It is chiefly for lack of a definite colonial policy
that our rubber industry, by far the largest in the world, has to be
dependent upon foreign sources for all its raw materials. Because the
Philippines are likely to be cast off at any moment, American
manufacturers are placing their plantations in the Dutch or British
possessions. The Goodyear Company has secured a concession of 20,000
acres near Medan in Dutch Sumatra.
While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific
possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New
Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber
country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000
worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping
had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the
cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British
plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act
has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay
Peninsula.
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