The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-01-11

by nature, whether rubber, guayule or cryptostegia."
 A group of United States news papermen recently visited Haiti, and saw the cryptostegia industry at work. It has passed the experi- mental point, and is now in its initial production stage.
 A five-hour flight from Miami took us to the beautiful capital at Port-au-Prince, and a four-hour automobile journey completed the journey to Gonaiives, in north central Haiti, which is the nerve center of the cryptostegia work. Haiti has many advantages for such large-scale agricultural en- deavors. It has the right climate; its population of 2,700000 assures an adequate labor supply, and the average peasants wage is 36 cents day.
 Spark-plug behind this project is Thomas A. Fennell of Cynthiana, Ky, a young man of fl who has known the plant for IS years. He has had considerable experience in the United States Department of Agriculture. He is now stalking all his experience in the belief that rubber production in Haiti cannot only be success on an emergency basis, but that even in the postwar period it can hold its own on a com- petitive basis with tree and syn thetic rubbers.
 Fennell has already spent four years in Haiti, as agricultural ad- wiser to the government, and as president of the Societe Haitiano- Americaine de Developpement Agri- cole (Haitian-American Corpora tion for Agricultural Development), |, better known as SHADA.
 At Gonaiives we saw large rub Der plantations, the experimental station at work, and sheets of rub Der produced from latex. All this has been done in a little over year. Fennell told us that Haiti will pro- duce 5000 tons of rubber in 1914, and 10000 to 12,000 in 1945. He figures that this rubber is now cost ing about 65 cents a pound, but thinks it can be lowered consider ably in the long run.
 Here is the way the whole thing started. A German ship captain brought the plant from Madagas- car to Haiti in 1912, and planted 1t for it's pretty blue flower. It eventu- ally grew wild, so when the cry for rubber went up after Pearl Habor, it was easy to find plenty of seeds. The peasants were paid to gather the seeds, and SHADA, organized the plantation and nurseries. It takes only a few months for the plant to produce latex-nothing that grows can do the same thing so rapidly.
 Gathering the latex from the stems of the branches is quite problem. Various methods have been tried The process now is to get. about six to 10 branches together, cut them all in one bunch on an apparatus that looks like a small stilt with container on top and a clamp which holds the stems. Then the latex drips out. One well-trained peasant can work about five these instruments at a time.
 To convert the latex into rubber is simple, as we saw it done at Gonaiives. It coagulates by simply adding six portions of water to one of latex. No chemicals are needed. The coagulated mass is then put on a table, fiattened into sheets, and run through five presses that look like clothes-wringers. The sheets are then smoked, and shipped to Akron. When the latex cans are brought into the plant. they are of anywhere from 8 to 30 per cent rubber-the rest is water, resin and other components of no value. After it has been rolled, it becomes . sheet of S8 to 9l per cent pure rubber.
 The cryptoStegia project so far has cost around e4.300, 900. Up to %. 900 peasants have been em- ploged on Go0oO acres ot land.