e perilous forest,
with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping
serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and
expensive, and disease and fever cause many deaths.

On the other hand, workers on a well-managed plantation live in
comfortable houses in healthy surroundings and are supplied with
plenty of good food. In fact the conditions are so much better
than generally prevail among natives in the Orient that work on a
plantation is considered more desirable than most other forms of
labor. The unmarried men live in barracks, but the men with
families have individual houses with garden plots adjoining. Big
kitchens prepare and cook the food in the best native style.
Schools for the children, recreation centers for old and young,
and hospitals to care for the sick, are all parts of the
plantation organization.

In erecting hospitals and caring for the health of its plantation
workers, as in other branches of the rubber industry, America has
taken the lead. So well is this recognized, that the Dutch
Government has awarded a medal to the United States Rubber Company
for the efficiency and completeness of its plantation hospital,
which happens to be the largest private hospital in the East
Indies, having accommodations for nearly a thousand patients.

CHAPTER 7

HARVESTING THE RUBBER

It is a cheerful sight to see the workers, men and women, dressed
in all the colors of the rainbow, trooping out from their quarters
to begin the day's work. The tapping must be done early in the
day, for the latex or rubber juice stops flowing a few hours after
sunrise.

When the trees reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen
inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is
usually attained when the trees are about five years old.

In tapping, a narrow strip of bark is cut away with a knife, the
cut extending diagonally one-quarter of the way around the tree.
At each succeeding day's tapping the tapper widens the cut by
stripping off a sliver of bark one-twentieth of an inch in width.[2]
He must be careful not to cut into the wood of the tree, as such cuts
not only injure the tree but permit the sap to run into the latex
and spoil the rubber. When the tapper has made the proper gash in
the bark he inserts a little spout to carry the dripping latex to
a glass cup beneath.

[2] This method of tapping is shown on the front cover.

Later in the morning the workers