Evening star., 1943-11-15
(Second OF a Series.)
BY MARQUIS w. CHILDS,

!.
Correspondent Of the st. Louis Post
: Dispatch and The Evening Star
+ BELEM, Brazil-It is far easier te
do social planning on paper than II
is to carry out those plans in real
life. This has been demonstrated
once again here in the Amazon VAL
ley, where handicaps of distance
climate and health worked against
the planners in Washington and Ric
de Janeiro.
The objective was to move $4,000
to 10000 men from drouth- stricken
Ceara In Northeast Brazil into the
rubber-producing areas of the Anna
zon. They were to be trained in the
rubber-tapping technique and ther
set to work on their own on the trails
that lead through the jungle to the
scattered rubber trees.
The plan appears to have over
looked deep-rooted habits, fears
loyalties and superstitions. It ig-
nored the picture that the men to be
moved had in their minds of them
selves and their environment; what
lIley CuOuGnC ana IelC.
Ceara Like South Dakota.
Ceara Is q state very much like
South Dakota. In those rare years
when there Is enough rainfall, it
produces abundantly. The farmers
OF Ceara persist year after year in
believing that this time the rains
Will come. Their attachment to their
own land has the same unreasoning
quality as the devotion of the Okies
to their farms in our own dust bowl.
just as the organized migration from
Ceara was getting started, soaking
rains came and the men could not
be persuaded to leave their land and
their families.
Another factor, even more impor-
tant perhaps, is the fear Of the
Amazon that exists not only in
Ceara but throughout Brazil. In
part OF least this goes back to the
system of labor used in the rubber
areas. 1t resembles the share-crop
system in our own South.
The seringueira or rubber taper
works for boss to whom he remains
IN debt all his life. If the price of
rubber that he brings in is up, then
the food he must buy from his boss
is correspondingly marked up so that
the debt will not be erased. The fact
is that, like many Negro share
cropper, the seringueira has so little
knowledge of the world and its WAYS
that he probably never knows the
real amount of his debt. All he
knows is that he must keep on work.
ing in the hope of getting enough to
exist on.
Suffered Cruel Hardships.
During the big rubber boom In the
early 1900s the seringueiras suffered
cruel hardships. AS the world price
scared toward 50 a pound, with the
rise OF the motor industry, they were
under constant pressure from their
overlords to bring in more rubber.
1t amounted to a form of relentless
slavery. They died of malaria, vel
low fever, leprosy, the yaws. And
yet more men were found to take
their places.
Word of the sufferings of the rub
Der workers in the green hell" of
the Amazon spread throughout Bra
I'll, throughout South America. In
exaggerated form it became legend.
Then, In 1912, the rubber bubble
burst.
This was the final consequence
OF a chain of events started years
before. In 1876 an Englishman.
Henry Wickham, later to be knighted
Tor his services, had got out of the
country In spite of Brazilian regu-
latlons a number of the seeds of
hevea brasilensis. These he had
taken to London and there they had
been terminated in Kensington
Gardens greenhouses. The seedlings,
taken to Ceylon and Malaya. were
the start of the great rubber planta-
tions of the Far East.
Low Plantation Costs.
Hevea brasilensis could be grown
IN plantations in the East because
there was no deadly leaf disease
there. All efforts to plant hevea in
orderly rows in its native habitat
had ended in destruction from the
leaf blight. And in the East, too
there was cheap labor to tend enI
tap the trees. When plantation
rubber brought its highest price on
the world market during the 2Os and
the big motorcar boom in the United
states, men IN Ceylon and Malaya
were paid 20 cents a day and women
10 cents. That was the peak 1t
was less than the Amazonian rubber
tappers were paid.
The Amazon could not stand up
TO that competition, particularly
since the plantation rubber was a
more pure and standardized prod
uct. Amazonian tappers were using
methods which they had used be-
fore the first white men came to
South America. They coagulated
the white latex around a crude ball
and smoked it in layers in such a
way that impurities and water cut
down the rubber content.
So the Amazon boom declined.
Tappers left the valley to seek work
In the towns. The merchants and
serinalistas, or bosses. turned to
other sources of income-Brazil
nuts, rosewood oil, gums and other
products. In 1899 rubber imports
into the United States totaled only
1880 tons, while 278,168 tons came
from British Malaga, 143,036 tons
from the Dutch East Indies and
a4,778 tons from Ceylon.
The inheritance of the boom was
disillusion and distrust. 1t was
against that background that the