the best news which shareholders 3 The niost important news an rubber plantations have had for a Jong time is the approval of the Colonial Office of a definite scheme for the restriction of output. Since voluntary—restriction was first brought into operation many heart. breaking months have elapsed, with Prices remaining steadily at an unprofitably low point, numerous estates getting deeper into what might be described as a steadily expanding financial quagmire anid any hope of cooperation by all the interests concerned steadily waning. The darkest hour was probably when the Dutch Government expressed itself unable to introduce a scheme of compulsory restriction in conjunction with Malaya and Ceylon, but as tradition tells vs that particular hour invariably precedes the dawn. Fortunate it was that at the very centre of the Malayan rubber industry stood a group of men whose belief in the essential soundness of rubber could not be shaken. They held that no matter what the Dutch plantations did or did not do, estates in British territory were extensive enough and financially powerful enough to make a restriction scheme applicable to them alone ultimately successful. Such a scheme is now placed before the territories principally interastei in tangible form, being apparently an outcome of the Stephenson report published some time ago. There Seems every reason to believe that that it will be adopted immediately and if so one may hope for better things for rubber. Mr. A. W. Still, Editor of the "Straits Times," is to be complimented on the success of the long and arduous campaign which he had conducted. We know that th8*proposals now formulated are very far short of his ambitions, as he would wish for a complete cessation of output for a year in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.