Effeet of
she motor
ndustry
on rubber
production.

account in Appendix I, met with little success until the development
 of cycling and motoring after 1900.
17. The rapid increase in the use of bicycles and tricycles
‘ollowed the invention of the pneumatic tyre by J. B. Dunlop in
L888* and its still greater future use on motor vehicles was foreshadowed
 in 1895, when a car equipped with such tyres competed
in the Bordeaux-Paris trials. These new uses for rubber caused
» phenomenal growth in the plantation industry and a great improvement
 in the cleanliness and manner in which the raw product
was marketed. In 1887, just before Dunlop’s invention, the gross
exports of rubber from producing countries was estimated at
17,280 tons, of which anything from a quarter to a third was dirt
and impurities. Thirteen years later in 1900 the total world supply
had reached 40,000 tons of clean rubber and a small quantity of
plantation rubber—4 tons—appeared for the first time in London
28 a marketable product. Meanwhile the price, which in 1887
had averaged 2s. per lb., had risen, in 1900, for Fine Para to
4s. 3d. and for poorer qualities to 2s. 5d. After another 13 years,
in 1913, plantation rubber accounted for 47,600 tons out of a world
production of 108,000 tons. Fifteen years later, in 1928, the production
 of plantation rubber was 620,168 tons out of a world total
of 649,674 tons. The figures for recent years are as follows :—

World Production of Rubber.’

1913
1919
1925
1926
1927
1998

Plantation.

tons.
47,618
285,225
181,955
376,955
567,504
320.168

Brazil.

tons.
39,370
34,285
27,386
26,433
30,952
4 556

Other
(Africa and
Central
America).

tons.
21,452
7,350
8,735
11,390
8,740
4.950

Total.

tons.
108,440
326,860
516,076
514,778
505,196
349.674

! Figures supplied by the India Rubber Manufacturers’ Association.
The production of crude rubber in 1929 is estimated at 860,000
bons, of which some 835,000 tons would be plantation and 25.000
tons wild rubber.

V.—ABSORPTION IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.
Distri- 18. A trade esfimate of the quantities of crude rubber bought
iy of hy the roanufacturing industries in different countries has
crude
rubber.

* An earlier invention of a pneumatic tyre by R. W. Thomson in 1845 had borne
no commercial results.