While the United States is planning to relinquish its Pacific possessions the British have more than doubled their holdings in New Guinea by the acquisition of Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, good rubber country. The British Malay States in 1917 exported over $118,000,000 worth of plantation-grown rubber and could have sold more if shipping had not been short and production restricted. Fully 90 per cent. of the cultivated rubber is now grown in British colonies or on British plantations in the Dutch East Indies. To protect this monopoly an act has been passed preventing foreigners from buying more land in the Malay Peninsula. The Japanese have acquired there 50,000 acres, on which they are growing more than a million dollars' worth of rubber a year. The British _Tropical Life_ says of the American invasion: "As America is so extremely wealthy Uncle Sam can well afford to continue to buy our rubber as he has been doing instead of coming in to produce rubber to reduce his competition as a buyer in the world's market." The Malaya estates calculate to pay a dividend of 20 per cent. on the investment with rubber selling at 30 cents a pound and every two cents additional on the price brings a further 3-1/2 per cent. dividend. The output is restricted by the Rubber Growers' Association so as to keep the price up to 50-70 cents. When the plantations first came into bearing in 1910 rubber was bringing nearly $3 a pound, and since it can be produced at less than 30 cents a pound we can imagine the profits of the early birds.