e grabbed by eager buyers at $100
each. I know of a specific instance where a plantation bought for
$16,000 was capitalized at $230,000, or 20 for 1, and the stock
floated. When the madness had finally spent itself and people began to
see things as they were, not only individuals, but whole communities,
found themselves prostrated. Shanghai will not recover for years, and
some of its citizens--the young fellow with a $1500 income who
incurred a $30,000 debt in the scramble, for example--are left in
practical bondage for life as a result. The men who have gone into the
rubber-growing industry on a strictly business basis, however, are
likely to find it profitable for a long time to come.

The cocoanut industry is also a profitable one, although the modest
average of 10 per cent., year in and year out, has {189} not appealed
to those who have been indulging in pipe dreams about rubber. Where
transportation facilities are good, the profits from cocoanuts
probably average considerably in excess of 10 per cent., for the trees
require little care, and it is easy for the owners to sell the product
without going to any trouble themselves. In one section of the
Philippines, I know, the Chinese pay one peso (50 cents gold) a tree
for the nuts and pick them themselves. And when we consider the great
number of the slim-bodied trees that may grow upon an acre, it is not
surprising to hear that many owners of cocoanut groves or plantations
live in Europe on the income from the groves, going to no trouble
whatever except to have the trees counted once a year.

Penang, where we spent only a day, is almost literally in the midst of
an immense cocoanut plantation, and I was much interested in seeing
the half-naked Hindus gathering the unhusked fruit for shipment. The
tall, limbless trunks of the trees, surmounted only by a top-knot of
fruit and foliage, are in nearly every case gapped and notched at
intervals of about three feet to furnish toe-hold for the natives in
climbing.

After tiffin on this winter day, instead of putting on gloves and
overcoats, we went out on a grassy lawn, clad in linen and pongee as
we were, and luxuriated in the cool shade of the palm trees. The dense
foliage of the tropical jungle was in sight from our place by the
seaside, and in the garden not far away were cinnamon trees, cloves,
orchids, rubber trees, the poisonous upas, and palms of all varieties
known.

Penang is a rather important commercial cent