Hope deferred, it is said, makes the heart sick—but not in the Rubber market, where perennial hopes of a prosperous future seem never to be destroyed by the uncompromising reality of frequent disappointment. The opening days of 1939 find the market in its customary mood of patient and. sanguine expectation. There is, certainly, a trace of caution and reserve in the market's attitude, by way of acknowledgment of the unstable political situation which the old year has bequeathed to the new. But the market believes that if major European disaster can be avoided, the coming year will bring conditions perceptibly superior to those of the last, states "The Financial News."
This'will be the first year of the second phase of restriction. The first phase—from 1934 to 1938—failed to [achieve any remarkable degree of prosperity for any section of the in-Austry. The average rate of export was little more than 70 per cent. of standard and the average price was under 7%d. a pound. It may be calculated that producers' profits, broadly, have been no more than half what would be regarded as reasonable. That may appear a poor result, since consumption rose by leaps and bounds for a considerable part of the period—though against that fact must be set the huge stock total with which the Rubber Committee began its task, and the difficulties experienced at the outset in effectively controlling Dutch native output.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.