Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 24, DeMotte, Jasper County, 5 January 1933 — World’s Rubber Supply Matter of Importance [ARTICLE]

World’s Rubber Supply Matter of Importance

The electrical industry, probably more than any other, is dependent upon rubber and without it the telephone company would be compelled to go out of business or find some adequate substitute. The rubber supply comes from Brazil, East Indies and Indo China. The rubier plantations cover many square miles and are divided like great cities into blocks. Just as houses on city blocks are numbered, the trees, in many cases, are numbered Each of the hundreds of workers on the plantations cares for about 450 caoutchouc trees daily, collecting the sap from cups under spouts, in each tree in a great latex pail. The tapper has to he an expert with his knife in attaching the small zinc spout through which the white latex flows into the small cup. The scar in the hark must be kept fresh with the dexterous handling of the knife, but the rapper must be extremely cautious not to injure the cambium, or formative tissue of the wood beneath, for that might kill the tree. On some of rhe plantations the annual yield of rubber is about 350 pounds to the acre. The juice, or latex, is transformed into crude rubber by curdling it with chemicals and rolling the curds into sheets, which are then smoked over a fire.

Dr, Pierce’s Pleasant Pellets* are the original little liver pills put up 60 years ago. They regulate liver and bowels. —Adv.