As a consequence the
trees were bled to death and sometimes also the natives. The Belgian
atrocities in the Congo shocked the civilized world and at Putumayo on
the upper Amazon the same cause produced the same horrible effects. But
no matter what cruelty was practiced the tropical forests could not be
made to yield a sufficient increase, so the cultivation of the rubber
was begun by far-sighted men in Dutch Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in
British Malaya and Ceylon.
Brazil, feeling secure in the possession of a natural monopoly, made no
effort to compete with these parvenus. It cost about as much to gather
rubber from the Amazon forests as it did to raise it on a Malay
plantation, that is, 25 cents a pound. The Brazilian Government clapped
on another 25 cents export duty and spent the money lavishly. In 1911
the treasury of Para took in $2,000,000 from the rubber tax and a good
share of the money was spent on a magnificent new theater at Manaos--not
on setting out rubber trees. The result of this rivalry between the
collector and the cultivator is shown by the fact that in the decade
1907-1917 the world's output of plantation rubber increased from 1000 to
204,000 tons, while the output of wild rubber decreased from 68,000 to
53,000.
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