June 1, 1927

winter and spring terms he led his classes through the valley of doubt to a final and triumphant conclusion. His thesis concluded with the precision and certitude of a mathematical demonstration.

Of course, others have thought that there is no problem in science, much less in religion or philosophy, that can be so demonstrated. Science and philosophy alike proceed on evidence and reason, but always with caution, and always with incertitude caused by the possibility of error in the observation of facts, or in the processes of the reason.

Garman may not have been the profoundest of philosophers, but he certainly was a great teacher. For a workaday world, Garman's method had striking advantages. He taught his pupils to question, to think, to reason, and to arrive at a conclusion—a conclusion correct enough for practical purposes, yet incorrect, no doubt, in final analysis.

The world demands of religion an idol, the symbol of certitude, an infallible Pope it may be, or an inerrant Bible, or perchance only a golden calf. So, too, of its leaders in all popular fields it demands a considered argument, followed by a conclusion, final, certain, and strongly held.

ter?

life!

What do we find? Garman to the Sometimes it is the proper sphere of woman, sometimes it is the soldier's bonus, sometimes farmer's relief, but always the careful, considered argument, the conclusion stated with mathematical clearness and precision, and the conclusion strongly held.

Whenever you scratch an Amherst man of the Garman period, you find a thinker. And always, too, you find the same logical processes, the same finality of decision, the same stability of conviction. No wonder they tower above us of the unthinking multitude. If they have thought something out for us, we will follow them. Who cares if their conclusions are philosophically and fundamentally all wrong? Practically, they seem all right. And certitude is what we want. Assurance is the banner we will follow.

BUT UT to return to Garman, for it is with him that we presently are concerned. Garman was withal a devout New England Congregationalist. He led his flock finally into the green pastures and beside the still waters. Never was a shepherd more faithful. The story is told of him that one of his students was called home by the death of his father in the mid-year. The boy was still in the valley of doubt. During the spring Professor Garman heard of him as roaming about among the Vermont hills of his home, giving expression to his doubts and unbelief. The following summer, instead of going to the White Mountains, as was his custom, Professor Garman went up into Vermont, sought out his erstwhile pupil, gave him, alone, the lectures that had been

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missed, and labored for and with the one, as in class he did for and with the many, and brought the boy triumphantly out of the slough of agnosticism into the clear light of his own genial philosophy.

In the nineties boys went to Amherst as disinclined to think as are the boys of to-day. They came under the compelling influence of Professor Garman's overwhelming enthusiasm. They learned to think. They found that they liked to think. Then they were excited by the experience almost to the state of intoxication.

NCE in a century, perhaps, a great teacher like Professor Garman will appear. When he does appear, his students will forget the slogan "Let's not think," but will find their greatest pleasure and excitement in thought. Such a teacher will get kings, though he be none. A log in the wilderness with Garman on one end of it is university enough for any President.

In those days, if suddenly you should ask an Amherst man who made him, he would reply, "Garman." And he would not be so very wrong. No doubt God made Amherst men in common with the unthinking rest of us. God may have given him eyes and nose and mouth, but Garman gave him distinction. Why, then, is his fame left to one of the 'thoughtless, in this off-hand, casual way, to sound his praise? A considered "Life of Garman" might be made one of the best treatises on education, and one that would outlive any book on the subject that has been written in a generation. At least, if I were a thinker, I would think so.

T

HE original pivotal price of crude rubber, as established in November, 1922, under the British Stevenson Restriction Act, was 36 cents a pound. In 1926 it was raised first to 42 cents, and then again to 48 cents per pound. Was the repeated rise ordained to spare the despairing planters from ruin?

A few facts regarding dividends paid for 1925 by British rubber-growing companies, as published in the "Economist," will answer the question:

The Golconda Malay Rubber Company paid 40 per cent dividends for 1925.

The Kapar Para Rubber Estate, 45 per cent.

The Rembau Jelel Rubber Company distributed "only" 20 per cent out of total earnings of 31 per cent, but the board stated apologetically that 20 per cent in the second year was in reality not unsatisfactory.

The Kepong Malay Rubber Estate paid a total of 62.5 per cent for 1925 and increased reserves substantially. This company distributed its first dividend in 1909, and since then has paid. dividends aggregating 722 per cent. Assuming that the first call for capital subscribed was made in 1903, which would give ample time for rubber trees to be planted and to grow to bearing, the stockholders received an average of more than 31 per cent for each year on the total investment. An average yearly dividend of 31 per cent for nearly a quarter of a century!

We may envy the fortunate investors, but we have no right to begrudge them their income, even if we, as consumers of more than seventy per cent of the world's total crude rubber production, pay the largest part of that income. They deserve every penny they receive; it is a just reward for their pluck and enterprise.

