How different is life on the rubber plantations of to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle.  In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents.  The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and fever cause many deaths.

On the other hand, workers on a well-managed plantation live in comfortable houses in healthy surroundings and are supplied with plenty of good food.  In fact the conditions are so much better than generally prevail among natives in the Orient that work on a plantation is considered more desirable than most other forms of labor.  The unmarried men live in barracks, but the men with families have individual houses with garden plots adjoining.  Big kitchens prepare and cook the food in the best native style.  Schools for the children, recreation centers for old and young, and hospitals to care for the sick, are all parts of the plantation organization.

In erecting hospitals and caring for the health of its plantation workers, as in other branches of the rubber industry, America has taken the lead.  So well is this recognized, that the Dutch Government has awarded a medal to the United States Rubber Company for the efficiency and completeness of its plantation hospital, which happens to be the largest private hospital in the East Indies, having accommodations for nearly a thousand patients.

CHAPTER 7

HARVESTING THE RUBBER

It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters to begin the day’s work.  The tapping must be done early in the day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after sunrise.

When the trees reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping.  This growth is usually attained when the trees are about five years old.

In tapping, a narrow strip of bark is cut away with a knife, the cut extending diagonally one-quarter of the way around the tree.  At each succeeding day’s tapping the tapper widens the cut by stripping off a sliver of bark one-twentieth of an inch in width. [Footnote:  This method of tapping is shown on the front cover] He must be careful not to cut into the wood of the tree, as such cuts not only injure the tree but permit the sap to run into the latex and spoil the rubber.  When the tapper has made the proper gash in the bark he inserts a little spout to carry the dripping latex to a glass cup beneath.

Later in the morning the workers 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.