Effeet of 
she motor 
ndustry 
on rubber 
production. 
account in Appendix I, met with little success until the develop- 
ment 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 fore- 
shadowed 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 im- 
provement 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 pro- 
duction 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.