By CLEMENT SCHWINGES

nomenal success the industry was destined to have. Nobody imagined that rubber would ever be consumed at the rate of more than half a million tons a year, as is the case now. Dutch planters in Sumatra and Java soon followed suit. The British and the Dutch now control about eighty-five per cent of the world's plantation rubber production. French, Belgian, and Japanese investors, and others, soon took advantage of the new opportunity.

The most noteworthy among the few American companies that planted Para rubber in the Middle East are the United States Rubber Company and the Continental Rubber Company. The Continental Rubber Company has about 4,000 acres planted to Para rubber in the Middle East, but is now more active in the planting of guayule rubber in Mexico, Texas, California, etc. That is an entirely different industry, and is not under consideration in this article.

The United States Rubber Company

It requires 90 labor days to keep an acre trim for the first year after planting. But gradually the trees grow and shade the ground, so that weeds grow less abundantly. During the fourth year only about 30 days are required to attend to the upkeep of an acre-that is to say, one man can attend to about ten

acres.

The company did not stop after having created a plantation of 22 square miles. Up to 1922, inclusive, planted acreage was increased at an average rate of 4,500 acres per year; during the four years 1923-6 the increase averaged 6,000 acres annually.

The United States Rubber Company's plantations, operated through several subsidiaries, now aggregate nearly 83,000 acres, a square of more than 11 miles each way. Besides this the company owns more than 60,000 acres of reserve land and is acquiring more at every possible opportunity.

in the world, consisting of nearly 80 square miles of planted rubber land in one single block, is situated in Sumatra and operated by the HollandschAmerican Plantage Matschappij-the H. A. P. M.-a subsidiary of the United States Rubber Company. It is not only the largest, but also the most conspicuous plantation in the world, as will be seen by the table on page 157.

has made efforts to plant Para rubber THE largest single rubber plantation ever since 1903, when extensive concessions were obtained in northern Brazil. But there the State Government of the region did not know how to treat a goose that is expected to lay golden eggs; the goose was not killed, but she was not made comfortable, so that she flew away to seek another nest, alighting finally in Sumatra. After extensive surveys, actual planting was started in 1911, and during that 1911, and during that year the company planted the largest tract ever planted to Para rubber by any one concern during a twelve-month period, viz., 14,000 acres, or about 22 square miles. Το convert a tract of that size from virgin jungle into a carpet-like surface, with trees planted at absolutely even distances one from another, is a gigantic task to complete in one short

year.

To open and plant an acre of jungle land requires about 300 labor daysthat is to say, a force of 20 men would finish the task in 15 working days, or one man would do it in 300 days-practically one year. Consequently, an army of at least 14,000 men, not counting the idle and sick, must have been at work constantly during the year to complete the job. Nor can a plantation be left to itself after the trees are in the ground. Cleaning, weeding, and general upkeep work has to go on constantly.

The large variation in the capital costs in the table on page 157 is remarkable. Great Britain, with about twothirds of all the Middle East plantations, stands very near the average, which is $265.39 for all nations, exclusive of the United States. The latter, with $367.82, stands 39 per cent above the average, 10 per cent above the next highest (Japan), and 64 per cent above the lowest (France). It seems strange that American planters should invest so much more per acre than other planters. But there is a reason: foresight-as will be seen if the policies of the H. A. P. M. are studied. No money is wasted by this company; but it can be said, by infer ence at least, that some of those with comparatively low capital costs are penny wise and pound foolish. They start wasting money by saving in the very first step of operations-clearing the jungle. After cutting and burning. they leave the stumps to rot in the

ground, because their removal is rather expensive.

But to leave them is often more expensive, because they rot and spread contagious diseases among the growing rubber trees, destroying sometimes acres and acres of planted rubber land. The H. A. P. M. is not done with planting until the last trace of the jungle has disappeared, regardless of cost; and the same policy of putting everything in as clean and sanitary a condition as money and effort can accomplish, prevails in all branches of its operations, from the first step of clearing to the shipping of the finished product, and from the building of the very comfortable home of the head manager to constructing the humble but clean and homelike dwellings of the natives.

Some planters try to "save" in the cost of construction of quarters for the staff as well as the "lines" (rows upon rows of dwellings for natives). That, and everything else connected with the laborers or their relatives and their needs, is the last thing on which a planter might save with impunity, because it invariably results in poor, and consequently more expensive, labor, not to mention other evils inseparable from a poorly attended labor force one of the most serious of which is a larger turnover, a very important factor on a rubber plantation, because the bulk of the labor has to be imported at considerable expense.

