A wave of new estate planting was induced by the rubber boom. and the planting programme th drawn up continued for another five years. The high prices prevailing for rubber and the ease with which money was made attracted many of the natives in Malaya. Even before the 1910 boom some 50,000 acres had been planted by natives, who interplanted rubber seeds with their tapioca and fruit trees, and when th trees were old enough to tap many of them abandoned their fruit and tapioca and concentrated entirely on Mthe production of rubber. Others grew part, at least, of their own foodstuffs. The success of the early native planters and the high price of rubber soon brought about a rapid expansion of native planting, although accurate estimates could: not. at that date, be made of their total planted acreage.
"The price of rubber soon fell from the high levels attained in 1910. By i813 it became evident that supplies of plantation rubber would increase very rapidly during the next ten years, and even the most optimistic at that time had difficulty in envisage ing a corresponding expansion in the demand for rubber. The Rubber Growers': Association tackled the problem of new uses, and its members formed a development company (Rubber Roadways, Ltd.) for investigating the possibility of using rubber either as a paving material or in directions which would consume Substantial quantities of rubber.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.