My underlying thought in this comment is that rubber investors need have no fear. The United Stated will be compelled to" buy rubber in larger quantities in due course, Mr. Hoover and a few others, in misguided enthusiasm, love that the national saving" in tha save rubber" campaign. will de at least 25 per cent. (this is Mr, Hoover's official estimate), but I prediet that the last two quarters of 1926 will show returns of rubber imported equal if not in exess of the last half year of 1925, The question has been argued threadbare, but to one who knows rubber from the plantation stand-Point the attitude of the average American interested i the: Ca modity, from a totally differen: angle is honeycombed with inconsistency. Without abearing to be malicious, the average " Ceylon, C,, or Java planter would be bound to castigate the American opinion as so one-sided og to have no thread of logic. When the world needs American supplies it fs considered to be the height "good business" to force the to breaking point. We it in cotton, in wheat, meats, in California canned goods of all kinds, and in many other things. Did a man not take full advantage of conditions in which he could corner the market, he would be considered if not a fool, then a very poor and inexperienced busi ness man. And in this country the man who drives prices up for his own profit generally has had not the test interest. in the production of the commodity he is selling. He is merely a kind of commercial chess-player.
With rubber, however, the situation is very different. "To a very great extent the people selling rubter to America are the people who have grown it, who have "held the bag" for years, who have year in and year out struggled to keep their estates together in the hope that some day they would find themselves operating in a market which would yield them a fair return. Let any shareholder in 90] per cent. of the rubber companies of Shanghai, for example—or Singapore or Ceylon—figure up what their dividends have been during the past ten years, and I will hazard a guess that they ' will not be as much as some of the outstandingly prosperous tyre manufac-_ turers in this country.
But it must be remembered that, growing rubber and making tyres are vastly different businesses. Th: latter is a straightforward affair; where the manufactured product is, hanged hands, for June is gener- in constant demand, and where it not been-lifted by the Church. The
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.