The H. A. P. M. recruits most of its labor from Java on a three-year agreement, and at a cost of about $60 a person. When the men arrive they are usually in very poor condition-underfed, sickly, and in general unfit for work. About ten per cent must be rejected at once as hopeless and are returned to their country at the company's expense. Unless something serious necessitates hospital treatment, the remaining ninety per cent go to a rest camp. There they

2,864,000

$268.50

are treated for hookworm and other tropical diseases and, above all, are fed. By the time they are taken to their station they are different beings from when they arrived, and by then each man has cost the company nearly one hundred dollars. As the H. A. P. M. employs about 25,000 laborers, that item of its investment runs into the millions. The men therefore constitute a valuable asset; and as their efficiency increases automatically with the amortization of the cost of recruiting, the value of the asset increases with the time. One can readily imagine that they are treated well for practical, if not for purely humanitarian, reasons. How the native laborers fare on the H. A. P. M. plantations is illustrated very plainly by the fact that eighty-five per cent of the men re-engage at the expiration of their agreement.

The company provides healthful, clean, and nutritious food, with a diversity of diet, for the natives at a figure usually below cost. The sick rate at the H. A. P. M. was four per cent at the beginning of operations, and that rate was considered excellent. It has dropped gradually below one per cent. The death rate is about seven per thousand, as compared with thirteen per thousand in the United States. These splendid achievements have been attained through the constant efforts of the permanent medical staff and a regiment of trained nurses, operating a hospital with more than one thousand beds and the most modern equipment that money and careful thought can provide.

THE staff of the company comprises,

in addition to the usual members attending to the business and administrative end, a large body of scientists and practical planters. There are micrologists to study tree diseases, their prevention and cure; soil analysts to determine the suitability of certain areas

for planting, the manuring methods to be employed, etc.; genetic botanists to make seed selections and to study bud grafting and other highly scientific methods to increase yield; foresters to supervise tapping and watch bark renewal, etc.; there is a statistical department to keep accurate track of millions of trees their life history, their yield for each month, their diseases—to determine the trees from which to bud and those from which to seed, in order to obtain maximum yield at minimum cost. There is a staff of engineers to build drains, steam railroads, motor roads, houses, factories, and other buildings, and bunds to prevent the soil from being washed away by heavy rains. There are repair shops to do almost everything conceivable in the way of keeping such a vast establishment in trim and efficient condition 12,000 miles away from home.

Even British publications, representative of the largest rubber-growing country, acclaim the work of this foremost American plantation. For instance, the British publication "Recent Developments in the Rubber Planting Industry:"

"It is astonishing to find how many of the familiar problems of rubber planting have been satisfactorily settled by the researches of the H. A. P. M. staff;" and the "Bulletin of the Rubber Growers Association:"

"The contributions to scientific journals by members of the H. A. P. M. research staff are read by all interested in the well-being of the industry, and the broad-minded view of the administration in giving free access to their laboratories and records is an example which might be followed by many other organizations."

ΟΝ

NE of the most important achievements of the H. A. P. M. research staff resulted from constant experiments in the way of handling latex from the tree to its final destination (the rubber goods manufacturers, 12,000 miles away). The first radical accomplishment was the shipping of latex in liquid form. That is essential for certain manufactures, because the latex retains certain chemical qualities only while it remains liquid. So far back as 1913 small experimental shipments of liquid rubber were made in five-gallon kerosene cans, but not until 1920 was it successfully shipped in fifty-gallon steel drums. Later, the fore and aft peak tanks of cargo steamers were used for the purpose. At that time the company already had containers of 1,000 gallons capacity each, which were filled on the plantation a hundred miles or more dis

tant from the dock and sent there by rail. They were placed on the deck of the steamer and the ship tanks were filled by gravity.

The next step was to induce steamers to clean their ballast and oil tanks and fill them with latex for the home trip. The steamship companies, although rather reluctant at first, soon began to compete for the business, and several lines equipped their vessels for that kind of cargo. In 1923 the company introduced fifteen tank cars of ten tons capacity each for transportation of latex over its own rails from the rubber estate to the dock, where the latex is drained into storage tanks of 200 tons each. As soon as the steamer arrives the latex is put into tank lighters, and while the steamer takes on solid rubber from the

dock on one side, the latex is pumped into the steamer's tanks from the other side, thus reducing loading time to a minimum. At the arrival of the steamer in this country the process is reversed: railroad tank cars are placed on barges and filled from alongside.

But the research staff did not rest on its laurels with this important achievement. A method was evolved by which latex can be solidified and yet retain all those qualities which were largely neutralized by the old coagulating process. The famous Hopkinson Spraying Process converts the latex into dry and spongy mass, as easy to handle as cake or crape rubber, but of far superior quality. The company has nine spraying plants with a capacity of about 17,000 tons of dry rubber annually.

