the forenoon, when the sap runs most freely. He begins by tapping the tree as high up from the ground as he can reach, neither boring the tree with an auger, as we do our maple trees, nor scarifying the tree as we do our turpentine pine trees of the South.

The rubber gatherer taps the tree with a tomahawk or hatchet which has an inchwide blade. He makes only a slight gash in the bark with his hatchet, taking care not to cut the wood beneath the bark. Immediately a fluid, as thin and as white as milk, oozes forth. The gatherer now fastens a small cup into another cut made below the gash, thus catching the fluid as it runs down. He makes three or four similar gashes in each tree, fastening a cup under each gash. About noontime he goes from tree to tree and empties the milk from the cups into a bucket. He has only a certain number of trees allotted to him, and as there is a tablespoonful of fluid in each cup when he gathers it at noontime, each tapper has about a gallon of sap to show for his morning's work.

The rubber forests are divided into what are known in the rubber regions as paths. These consist of from sixty to one hundred trees each, the paths leading in and out of the woods and crossing streams. One such path is allotted to each of the native workers who tap the trees and gather the rubber. The size of a plantation is known by the number of paths that it contains. Hence, the size of the plantation owned by the Para Rubber Plantation Company is about 75,000 paths, making it of a size that renders even our great cotton plantations or wheat farms insignificant by comparison. As two thousand laborers will soon be at work, over eleven hundred now being actually employed on the Company's property, the reader will understand that eleven hundred paths are being worked. The Company expects to add extra workers at the rate of at least two thousand a year.

After the gathering the next process is that of smoking, referred to in a previous paragraph. As the sap coagulates on exposure to the air, it is necessary to smoke it the day it is gathered. By following this rule the best rubber is obtained. Under the influence of the smoke the sap hardens. The fuel that makes the fire that makes the smoke is covered with ordinary palm nuts, which, when fired, give forth a dense smoke. In this smoke the worker holds the lump of sap or rubber on a kind of wooden paddle, turning it round and round until the operation is finished.

The lump of rubber is accumulated upon the end of the wooden paddle by first dipping it in the sap or milk, and then holding it in the smoke. After turning it round and round rapidly as described for a minute, the milk hardens. The worker again thrusts the paddle into the bowl of milk, and again he holds it in the smoke, repeating this process until a ball of crude rubber of the regulation size has been gathered. The Para Rubber Plantation Company will ship thousands of these rubber hams,

has the opportunity to pay for labor in commodities, and for making a large profit on those commodities. This, of course, will result in lowering the cost of production. Even after labor is paid, it is a known fact that the cost of production of rubber is less than that of any other product save gold. Trading conditions are such, therefore, that the Rubber Company now under consideration can make handsome profits. Let one of the Company's ships take down, for example, ten thousand dollars' worth of commodities, consisting

as we may call them, from Manaos daily. On the Company's property every tree is scrupulously cared for, and it is a fact known to science that if a rubber tree is not abused it will produce milk in abundance continuously for thirty or forty years.

The purposes of this Company are those of exploitation, trade, and the opening up of their rubber lands. In the matter of ex ploitation it is impossible to prophesy, for who can say what will be the limit of the natural resources of this vast tract of virgin rubber forest? In the matter of trade, the Company has this twofold advantage. It

of calicoes, flour, jewelry, beads, and factory-made clothing. This cargo of ten thousand dollars' worth of commodities can be traded for many times the amount in rubber or labor. The natives, indeed, would rather be paid in this way than in cash, as it suits them better, for of what avail is money in a region where there is nothing for the laborer to buy? The Company is establishing stores for trading purposes, and at these stores the rubber-gatherers will do their trading. Thus, while the laborer will receive a fair recompense, taking his pay in supplies purchased from the Company's stores,

the system will afford a large profit for the Company, as no other traders can come within a competing distance. This is precisely the system that made the great Hudson Bay Trading Company the richest fur company in the world; it was just this method of trading that laid the foundation of the great Astor fortune when John Jacob Astor, the first, established himself at Astoria.

What are the other conditions that promise a great future and profit for all interested in the rubber industry? First

of all, there is a market for every pound of rubber that can be brought into this country or into Europe. Rubber never has to go a-begging. A million pounds, arriving unexpectedly any day, would find immediate sale without lowering the market price. Para rubber sells for 88 cents a pound, with immediate prospect of further advance, and by Para rubber is meant the product that comes from the rubber forests of Venezuela as well as the rubber regions adjoining; and while Para rubber sells for 88 cents a pound, Central American and all other rubber brings only 50 cents. To produce this rubber it costs the Para Rubber Plantation Company less than 35 cents, so that the profit on each pound may be estimated at about 100 per cent. As already stated, the Company owns about six million trees. Each of these produces about five pounds of rubber, which would make for the entire property thirty million pounds a year-all of which facts convey some idea of the future for all who are interested in rubber, when that interest comes through a Company whose plans are on lines similar to those of the great Hudson Bay Trading Company. As for markets, even if the demand of American manufacturers should be entirely supplied at any time, the manufacturers of Europe would at once outbid each other to secure the raw material. And as for the profits on rubber, made through European channels, there is no better known instance of a fortune made than that accumulated by the King of the Belgians through his ownership of rubber forests in the Congo region in Africa.

With the foregoing outline of what the rubber industry is, and what relation the

Para Rubber Plantation Company bears to the rubber industry, it is the purpose of this article to inform the readers of The Outlook that a fortune has been spent in the preliminary operations by the Company. This money has been spent in the acquiring of the property and the establishment of camps and trading posts, and it is now the purpose of the Company to sell a limited amount of its treasury stock for further exploitation. The capital stock of the Company is $5,000,000, of which only a limited amount will be sold to the public. The stock will be sold at its par value of $10.00 a share, and application will be made to list it on the exchanges.

In view of the foregoing the officers of the Company feel that they are very conservative in assuring investors that present prospects warrant their looking forward to a dividend of at least 6 per cent. from the first year's earnings, and it will be seen at a glance that the natural available resources of the Company are such that this dividend should be immediately and largely increased.

We desire to emphasize that the above calculation of a 6 per cent. dividend is based on the employment of but two thousand men, but this number can be doubled and trebled, and the Company owns sufficient territory for the employment of forty thousand laborers. Two thousand laborers net 6 per cent., and there is room for the constant employment of forty thousand. The forty thousand are available. It is unnecessary to say more. The great immediate prospective value of the stock is apparent at a glance.

The officers of the Company are: PRESIDENT, JOHN CUDAHY, of the John Cudahy Company, Chicago.

VICE-PRESIDENT, ALLEN T. HAIGHT, President Manhattan Terrace Company of New York.

TREASURER, ELMER B. MARTIN, S. K. Martin Lumber Co., Chicago.

SECRETARY, F. M. CRAWFORD, Exchange Court Building, New York City.

For further information and prospectus, giving full particulars relative to the Company, address the Para Rubber Plantation Co., Main Office, Exchange Court Building, New York City.