Curtailed Rubber?

Most U. S. citizens think of the Dutch in terms of a bonneted little creature who is the scourge of dirt. The rest of the world--particularly the British--think of the Dutch in terms of stubbornness. It was the stubborn Dutch East Indian rubber planters who knocked Britain's Stevenson plan of rubber control into a hat so cocked that all rubber planters have been prostrate ever since. The harder the British bore down on production the faster the Dutchmen planted. But if the Dutch are stubborn the British are dogged and together they produce 95% of the world's rubber.

For months the British have been negotiating slowly and with great secrecy a production curtailment program. By last week, London understood, the delegates had agreed in principle on a program for 1934 calling for 500.000 tons of cultivated rubber--50% of the potential production and 200.000 tons below the ten year average. Aside from the Dutchmen, production of native rubber, an uncontrollable and widely varying factor, has been one of the chief obstacles of a rubber-tight agreement. But the times are in joint: it is estimated rubber consumption in 1933 will exceed production for the first time in five years. This week all good Dutch planters will emerge from the jungle to ponder their delegates' schemes in Batavia.

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