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THE GARDES ISLAND, TUESDAY. JUNE 17, 1919
THE GARDEN ISLAND
Issued Every Tuesday.
KENNETH C. HOPPER
Managing Editor
TUESDAY -
JUNE 17
What has happened to the pro-,
posed Puu Ka I'ele camp lodge?
A few months ago this project
was much Hiked of and every
thing seemed to be in readiness
to go ahead with the building as
soon as the property was turned
over to the county and the roads
put into shape so the neeeusary
lumber could be hauled up. The
countr has put the road in good
shape so machines can negotiate
the climb with ease, and the
Legislature has given the county
the land, still there has been no
move toward the erection of the
lodge.
We understand the Kauai Su
gar Planters Association have
agreed to stand one half the ex
pense of the erection of a lodge
it ought not be more than a few
hours work to raise the other
half bv popular subscription.
This is an important matter to
the people of Kauai and to let it
lapse and die for the want of a
little hustle and public spirit in
a home enterprise would be but
little short of a crime. We are
always ready and willing to give
our money for foreign charities
and institutions in no wav con
nected with the benefit of our is
land and its people. This, of
course is as it should be, and we
can be proul of what we have
done from Kauai for outside in
stitution, but is it not time we
were doing something for our
own home people?
This camp is necessary for the
health and well -being of the peo
ple of Kauai, the benefit to be
derived from short vacations
spent in that iinvigprating cli
mate is almost beyond calcula
tion. It is almost impossible to
get to the mainland these days
for the necessary change of cli
ate, besides there being but few
who can afford such a trip. ith
a comfortable lodge erected at
the proposed site, there would be
no necessity for the expensive
! trip to the mainland.
4
The Race for Rubber
The New York "Independent" con
tains an interesting and Instructive
article, with the above title, from
which we synopsiie the following
story of creative chemistry:
It it an easy matter to break things
up, but hard to put them together
again. Almost anybody with a me
chanical turn can take a watch to
pieces, but very few can put It togeth
er again.
Sixty or seventy years ago chemists
discovered how to take rubber to
pieces, but they are still working over
the problem of how to put It together
again so that it may be a practical
and commercial success. To take it
apart Is easy. Just put some raw
rubber into a retort and heat it, it
breaks up into a bad smell which fills
the air, and a sort of benzine liquid,
called "isoprene" which fills the retort.
But to put things back again Into rub
ber once more, that Is a more difficult
pdoblem; all the kings horses and
all the kings men" couldn't make rub
ber, and make it cheap enough for
practical uses.
Naturally chemlsu the world over
turned to the study o the problem.
The most enthusiastic and confident
students were in England and Ger
many. In England Prof. W. H. Per
kin led In the race with a corps of
chemists under him' hunting for the
reagent that would reverse the reac
tion and convert the liquid isoprene
into solid rubber. Again It waa dis
covered by accident, the kind of ac
cident that happens only to the rarest
intelligence and the most phenominal
skiU.
Drying some "isoprene" over metal
' lie soda, with no purpose but to dry
it. It was finally found to be a mass
of real rubber. The problem was
solved, as far anyway as laboratory
analysis went; now the question was
to make It commercially practicable.
Could the two ingredients be secured
in sufficient quantity, and at such rea
sonable prices that the product would
compete with natural rubber. Metallic
soda was all right; thanks to the de
velopment of electricity it was cheap
enough. But with isoprene It was
different. It was obtained from tur
pentine, and that came from bleeding
pine trees In very much the same way
that rubber was got, and you had the
same problem, only in another form
the destruction of pine forests Instead
of rubber forests. Casting aqout for
other sources of Isoprene, it was found
and there are many sources of starch
that It could be made out of starch,
of which the potato is the cheapest;
but even so not cheap enough for com
mercial rubber.
In the meantime Germany was
working on the same problem with
even more feverish anxiety, for war
was coming, which would mean over
seas blockade and the cuting off of
her rubber supplies from Brazil and
other tropical countries. After ex
perimenting for some time with iso
prene and fetching up always against
the dead wall of its expensiveness
they cut adrift altogether from the
organic sources of rubber. In any
thing that is grown, and fell back on
the inorganic; they started with coal
and lime, things that they had plenty
of and could be sure of . These heat
ed together give calcum carbide, from
which comes acetylene gas, from
which in turn isoprene is made.
