The French engineer, Mr. Paul Le Cointe, who is an expert in the matter, writes the following: “For the work to be executed, the number of workmen required is much less where the production of those men is high, hence to calculate the price of hand work, the individual production is the factor that may become more important than the pay to the men who work by the day. “In the Far East, the workmen are paid from Fr. 75 to Fr. 1.25, equal to 14 cents to 23 cents, approximately, including feeding. In the Amazonas, the pay per day amounts to Frs. 4.75, or that is, almost 91 cents for all the work, which is three to four times more.” Let us examine the cost in Asia and in the Amazonas for the different work required by the cultivation of the rubber trees. According to Mr. Stanley Arden, it is about 38 cents for each kilogram of rubber in the plantation (the data that I am presenting in connection with this matter is from the book of Mr. Le Cointe, entitled “Le Caoutchouc Amazonien et son Concurrent Asiatique”). Mr. Lamy Torrilhon speaks about the Kuala Lampur Rubber Company (Malay), which had in 1909, 404,012 rubber trees from one to six years old. Calculating the price of cultivation of that rubber at Fr. 4 per kilogram or approximately 76 cents, Mr. Stanley Arden also calculated that the cost of a hectar of plantation before reaching the period of exploitation (the sixth year, according to him) was only Fr. 816, or more or less $157, including the salaries and establishment of European employees, and Mr. M. G. Vernet, of the Pasteur Institute of Nha-Trang, calculated Fr. 3,000, about $580. Mr. Le Cointe further states that Mr. Stanley Arden in his calculations of expense seems to presume the plantation in lands not thickly wooded, because he counts for the burning and clearing of the land, hardly one-third the cost of felling the trees, when in the forest it is about the same. Of course, lands not properly protected and in the virgin state in the tropical countries, are less fertile than those covered with thick forests, furthermore the lands that have been devoted to a prolonged cultivation of plants, like coffee, tea, etc., are to a large extent exhausted, and if rubber trees were attempted to be planted there, the result would be that it would largely lose the advantages by having to fell new trees. [Illustration: BRANDING RUBBER ON THE SAND-BAR.] Mr. Le Cointe also speaks of about 225 trees per kilogram, when practically that number can be doubled; besides this the calculation made by the same author of about $18 for the clearing of the hectar, at the rate of $14 per day for each workman shows that the price for that work in almost clean land will take sixty-two days, whereas in the Amazonas we only count on twenty-six days for each clearing of a hectar in a virgin forest.