Cut & Paste from: NSTPi

Men who sowed the seeds of country's rubber industry

By Khoo Kay Khim

STILL on the subject of rubber to which modern Malaysia owes a huge debt, it is useful for students of history to know who were some of the rubber pioneers apart from E.V. Carey.

There was W.W. Bailey who was one of the earliest to experiment with rubber planting. He was to reap the reward during the first rubber boom in 1910. Yet when he first arrived, his knowledge of rubber cultivation was completely superficial.

Like Carey, he was willing to learn and made a contract to take over all the rubber seeds in the Botanical Gardens. This upset the other planters who by the turn of the century had also become aware of rubber's potential.

They protested and the Straits government rescinded Bailey's contract. But he had already received the seeds at half the price that the other planters paid for theirs.

Another important pioneer was C. Baxendale who claimed in 1940 that he was the first planter to sell plantation rubber from Malaya. That was in 1902. Previously, H.N. Ridley (known to schoolchildren as the "Father of Rubber" in Malaya) in 1897, L. Wray in 1897 and F.G. Stephens of Jebong Estate in Matang, Perak, in 1902, had sent to England specimens for valuation.

It was also in 1902 that the Linsum Estate in Rantau, Negri Sembilan, originally the property of Thomas Heslop Hill, a prominent coffee pioneer, (coffee had preceded rubber as Malaya's main agricultural export) sent over 130 pounds of rubber to England which sold for 3s 10d.

The Kindersley brothers, R.C.M. and D.C.P., were equally important rubber pioneers. They came during the close of the 19th century. Initially, they planted only five acres in their Inch-Kenneth Estates near Kajang. R.C.M., in particular, became a leading member of the planting community for many yeas.

Although not a planter, Sir Hugh Low (the third Resident of Perak) also contributed significantly to the development of the rubber industry. He planted rubber in Kuala Kangsar as an experiment and also sent some seeds to the penghulus in Sitiawan, Perak.

It was Low who sent some of the seeds brought back by Henry Wickham from Brazil to Hill and these were planted in Linsum Estate as well as Weld Hill Estate in Kuala Lumpur (in the vicinity of Jalan Raja Chulan, previously Weld Road).

Among the non-Europeans, Tan Chay Yan of Malacca was by far the most important. He had earlier planted tapioca but began planting rubber at the close of the 19th century on a 40-acre plot at Bukit Lintang to the northeast of Malacca town.

His enterprise was to have a great influence on the wealthy Chinese in Malacca, many of whom took to rubber planting. The well-known Tan Cheng Lock was among them. His most important estate was Melaka Pinda.

Despite the passion and hard work of these pioneers, the rubber sector did not take off smoothly. Many of the younger and completely inexperienced planters posed innumerable problems. Carey, after a business trip through Selangor in early 1908, recorded his observations in a letter to the local Press.

The conditions of many estates, he wrote, was "absolutely disgraceful". Many of the planters did "anything and everything but work". The recreation clubs were abused. Young planters who scarcely knew the taste of anything stronger than water drank enough to knock out a seasoned toper.

Carey also wrote of "senseless home interference and the issue of puerile instructions" by the directors of companies which crippled the efficiency of "real good men".

"My deliberate opinion", he said, "is that many home Boards are utterly unfitted to be entrusted with the management of Companies out here, and many of the Agents, Visting Agents and planters should get the sack" mainly because they are not able to control and put a stop to abuses and irregularities which "they now do not even appear to even notice".

Carey's solution to the problem was simple, possibly not so pragmatic. If they should receive orders the execution of which they knew to be against the interests of the estate in their charge, they should "deliberately refuse to carry them out, and then stand the racket".

Then, referring to Bailey, he asked whether he ever carried out an order which he knew from his long experience to be wrong. "He never did," said Carey, "and that is one of the reasons that he enjoys the well-deserved reputation of being the best planter we ever had out here."

The growth and development of the rubber industry in this country "embraces one long series of episodes brimming with romance", said Heah Joo Seang, a rubber magnate of a later generation, "mingled with tragedy, interspersed with booms and slumps alternating in rapid succession".

But it was as much a human story as it was a story of production and consumption and should be studied in greater depth than it is in the schools today.