make the rounds of the trees with
large milk cans, gathering the latex from the cups. When the cans
are full they are carried to a collecting station, called a
Coagulation Shed. It is as clean and well kept as a dairy. Here
the latex is weighed, and when each collector has been credited
with the amount he has brought, it is dumped into huge vats.

The next step is to extract the particles of rubber from the latex
and to harden them. The jungle method of hardening rubber is to
dip a wooden paddle in the latex and smoke it over a fire of wood
and palm nuts.[3] It is a back-breaking process to cover the paddle
with layer after layer, until a good-sized lump, usually called a
"biscuit," is formed. The plantation method is a quicker and cleaner
one. Into the vats is poured a small quantity of acid, which causes
the rubber "cream" to coagulate and come to the surface. The
"coagulum," as it is called, is like snow-white dough. It is removed
from the vats and run in sheets through machines which squeeze out
the moisture and imprint on them a criss-cross pattern to expose as
large a surface as possible to the air.

[3] See picture, page 12.

These sheets of rubber are then hung in smoke houses and smoked
from eight to fourteen days in much the same way that we smoke
hams and bacon. After being dried in this way they are pressed
into bales or packed in boxes ready for shipment.

CHAPTER 8

A LAST WORD

It would be an adventure to follow a bale of plantation rubber as,
carefully boxed or wrapped in burlap, it starts on its long and
picturesque journey. Bullock carts, railroads, boats and steamers
bring it at last to one of the world markets, Singapore, Colombo,
London, Amsterdam or New York, where it is bought by dealers, and
then sold to factories which make rubber goods.

An equally fascinating story might be told of its progress through
the factory, how it is kneaded and rolled, mixed with chemicals,
rubbed into fabrics, baked in ovens, and finally emerges as any
one of the tens of thousands of articles that are made wholly or
partly from rubber.

Rubber manufacturing is peculiarly an American industry. South
America gave us the original rubber trees, and the one man who,
more than any other, was responsible for making rubber useful was
the American, Charles Goodyear. To-day, two-thirds of the entire
output of rubber is sold to the United States, whose manufactured
rubber goods set the standard for the w