Evening star., 1928-11-06
BY A. M. SMITH.

Written exclusively for The Star and the
North American Newspaper Alliance.
PARA, Brazil, November 6.-All ANA
zonia, which includes the greater part
of Brazil, portions of Venezuela, Co
lombia. Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, is
economically fiat. Domestic capital
cannot cope with the problem of re-
viving the now dormant, but once -four
1shing chief industry, production OF
rubber.
The people of Brazil offer no welcome
to the "extrangeiro" who comes to take
unfair advantage. Nevertheless, devel-
opment of the natural resources of Am
azonia to point where the products of
the land may be brought into advan-
tageous competition in world markets
must be undertaken by outside capital.
Brazil realized this years ago. The
federal government took steps, incor-
porated in 1912 decree, to aid foreign
? capital that could see the opportunity
of rich returns, and at the same time
help Brazil out of her economic difficult
ties.
The economic condition of the states
in the basin of the Amazon since 1912,
with the attitude of federal and states
governments expressed in laws and de-
creeS aimed at rehabilitation and the
labor and general social conditions re-
sulting from this long period of dor
mant production, from the substantial
economic, social and political basis on
which the Ford Motor Co. or any other
foreign concern must approach the
problem of exploitation of the resources
of AmaZoria.
Articles of Export.
Rubber and Brazil nuts are the two
great staples for export. Other exports,
such as oil nuts, dried fish, deerskins,
cocoa, cotton, rice, beans, corn, sugar,
alcohol and rum, are all important
staples, in their early infancy of posi-
BILE productivity. But Amazonia was
once at high tide of prosperity because
OF rubber, and for the past Is years has
steadily Slumped because of rubber.
Rubber Is the index of the economic
health of Amazonia.
The rubber industry of Brazil began
100 years ago. In 1927, the Province
of Para exported 3412 tons. Greater
demand soon resulted from the discov-
cry of the vulcanizing process, and by
1853, the export of rubber from this
area had risen to 2,607 tons.
Other sections of the Amazon basin
began to produce for export, as a re-
suit of the increased demand, and in
1908 Annazonia'S output raised the total
export of that year to 40,164 tons, Bra
I'll, however, exporting more than three
SeventhS of this total. This was the
high tide of the industry. Prices con-
tinued to rise. Money flowed freely.
'CabocloS," laborers, swamped through
the areas near the great waterways,
gathering the priced latex and curing it,
by a smoking process, into balls, slabs
or scrap for export.
Country PrOspered.
Money was poured out in building
and establishment of cities. Para and
Manaos, the latter 865 miles up the
Amazon on the Rio Negro, near the
confluence of the latter with the Anna
zon, fiourished and glittered, put on
pomp and gayety. their people living
like princes and entertaining like kings.
Manaos, in this period, was known
as the Paris of the West Nothing was
too expensive for the city to have and
to enjoy. The most costly operate per-
formances were staged in the richly
adorned opera house of ManaoS, the
worlds greatest actors and singers rich
ly paid for coming to the new city of
AmaZonia. What Para. Rio de Janeiro;
Buenos Aires or any city Of the conti-
nent or of the world could have, Manaos
could and would have. Why not? Here
in the Amazon Basin was the only sup
ply Of product which the world was
beginning to demand in enormous
quantity.
BY 1910, Para, Manaos, Santarem,
1quitoS, the cities and countryside up
and down the Amazon and its hundreds
of tributaries, were in the full swing of
the great rubber "booms." Then, with
the startling suddenness of tire blow
ing out the boom collapsed.
Not only had prices been inflated,
and, as result of this, production over
done, but out of the East, 49, 800 miles
from the port of New York, there began
to be delivered rubber, ilevea brasilien-
sis, Para rubber, from, the English and
Dutch plantations of Malaysia.
AmaZonia has never been able to
overcome this competition of the well
ordered. well managed. cultivated and
scientifically operated plantations of the
Orient, for Amazonia has exhibited no
thought along these lines of production
She had merely taken at random, and
by the easiest forest paths, the bounty
offered by nature in the wild.
Boom Bubble Bursts.
Many of the companies and individ-
ual operators, to whom great credit had
been extended in 1910, suddenly failed
when the boom price bubble was
pricked, and trading houses and banks
went down in the general melee.
AmaZonia has never recovered from
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