And here we are back again on to
familiar ground by an entirely differ
ent road. And In this way, during the
war, Germany made more or less sym
pathetic rubber. She simply had to
have it whatever it cost, especially
for gaa masks. They had to do with'
out it for automobiles and trucks.
the made a spring tire y way of
mbrtitute. not o .Tood. buwit had to
do. But for gas masks, rubber was
indispensable. Thiee Danish sailors,
who were caught by United States of
Ocials trying to smuggle dental rubber
into Germany, confessed that they
had been selling it there for gas masks
at 73 a pound. Every scrap of old
rubber in Germany was caved and
worked over and diluted with fillers
and surrogates to the limit of elast
Icity.
The made rubber might in a mea
sure meet the requirements of such
dire necessity, but it does not yet be
gin to meet them in the open market
where it has to compete with the na
tural article, grown in tha tropical
forests. Thus far synthetic rubber
is not a commercial success. Doubt
less it will be someday, but not yet,
Meanwhile the demand for rubber
grows apace; how is it to be met
When the call came for more rubber,
a decade of two ago,, to meet the
needs of the electrical and automo
bile industries, the first attempt to
increase the supply was to put pres
sure upon the natives to bring in
more of the latex or raw gum. The
trees were ble-d to death and the na
tives too. But no matter what fran
tic efforts were made, and what cruel
ties practised, the tropical forests
could not be made to yield a suffi
cient increase, so the cultivation of
the rubber tree was begun by far-
sighted men in Java, Sumatra, and
Borneo, and in the Malay Peninsula
where much Hawaiian money is in
vested in the business, and in Cey
lon.
Brazil had been the world's source
of supply, wild rubber frcm the
depths of the Amazon jungles. It cost
about 25 ents a pound to gather it,
just about r.s much as it costs the
plantations to grow it. But Brazil
rested easy in her monoply and scout
ed the competition of cultivated rub
ber, and flouted the world by clapping
on another 25 cents export duty, and
wasted the substance in riotous liv
ing. In 1911 the treasury of Para
took in two million dollars from the
rubber tax, and spent most cf it in
new theatre at Manaos not in set
ting out rubber trees.
But the cultivated rubber came ra
pldly to the front in spite of the inde
world out-put of cultivated rubber
ran up from lOOf to over 200.000 tons,
while the wild rubber dropped from
68,000 to 53.000. And the culUvated
rubber is a more satisfactory product.
It is cleaner and more even in quality,
and more carefully prepared. It comes
in pale yellow sheets instead of big
black balls loaded with dirt or sticks
and stones mixed in to give it weight
The United States uses three-fourths
of the world's rubber and grows none
of It The Philippines could grow all
our rubber and keep a 300 million
dollar business under our flag. Santo
Domingo, under our supervision could
be enriched by the industry. The
Guianas. the ideal country for rubber
could be bought Because America
gives no assurance of a fuuro for the
rubber industry, American concerns
are placing their plantations in the
Dutch or British possessions. The
Goodyear Company has just secured
a concession of 200.000 acres near
Medan in Dutch Sumatra, and Ha-
e i ported over a hundred million dol
lars worth of plantation grown rubber,
and could have- told more if shipping
had not been abort and prodution res
tricted. Folly 90 per cent of the cul-
tivaed rubber of the world Is
now grown in British colonies, or
on British plantations in the Dutch
East Indies. To protect this monoply
an act has been passed preventing
foreigners from buying more land in
the Malay Peninsula, The Japanese
had acquired 60,000 acres there on
which they will raise more than a mil
lion dollars worth of rubber a year,
but the extension of that sort of thing
will now be stopped.
The Malaya estates, such as those
in which Hawaii is so largely Interest
ed, expect to pay a dividend of 20 per
cent on the investment when rubber
is 30 cents a poundnd every two
cents additional brings a further 3V4
per cent on the dividend. When the
plantations there first came into bear
ing in 1S10, rubber waa bringing about
13 a pound; the profits of these early
birds may be imagined.
Rubber in not rare in nature, for
it is contained in almost every milky
juice. We have it here in Hawaii in
a score of trees and plant with more
or less rubber possibilities. All the
Euphoibias of which we have ten or
or a dozen kinds indigenous as well
as several imported species; the va
rious plants and trees of the maile
family, indigenous and introduced;
the breadfruit and various other
plants, well known locally, contain
the rubber latex, and some of them
may have commercial value.
The only source actually made use
of within American territory, as
matter of fact, is a little shrub called
guayule pronounced wy-ule, which
overflows from Mexico into Texas.
When they found that it contained
profitable rubber they scoured the
country for it and pulled it up root
and branch, ground it and boiled it, to
get the rubber out So doing they kill
ed the goose that laid the golden egg
and soon there was none left Now
they are setting down to a commer
cial basis, and are going into the cul
ture of this guayule, just as they are
cultivating rubber trees in the Malay
States and Java.
