The finest quality rubber is the product of a tree botanically known as Hevea brasiliensis, which is native to the Amazon Valley. Many varieties of the same species of tree belong to the family called "the Heveas." All rubber obtained from such trees, no matter where they grow, has the distinctive name of "Para" in the commercial world, being called after the port of Para, which was the first centre of distribution.

The highly important and extensive rubber industry of to-day owes its origin to the trade which sprang up in Para rubber, following on the colonization of the Amazon Valley by the Portuguese. During the first half of the eighteenth century Lisbon began to import rubber goods, such as hats, boots, bags, and capes, from Brazil. A little later, France began to take an interest in rubber, and it was not long before other countries, including England, began to experiment with the new material.

Until well on in the nineteenth century, rubber goods were made in Brazil only. The chief market for them was North America, where waterproof shoes in particular became so popular that the United States decided to import raw rubber and start manufacturing rubber goods. The enterprise of the United States soon led to the establishment of some pioneer rubber-goods factories in Europe.

The factory quickly began to rival the forest workshop in the variety of goods turned out, and in such details of craftsmanship as style and finish. But the factory-made goods did not wear well; evidently they suffered from exposure to the air, being damaged by changes of temperature.

This great drawback to manufactured rubber goods was removed by a method of treating raw rubber with sulphur. The process, called "vulcanization," was discovered by an American named Charles Goodyear, who made his first successful experiments in 1839.

The discovery of the vulcanization process acted as a very great stimulus to the rubber industry. More and more keen and widespread became the desire to manufacture rubber goods, and the growing demand for the raw material led Brazil to extend her search for Hevea trees, and to set about dealing with the export of raw rubber in a more businesslike way. Up to about 1877 the forests around the mouth of the Amazon had been the only source of supply. Now some of the upper tributaries of the river were exploited, and the glowing reports as to the wealth of Hevea in the far inland forests led to a rush of rubber-gatherers into the interior. It soon became known that these reports had not exaggerated the available supply of Para rubber, and fresh energy and enterprise were attracted to the Amazon Valley by the rosy prospects of the raw rubber trade.

The principal rubber-producing regions of Brazil are the States of Para, Amazonas and Matto Grosso, and the federal territory of Acre, all in the Amazon Valley. Three qualities of Para rubber are exported from these localities—namely, fine, entrefine or medium, and coarse or negro-head.

Until a very short time ago, Para rubber obtained from trees growing wild in the Amazon forests had no rival. But to-day, rubber from plantations of Hevea in Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and the East Indies, is waging a great commercial war for supremacy. To see how that war started, and to understand the developments in a historic industrial struggle, we must go back to the latter part of the nineteenth century.

In 1876 some Hevea seeds were smuggled out of the Amazon forests. These seeds were taken to Kew Gardens and carefully tended in glass-houses. About 7,000 grew up into healthy seedlings, which were distributed among the Eastern Tropics, to be transplanted in the open. The seedlings grew into trees, which in their turn became a source of seed-supply.

For several years the cultivation of Hevea was generally regarded as a new hobby for botanists, and anyone who prophesied a commercial future for plantation rubber was dubbed a crank. But a time arrived when the planters in the Malay Peninsula found themselves in a very desperate position. They had been growing coffee, and doing splendidly with the crop, but conditions now conspired to cut down their profits to such an extent that they were threatened with ruin. In despair they began to plant Hevea. This change only took place as recently as 1895.

The pioneers in Malay had a very hard struggle to keep their heads above water whilst their rubber-trees were growing. They had to wait five years before there was any possibility of judging whether their experiment was likely to prove a success, and few indeed were the people with sufficient faith in what the harvest would be to advance them any money for working expenses.

Came the day when motor-cars got so far beyond being a fashionable craze that people began to realize they would soon be a necessary means of locomotion in an age of hurry. Rubber tyres were going to be so much used in the near future, said someone to somebody else, that it looked as if we should want more rubber than was being supplied from the forests. The idea spread, and by 1898 a few more people had become interested in rubber cultivation; larger areas were put under Hevea in Malay and rubber-planting was begun in Ceylon. By 1899 it had been proved that cultivated Hevea trees would yield marketable rubber. In that year the first plantation Para rubber was sold in the London market at 3s. 10d. per pound.

By 1905 the great financiers, who had hitherto looked upon any prophecy of plantation rubber supplies as a fairy tale, began to think it was worth while risking money on an enterprise which gave such sound promise of yielding extraordinarily large profits. The increase in money now available for rubber-growing gave scope for a considerable development of the industry.