Under the most favourable conditions the collection of rubber is an arduous and generally unhealthy work. Years ago an estimate was made that every ton of rubber from the Amazon Valley cost two human lives, and although at that time the estimate seemed to be an exaggerated one, the methods of the Putumayo must have quadrupled it. If the native rubber-gatherer were treated as an ordinary labourer and paid a due wage, it is safe to say that it would not pay to gather wild rubber at all, or only by increasing its price in the world's market very considerably. As a cheap commodity it represents a definite ratio of human lives lost. In Sir Roger Casement's Report it is shown that for the twelve years 1900 to 1911 the Putumayo output of 4,000 tons of rubber cost 30,000 lives. Various rubber companies in Peru and Bolivia have been obliged already to suspend operations due to scarcity of labour. The remedy lies in planting, in conjunction with the wild rubber forests. The amount of rubber collected by the slave labour in the Putumayo district for the benefit of the company and its predecessors, for six years ending in December, 1910, was 2,947,800 kilogrammes, of the value on the London market of nearly £1,000,000. The output from Iquitos, however, has not decreased, which has been taken as a proof that native labour is still being hard-driven. The crop-year 1911-12 shows a considerable increase over that for 1910-11.[23] Perhaps one of the most remarkable circumstances affecting the rubber company is the ease with which it was possible to float, in London, a property of which, to a large extent, possession was imaginary and without proper title. It is but another instance of the astute methods of company promoters and the gullibility of the British shareholder. It will be recollected that in 1909 shares in rubber companies to the amount of £150,000,000 sterling were taken up, a great part of which have proved useless or fraudulent. Laws seem inadequate against the combination of knave, fool, and victim which is so marked a feature of modern company-promoting finance.