LETERS FROM OVER THERE
Following is the third of the series
of most interesting letters from the
Dole brothers in France not being
published in this paper:
I should have gotten in another let
ter to you before this aa there is cer
tainly plenty of things to talk about
but every minute of my time during
daylight (there are very few lamps
here) outside of drill hours, has been
taken up with censoring the mail. So
I have handled a good many letters
although they are not my own.
Since last I wrote, we have been
made a depot division (to train and
equip men, to replace casualties
other divisions). There will be a per
manent personel of three officers and
fifty men per company to do this work.
Tery meal, very little water is
drunk by the French, mainly because
of the lack of a sewer syBtem. Tho
wells are fall contaminated and tho
water unfit We have to boll all
the water we use. I drink more conee
than ever before on that account. Tho
French think the Americans are
awfully funny people becauno . they
drink water, and because they opnn
their windows at night You should
hare seen them laugh when we find
asked at the hotel for water. Thoy
wouldn't believe that was what wo
wanted and brought most every other
drink first
1 am in charge of bayonet work here
and spent one whole afternoon dicker
ing with a few shop keepers and a
lumber yard for the necessary mater
ials. They dont savy charging things
at all and they are awfully slow in
finally getting what you want. There
is no competition whatever. Their
goods are there to buy, it anybody
wants some, all O. K., and they try to
hold a purchaser as long as possible
just for the sociability of it You go
into a shop and they are in no hurry.
There may be three or four clerks and
one customer there before you. All
the clerks are, in all probability, get
ting in each other's way in trying to
get what the customer wants, as they
each have their own ideas as to just
what it is. Finally one of tbent, or
all of them, will come to wait on you
Last Wednesday was a big market
day. Every Tom, Dick and Harry and
his brother were in town. They
started coming in in camp wagons the
evening before and stopped in the
square where they did their cooking
over little charcoal stoveB Tfcose
that came in the camp wagons were
of the gypsy type and evidently made
a business of going from place to
place on market days and set up their
booths and get out their trinkets and
wares of every description for sale,
By Wednesday morning the square
was filled with their booths. About
4 a. m. Wednesday; the farmers began
to arrive, everyone with some stock
or produce to sell. It it was stock,
then on to about 9 a. m. it was a con
tinuous stream coming from every
direction. The cattle were all taken
to one place, the sheep to another and
the pigs to another, etc., so when a
man wanted to buy he knew just
where to go. I think the cattle were
most interesting. They were classi
fied into groups oxen in teams or
separate, yearling oxen, milch cows,
val calves, etc I wish you could
have seen some of the ox teams one
or two especially were tremendous,
with great horns that were interlnked
when they were yoked. One team I
stood beside. I could just barely look
over their backs, and perhaps it would
be a small boy or girl of ten years in
charge of them. The cattle were prac
tically loose, merely held in place by
the voice of their master. Can you
picture the American women going in
among a bunch of a thousand or so
cattle like that? Of course these cat
tle are brought cp on much more in
timate terms with peop'.e than our
own. and are in the babbit of being
handled from the day they are born,
so are very gentle. There were some
beautiful milch cows there too. The
cattle are all pure white, and a little
Order It By Mail!
Our Mail Ohii:k IH.paktmknt to exwp
lioimll.y wi ll pqtiipp.'il 1 )"inll! nil your Drug
iit, Toild wnnlH llioroiiglily and at owe.
Wn will pii.v wtiiKf on hII orders of U)f and
, over, except Hi" following:
Miiieinl WnleiM, liul.y Foods, Glassware
nnd nrlicleH of timiHiifil weijdit and small
vnlue.
Non-Mailable: Alcohol, Strychnine,
Rat poLons, Iodine, Ant poison, Mer
cury Antiseptic Tablets, Lysol, Car
bolic Acid, Gasoline, Turpentine, Ben
zine nnd all other poisonous or in
flamablc articles.
If your order is very henvy or contains much
liquid, we migge-t Unit you have it Kent by
freight.
Benson, Smith & Co., Ltd.
"Service Every Second"
t
The Rexal Store
Box 426 Honolulu
4
The right Kind of
WALL PAPER
BEAUTIFIES
the
HOME
We have the latest and nio.-t beautiful designs
- of the season's offerings - with Prices right.
AB ill Kll V tnlvnv
7, ,v larger than Holsteins.
have left us already and the comnanipi
are still nearly up to 250 men. it means I?or6es " 8Carce art3cle here now
that the officers left nearly have to be. M haTe been Urge,y uken by the
, . . . ' war. Pmall donkeva ara used for
in several places at once. I nave all
Let us send you samples - -Better
yet - Come in at your first opportunity
and look them over.
Lewers & Cooke, Ltd.