They work steadily with three eighthour shifts so as to be able to manage the latex coming from the company's plantations as well as that delivered under contract by other planters. Liquid rubber is now shipped only in such quantities as are required for certain specific purposes to which it is better adapted than the new solid rubber.

THE plantation, with its factories,

shops, dwellings, hospitals, clubs, hotels, theaters, about a hundred miles of railroad track, etc., is a little world in itself. After riding for miles through virgin jungle one is surprised to come suddenly upon an establishment of such magnitude and all in the interest of more rubber and lower cost of production.

T

HIS is a case of Leviathan and the minnows, this collection of recent books of poetry before me. Not that John G. Neihardt is a minnow, even if Edwin Arlington Robinson is certainly Leviathan among our poets. Neihardt has his own stature. And a few of the many slim volumesas one must always call them because their size and shape are always such

1 Tristram, by Edwin Arlington Robinson (Macmillan. $1.75); Collected Poems, by John G. Neihardt (Macmillan. $4); The Radiant Tree, by Marguerite Wilkinson (Macmillan. $2.50); Cliff Dwellings, by Glenn Ward Dresbach (Harold Vinal. $2); High Passage, by Thomas Hornsby Ferril (Yale University Press. $1.25); Selected Lyrics of Amelia Josephine Burr (Doran. $2); Laughter of Omnipotence, by J. H. Wallis (Harold Vinal. $1.50); The Guilty Sun, by James Daly (Folio Press, 5176 Woodlawn Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa. $2); Songs from the Heart of a Boy, by Jesse L. Lasky, Jr. (Boni & Liveright. $2); Little Pictures, by Ruth Victoria Inglis; Threads, by Dorothy Quick; Gray Songs, by Mercy Baldwin; Green Acres, by Vivian Yeiser Laramore; Wind Tossed Leaves, by Victor Zorin; Star Gatherer, by Jamie Sexton Holme; Late Adventure, by Lena Hall (All Harold Vinal. $1.50 each); Poppies and Mandragora, by Edgar Saltus (Harold Vinal. $2); The Test of the Sky, by Dora Read Goodale; Viareggio and Other Poems, by Max de Schauensee; Flickering Candlelight, by Mary Edgar Comstock (All Contemporary Poets of Dorrance. Dorrance & Co., Philadelphia. $1.75 each); Ignis Ardens, by Merle St. Croix Wright (Harold Vinal. $1.50); Selected Poems on Woodrow Wilson (Dean & Co., 112 Fourth Avenue, N. Y. $1.50).

are more than minnowish. But the generality are minnows, and will so remain.

Leviathan fills the foreground, or rather, let me get rid of this uncomfortable figure of speech right at the outset, and say that it is Mr. Robinson's "Tristram" that fills the foreground. This is his latest long narrative poem in his Arthurian cycle. It may not be the best of his Arthurian poems. But it is the most human of them all, a poem with few faults, and, above everything, showing an increase of emotional power over the work even of his youth. This last is an astonishing phenomenon.

"Tristram" comes in the train of the large blue volume of Robinson's "Collected Poems" which appeared half a dozen years ago. Robinson published

other long poems after that, "Roman Bartholow," "The Man Who Died Twice," the title poem of "Dionysus in Doubt." The second-mentioned is, in some ways a more remarkable poem than "Tristram," but it is in a different category.

With these preliminaries done, let us consider the poem. Before I had read it completely through for myself, I had heard part of it read by Mrs. August Belmont at the Sunday evening when so many of his friends and admirers met to do honor to Mr. Robinson. Mrs. Belmont read a good deal of the latter por

tion with cuts. Among the characters there appearing, one of the most interesting studies was Mr. Robinson's treatment of King Mark of Cornwall. In Tennyson, to go no farther back, we read that Mark was "a name of evil savor in the land." Arthur his spurns allegiance thus, in "Gareth and Ly nette":

and Arthur cried To rend the cloth and cast it on the hearth.

"But Mark hath tarnish'd the great name of king,

As Mark would sully the low state of churl:

And, seeing he hath sent us cloth of gold,

Return, and meet, and hold him from our eyes,

Lest we should lap him up in cloth of lead,

Silenced for ever-craven-a man of

Craft, poisonous counsels, wayside ambushings-"

In "The Last Tournament" Isolt hates Mark with a bitter hatred. "My God," she says to Tristram, "the measure of my hate for Mark is as the measure of my love for thee." One "mute midsummer night" in her tower, "flash'd a levin-brand; and near me stood, in fuming sulphur blue and green, a fiendMark's way to steal behind one in the

Isolt upbraids Tristram for his mar riage; Tristram is blunt and half