It is time for us, too, to leave the plantation, since we want to see the milk made into rubber. A short walk brings us to one of the Linggi factories, which is the rubber-making centre for a neighbouring portion of the estate. Remembering that I promised to bring you to one of the finest rubber factories in the East, you are disappointed when you see only a medium-sized, one-story building, with a corrugated iron roof. In your mind’s eye you immediately compare this building with some of the enormous factory piles you have seen in connection with other industries, and you think what a poor show it makes. Even when you go inside, there are no striking sights which immediately tempt you to alter your opinion.

“Seems to me,” you say to yourselves, “there’s nothing much to be seen here except dairy-pans and mangles. What a curious mixture!”

The explanation of your simple surroundings is that the process of manufacturing rubber is extremely simple, making no demands for huge machines such as a sugar-mill, for instance. I can assure you that in this factory you are going to see the process being carried out by the most scientific of present-day methods, with the assistance of the most up-to-date machinery. But in order that you may fully appreciate advanced methods of manufacture, let me first tell you how plantation rubber was generally made not so very long ago.

The milk was poured into small, round, shallow pans. To each panful a little acetic acid was added, to help the milk curdle, and the mixture was then stirred by fingers until it became a thick dough. Each little bit of dough was taken out of its pan, laid on a board, and a rolling-pin was passed over it to squeeze the water out. The result was a thin, round little “biscuit” of rubber. These biscuits were hung over a line, and when they were dry they were sent to market. Rubber biscuits are still made on some plantations, where the supply of milk is too small, for the time being, to warrant the expense of putting up a factory and buying machinery. But the bulk of plantation rubber is now turned out in the form of crÊpe or sheets such as we are now going to see made.

You notice that some of the milk which is brought into the factory is poured into those big pans which reminded you of a dairy, and some into oblong trays of enamel ware. In the pans, the milk is coagulated in bulk—that is to say, into big lumps—by the addition of acetic acid. The milk in each tray has to have a separate dose of the acid, so that each trayful will coagulate into a slab. To-day the machines are working on yesterday’s milk-supply; the milk which has been brought in to-day will not be sufficiently coagulated for them to work on until to-morrow.

From some of the pans we see coolies lifting big lumps of a white substance that looks like very heavy dough. These are put into a machine which tears them into small pieces. A second machine, which has rollers covered with a diamond pattern, kneads the pieces together, and turns out a long strip of material which looks like tripe. When this has been passed two or three times through a third machine, which has smooth-faced rollers, a strip of “crÊpe” rubber is ready to be taken to the drying-room or to the smoking-room.

The slabs taken out of the trays are passed through a machine which has smooth, copper rollers. The compact, oblong pieces of rubber which are the result of this method of preparation are called “sheets.” Some factories send smooth-surfaced sheets to market, others stamp their sheets top and bottom with a deep diamond pattern, to provide for ventilation when they are packed. Here we see the sheets, after they leave the smooth rollers, passed through a machine that has a diamond pattern deeply indented on its rollers.

C.H. Kerr & Co., Kandy, Ceylon

MAKING RUBBER BISCUITS. Page82