Lumber and Building Materials
1C9-177 So. King Street ' Honolulu
Theo. H. Davies & C o., td.
HONOLULU and HILO
Sugar Factors and Commission Merchants
IMPORTERS OF GENERAL MERCHANDISE
GENERAL HARDWARE
Builders' Hardware
Sporting Goods
Safes
Paints
Harness
Crockery
Fishing Tackle
Glassware Silverware
Firearms Ammunition
wait has large holdings in Pahang.
Tfintan DlstV nnd filma.riini1ni,a fn1
, .B. Keai i y.
ma xaiay biates. cngiana ts wide
awake to the importance of the rub-
"c " " ue i ruo-; pari, wh0 liTe.B hfcrfe
irci uuui, suu ja uiuuuaauy auuing tenant and
to ner Holdings. t
The British Malay Suites in
the censoring to do, and have only
managed to catch up today, it being
Sunday. Being left here now for train
ing purposes, may mean that I wont
get up in the fight very soon, but I
sure hope they wont keep the same
personel back all the time. It would
be a darn shame not to get any closer
than this, after all
Last Monday was a day that will
long belong be remembered, as on that
day we received our first mail. There
was quite a suck of it, but there was
nothing from you.
The houses here are built right
along the streets and have all the
yard in the back. They nearly all
have nice yards, surrounded by high
stone walls and all planted to garden.
Madame Gerigny's is no exception.
The back yard must be about 100 by
30 yards. All along one wall, grapes
are growing, and they are Just getting
ripe. She invited me to help myself
so I sure do enjoy them. Along the
opposite wall, there are a few apples
and pear trees trained, while the
ground in between is filled mostly
with vegetables. All the gardens I
have been in have been very much
on that order. Many of them had
merely flower gardens before the war,
but now have vegetables.
Ths regular officers' mess started
last Sunday and it was mighty fine to
get M-me real American coffee again.
We were eating before that at Hotel
de France at 10 fr. per day. It was
very good, but we were all glad to get
back tc our own cooks again, though
I do like the French cooking. We
have the same cooks we had at Camp
We have had several of the
leading citizens to meals with us. In
cluding the Mayor, the banker from
a French Lieu-
a French aviator. The
ma:n difference between our meals
1417 ( and theirs is that they serve wine with
war. Small donkeys are used tor
hauling to a large extent, as well as
for driving. In both cases two-wheeled
carts are used, and usually one donk
ey. If the load Is too heavy for one,
another la put on in front. For heavy
work, the oxen are used, with not a
bit of harness except the yoke that is
strapped to their heads by the horns.
For driving purposes, when the people
come to town for church or market,
they use what we would call dog carts,
as a rule. They also use, dogs for
hauling light loads, and some of the
loads don't look very light, either.
I think I spoke of calling on some
young ladies to talk In French. I have
continued going there with Lt. Swan
ner several evenings a week and I
guess that is a good way to pick up the
language. They seem awfully glad to
have us come, and teach us very
patiently. They are among tho better
class and all have good educations, so
give us a better class of French than
we would get from the farmers. They
had a brother killed at Champagne in
1S1C. Their only brother. They are
two sisters, Jean and Lucy Raynauf,
and a cousin, Margerite Raynauf. The
two 6isters are very good musicians, ,
piano and voice, but being in mourn-
Ing they practice very little now. lt j
seems funny but they seem In the very j
best of spirits and take it very philo-
sophically, but I suppose it is one of j
their customs. In tact, one of the
greatest surprises I have had is the
wonderful spirit and apparent happi
ness of the people, where nearly all
have lost some near relative. Swan
ner and I are Invited there for tea
this afternoon and I think they are
going to give us some music. Maybe'
Sunday is an exception to the rule, j
Well I guess I could ramble on tor
ever, as everything is so interesting
to me, and I am enjoying the experi
ence so well, but I better close now.
ELWIX H. DOLE,
1st Lt. 160 Inf., A. E. F.
Shoes
Refrigerators 8ark Plutrs Flashlights
Varnishes Brushes Oils Greases
Saddlery Roofing Trunks Suit Caws
etc. etc.
GROCERIES
Fancy and Staple Lines, Feed, etc.
DRY GOODS
Toilet Supplies Stationery etc. etc. t
INSURANCE AGENTS -
Writers of Fire, Marine, Compensation, Automobile and Miscellaneous
;.;Insnranee Policies.
AGENTS FOR
Canadian-Australian Royal Mail Steamship line
Upon application information will be cheerfully furnished in regard to any
of our lines in which you may he interested.
,,f 4. 4 ,, , -f t ft
R; j j Distributors j
YL " TERRITORY OF HAWAII jfijj
j (3 ojr 'tet prices
